Do I do any actual wargaming?

From reading this blog you might be forgiven for thinking that I spend my time painting figures which never get used in a wargame.  To some extent it is true that I have been doing a lot of 6mm painting of late courtesy of having a painting table set up 24/7 which makes it easy to do a few minutes here and there most days.

My gaming has mostly been provided by the Monday Night Group, you know the ones who meet on a Tuesday evening.  Graham blogs the details of the games over on Wargaming for Grown Ups and as they are his games, by and large I don't like to steal his thunder.  This year we have had some excellent games ranging from Ancient Mesopotamia through the mid 20th Century Spanish Civil War.  What I have not done is provide the game rules or scenario for any of these run outs.

With that in mind and considering that I don't really want to inflict an untried game on the MNGWMOAT (Monday Night Gamers Who Meet On A Tuesday) I am thinking of suggesting a game I have played solo a couple of times before using BBDBA and DBM.  This is the first Battle of Whalley, not the one fought in 1643, but the one from 798 during one of the regular Northumbrian Civil Wars, AKA the Battle of Billington Moor.  Unlike the later ECW battle where there is a reasonable amount of information available, this one is shrouded in mystery.  The Anglo Saxon Chronicle has a very laconic entry.  It reads:

'AD798.  This year a severe battle was fought in the Northumbrian territory, during Lent, on the fourth day before the nones of April, at Whalley; wherein Alric, the son of Herbert was slain and many others with him.'

I had to look up Nones of April.  Its Roman calendar reckoning and in the shorter months fell on the 5th day of the month so by my arithmetic this means the Battle was fought on 1st April.  I'm pretty sure that the name in my copy of Stenton's translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles isn't Herbert but as I can't get to it at present I will have to accept it for now.  I'm guessing that it will turn out to have been Eardberht or similar and that he was famous enough to warrant mention by virtue of his rank although it is of passing interest that his son's name wasn't worth mentioning.

Not much to go on there then.  We know from other sources that the Northumbrian crown was in dispute at the time and one of the claimants,  the previously deposed King Osbald, seems to have held lands around York at Osbaldwick and more importantly based on place name evidence perhaps also close by the site of this battle at Osbaldeston.

Osbald's claim seems to have had support from Mercia who following the death of King Offa were struggling to keep their status as the leading English kingdom.  They were campaigning in the East and South East and an internal succession dispute would have been useful to keep their Northern frontier secure.  The Northumbrian dispute could also have roots in the earlier organisation of the kingdom which had two power bases Bernicia on the North East Coast and Deira based in Yorkshire and the Pennine valleys of what is now East Lancashire.  The pro Osbald party was lead by Alderman Wada possibly from Waddington a few miles up the Ribble valley.  He met and was defeated by King Eardwulf at Billington Moor.

There is little evidence as to exactly where the battle was fought but there is a well used Roman Road which runs down the Ribble Valley along the East bank of the Ribble angling of to the west after Whalley to the old Roman fortress of Ribchester.  It would make sense for the combatants to have used this route.

So in my scenario I have Wada rallying support from Osbald's holdings between Ribchester and Whalley and calling in others from his own supporters.  The easiest way to move into the Northumbrian heartlands would be march North East along the Roman Road with a view to attempting the Aire Gap at Skipton.  Some historians suggest that the battle was fought somewhere close to Billington or Langho South West of Whalley (Hence Billington Moor).   So that's the ground I'm recreating and as a bonus it helps me to visualise the location as I went to school at Billington!

The Ribble valley is open here with flat land to the east of the river rising to a steep ridge above Billington with a number of small streams running down from the ridge to join the Ribble.  Slightly further to the North East at Whalley itself the River Calder joins the Ribble and personally I wouldn't want to fight with that to my back so I'm placing the action a little  further down the valley towards Old Langho which matches with the description of the Battle as being at Billington Moor.

The two forces are both essentially similar consisting of the Nobles Hearth troops backed up by Fyrdmen drawn from the rest of the local population.  Neither side would have been particularly numerous so I'd guess at no more than 1,000 a side.  The Royal Army would probably have an edge in quality over Wada, but Wada knows the ground so gets to choose the battlefield.

I'm going to allow Wada his own Hearth Troop plus some supporters of Osbald who are equally well equipped as a second unit of Hearth Troop.  The balance of his forces will be Fyrdmen split roughly 1:2 between the better so called 'Select Fyrd' and the the less well equipped 'General Fyrd'.  The Royal Army will have the Kings Heath Troop, plus Herbert's and one other Hearth troop unit.  The balance of his force will be 'Select Fyrd' quality.  Both sides will have some light infantry as skirmishers.  I normally give slightly more of these to Wadda as he is on home ground and can drum up more support from the locals.

I need to think about how many units to use overall as I may work to a lower figure:men ration to get more toys on the table.