For King & Parliament "Marlowe to Maidenhythe" Campaign Game 1: The Attack on Marlowe

Having played several games of FK&P over Vassal during lockdown and both having as yet unused 28mm ECW armies Dave and I decided to try out playing on an actual table! 

One of the add-ons FK&P is a fictional campaign (in fact more a series of games) called from Marlowe to Maidenhythe which features Sir John Boulters leading the Royalists (me) and Sir Christopher Grey commanding the Parliamentarians (Dave). The first scenario sees the Royalists attacking Marlowe which is held by a similar sized Parliamentarian force.

The rebel forces deploy in front of the town:

The King's men deploy to attack the rebels. They are stronger in horse but weaker in foot:

Planning to avoid taking on the rebel commanded shot and forlorn hope in the maze of hedgerows the Royalist foot begins to move to the more open ground on their left:

On the right the Royalist horse holds back and awaits developments:

The left wing of the Royalist horse advances boldly though to pin the rebel infantry in place:

The rebels advance their cavalry slightly but otherwise remain stationary:

The Royalist foot continue to advance and open fire on the rebel Forlorn Hope:

The Royalist horse on the left have made rapid progress forcing the nearest rebel foot battalia to turn to face them:

The Royalist foot continue to advance:

The first losses of the battle as one of the rebel forlorn hopes is routed:

The second rebel Forlorn Hope is also quickly dealt with:

On the right the rebels have rushed their horse forward and engaged the Royalist horse:

Both rebel horse have charged home:

The initial fight goes well for the 'Swedish' organised Royalists against their 'Dutch' opponents:

However, they fail to build on this success and one Royalist regiment is routed:

The Royalist foot are making good progress towards outflanking the rebel line. Much of the rebel foot seems reluctant to leave the safety of the hedgerows:

Things get worse for the Royalist right wing horse as a second unit routs:

All is not yet lost though as the final Royalist horse take the victorious rebels in the flank and disperse them:

They follow up and break the second rebel unit! They promptly pursue the fleeing rebels off table:

Rebel morale is starting to fall with one battalia taking fire from the front and flank while Royalist horse prevent the other rebel battalia intervening:

Possibly too late in the day the rebel commanded shot begin to advance forcing one Royalist battalia to retire before it breaks:

Having weakened the enemy the Royalists charge into the flank of the exposed rebel battalia and break it. Rebel morale collapses and the retire from the field:

It had been quite a while since we had played To the Strongest FK&P so we struggled a bit with the rules and probably did several things wrongly. 

I tend to find the rules a bit clunky with so many markers and the use of playing cards to drive the game, while giving some interesting nuances, tends to spoil the visual aspect with cards and markers littering the table most of the time. When you do get into combat it also appears to rely to a large extent on luck (though perhaps it just seems that way with cards rather than dice!).

As for the result I felt that advancing towards Dave's superior firepower behind hedges was not a good idea while (slowly!) carrying out a flank attack would be more successful. I think Dave waited too long to advance his uncommitted infantry and by the time he did it was a little too late. I also seemed to remember that the 'Swedish' style horse with only two hits were considerably worse than the 'Dutch' three hit horse, while initially the Swedish ones do okay (and depressed Dave greatly) they are extremely brittle and don't fare well in the long run.

Having said that it was an enjoyable game and certainly looked spectacular, Dave thought he had painted his army maybe five years ago and never used them while mine had been in production for at least three years I think so it was great to get them into action!

The next game requires some 'pike-heavy' battalia for the Royalists so I might even buy a few more figures to add to my standard pike-and-shot units.....