Another Beneath the Lilly Banners game

Although I enjoy line ‘em up and play type games, I also enjoy creating testing scenarios, this one found a small force defending a bridge expecting reinforcements against a much larger force trying to take the river crossing. The above picture shows the initial Williamite deployment.

Defending the bridge were William’s forces with one elite infantry unit (Kirke’s Lambs) one drilled infantry unit and a militia unit, two squadrons of cavalry were posted on the opposite side of the bridge. The picture above shows the initial Jacobite deployment.

The remainder of the protestants, including Dutch, Danish and the Royal Regiment were to arrive on the roll of one D6 (on turn 1, roll a 1, on turn two roll a 1 or 2 etc). The die rolling was good but the roll for percentage of the total force that could move was bad and the reinforcements didn’t start arriving until turn 4.

The Jacobites were tasked with taking the bridge with three squadrons of Irish cavalry, two French infantry units and a Guard unit (all drilled) and three units of raw infantry.

The Jacobites got the ball rolling by moving in to the attack and their artillery up front caused terrible damage to the cavalry, causing them to turn tail and manoeuvre out of the way. Meanwhile, Kirke’s, out on the right, was positioned behind cover and bore the brunt of the Jacobite left wing with the small gun falling prey to the Jacobite artillery but managed to halt the Irish charge against them.

The Protestant Irish crossed the bridge and immediately fell prey to the Irish artillery and decided that enough was enough and routed. Hanmer’s regiment on the Protestant left fared no better, at the first sign of a charge by the Irish horse they turned tail and found themselves between a wall and the enemy cavalry. However a long volley from the Royal Regiment from the other side of the river caused a few casualties to the Irish horse but not enough to really make a difference.

The bridge caused quite a bottleneck with William’s forces coming to a standstill as routing units ran past them shaking the Danish and halting the Dutch.

All in all we had a fun game and although we didn’t come to a conclusion decided that the Protestants would actually be hard pressed to do anything other than withdraw in good (?) order.

Hanmer's regiment caught between a rock and a hard place

The Jacobite charge falters against the teadfast Kirke's lambs.