It is all very well researching a battle but how can this be translated into wargaming terms? For those misguided enough to have waded through my last offering on the battle (LW 106) itself here are some thoughts on wargaming the event. But first a health warning! This was my first attempt at refighting an historical battle so the way I chose to approach various problems is probably not the best way and certainly not the only way. If you try something let members know about it through LW. My first attempt at a refight was based pretty closely on the standard accounts in most books. Most of my battles these days use variants of WRG "DBA". I like the simple mechanics which keeps down administrative overheads and makes easy it to bolt on "chrome" for specific games or periods. I also find the alternative move structure allows me to adopt a relatively unbiased viewpoint. A simple dice roll is used to resolve any ambiguous situations. Any variances from the standard rules are mentioned below. The questions were : how the rules could be made to work with two unequal armies? how to retain some resemblance to the historical battle ? the composition of each army.? I gave Hotspur a standard army of twelve elements, taken straight from the 100 years war English army list which gave a Royal army of 18 elements from the same list. The basic troop types available from this list are "Knights", "Blades" which are dismounted knights/men at arms, "Longbows", and "Auxiliaries" comprising lesser armed foot levies, militia or the like. There is also an option for artillery. Each army was broken down into 3 battles, a right or forward battle, a center or main battle, and a left or rear guard. Although only the C in C has significance in normal DBA, I named the commanders of each battle. I also decided that each battle had to have at least one unit of gentlemen be it knights or dismounted blades. This gave the following order of battle. Location Royaltists Rebels Right Humphrey, Earl of Stafford Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester 2 units of Blades 1 unit of Blade 2 units of Longbows 2 units of Longbows Center King Henry (C in C) Hotspur (C in C) 1 unit of Knights 1 unit of Knights 2 units of Blades 1 Unit of Blades 4 units of Longbows 1 unit auxiliaries 3 units of Longbows Left Prince Henry Earl Douglas 1 unit of Knights 1 unit of Knights 1 unit of Blades 1 unit of Auxiliaries 1 unit of Auxiliaries 3 units of Longbows 2 units of Longbows In DBA camps assume a major significance. For the purposes of this battle I regarded Shrewsbury itself as the Royal Camp, just off table and too heavily fortified for the Rebels to attack unless the field army is defeated. I placed the Rebels camp behind Hotspur's centre and treated it as mobile at wagon speed, so given enough time the rebels can save their baggage train. As the Cheshire archers were apparently a cut above the others you may like to give them +1 against other archers, as suggested in DBA, as "superior" troops. Since the Royal Army comprises 18 elements I considered it had lost when 6 elements were destroyed. The Rebels as a standard sized army lost with 4 elements wiped out. To provide an interesting but reasonably historic battle I chose an initial set up that reflected the supposed situation just as the first troops clashed. The basic terrain and deployment I used is shown on Map 1. Large Shrewsbury Map 1 (slow: 91K) Units and table sizes can be scaled to fit whatever you normally use. As I don't have any appropriate troops for this period I actually used graph paper and counters with a standard square DBA battlefield. The key features are that the northern quarter of the board should be a gentle slope helping the Rebels. In front of this should be some broken ground, the "standing crop of peas". A road should run North - South towards the Eastern edge of the board. Any other scenery is mainly for appearances. The deployment assumes that the Rebels have had plenty of time to organise and have their battle line fully deployed. The Kings army are presumed to have marched north along the road from Shrewsbury and are trying to deploy to face the Rebels. The important thing is that the Royal advance guard are actually amongst the bad going almost in range of the Rebels, and the Rebels move first. On both occasions I tried this as a solo battle the Royal advance guard were massacred and the rebels then tried to outflank the Royal centre and kill the king before Prince Henry could get into action. Once they succeeded and once they just failed. An alternative version of the battle This alternative assumes that the King's main army forded the river at Uffington in an attempt to trap Hotspur and that while the battle was in progress Prince Henry's force marched out of Shrewsbury and hit the rebels in the flank. Large Shrewsbury Map 2 (slow: 105K) The armies composition was as outlined for the first scenario with two exceptions. I actually gave the Royal Army a camp, in the shape of a town gateway at the south edge of the table, complete with an artillery piece as garrison. Not that any Rebels came near enough for it to fire in my refight. I also split the Royal force into two armies although its total size was unchanged. One army under Prince Henry with the same force shown in the first scenario. The remaining troops under the King was split into the 3 battles shown below. RIGHT Earl Stafford 2 units Blades 2 units Longbows CENTER King Henry 1 unit Knights 1 unit Blades 2 units Longbows 1 unit Auxiliaries LEFT Sir Richard Hussey 1 unit Blades 2 units Longbows As in the first scenario, the Royal advance guard is caught as it deploys through rough ground. This produced a close game with the Royal advance guard being wiped out and the King in danger until the Rebels were overwhelmed by Prince Henry's flank attack and superior numbers. Shrewsbury: Part 2 Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #110 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1995 by Solo Wargamers Association. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com