First Battle of Newbury - Set-up

It took a LOT of time to set-up but here are a couple of shots of the set-up for the Newbury I playlets of In Deo Veritas.

Looking south the north, Roundheads to the left (west) and Royalists to the right (east). The troops aren't in their final deployment positions yet. I'll probably set them in lines first. The colour tags represent the different 'Wings' or Battles in more common English parlance of the time. Under each of the Battle Commanders is a playing card, e.g. Jack of Diamonds for Robartes, Jack of Clubs  for Vavasour. The corresponding cards will be shuffled and drawn to determine the order of movement - drawing the Jack of Spades would mean it's Vavasour's turn to move.

A more 'aerial' view. The River Kennet near the top (north) running diagonally to the top right. Skinners Green is centre left. Round Hill is just south east of Skinners Green and Wash Common at the southern end where all the roads peter out.

I will have a quick re-read of the section on Newbury I in Hey for Old Robin to see what it says about the enclosures. I'm not confident I've got them right. And then a quick read through of the IDV rules again and I'll be ready to start.

I was tempted to game outdoors this weekend. Friday seemed too hot and I wanted to get the set-up done Saturday night for Newbury on Sunday so I couldn't do it outside. I've used my daughter's old gymnastics padded mat (8 x 4 feet) and put the cloth over the top of that, so the board is deeper than my usual 3 feet. The 8 feet represents something like 3.5km or c.2 miles

Orders of battle

I've used my normal unit frontages of 120mm as opposed to the IDV standard of 75mm, but scaled up the number of men a 'brigade' represents accordingly. As a result I have fewer brigades than you might expect if you used the IDV standard unit frontage. Groundscale remains unchanged.

Royalist: King Charles I

Right Wing - Vavasour:

1 brigade Horse

1 brigade Foot

1 detachment of Foot

Centre - Byron:

2 brigades Horse

2 detachments of Horse

3 brigades Foot

Left Wing - Rupert:

4 brigades Horse

1 Brigade Foot

Parliamentarian: Earl of Essex

Right Wing - Essex:

3 brigades Horse

3 brigades Foot

2 companies dragoon

Centre - Skippon:

1 brigade Foot

Reserve - Mainwaring:

2 brigades Foot

2 detachments of Foot

Left Wing - Robartes:

2 brigades Horse

1 brigade Foot

1 detachment of Foot