Last words about Timerton - determining a winner

The Aftermath of Battle. Photo courtesy of Rusty Aldwinkle 

I forgot to mention that the official result of the game was a marginal victory for the Parliament.

The rules have a fairly straight forward calculation to use where it isn't immediately clear who won from the table top situation.  The method is to calculate the army CE value of all units left on the table (unit CE value x number of bases in the unit) obviously this is going to be lower than the starting CE value of the army (Unless something very odd has happened!).  Subtract the end CE value from the starting CE value to see what the losses were.  Next calculate the loss as a percentage of the starting CE value to see what percentage of the armies strength has been lost.  Do the same for the other side.  You now have two numbers for reduction in CE value deduct the lower from the higher and compare to the table in the rules (reproduced below).

So for Timerton

Parliament starting army CE 561 and ending Army CE 385

561-385 = CE loss of 176

 176/561 x 100 = 31.37% reduction in Army CE

The Royalists started with 562 and ended with 296 which is 47.33% reduction in Army CE

47.33-31.37 = a difference of 15.96 or to put it another way the difference is losses was in favour of Parliament by 15.96 of the two starting strengths.

Which when compared to the table from the rules is between 11 and 20 - a marginal victory 

Score	Result
0-10	Draw
11-20	Marginal victory
21 - 30	Victory
31 or more	Decisive Victory

My thinking is that by comparing the overall loss ratios some of the advantage of having a more powerful army is removed.  It's not perfect as the larger army can soak up greater losses for the same percentage reduction but that is what tended to happen in real 17th century battles.  Or as someone once said the battle is not always to the big battalions or the race to the fleetest of foot...but that's the way to bet!