Stow on the Wold 1646 using 'Stand up with me to fight the field'

'Stand up with me to fight the field' is the name I have chosen for my home brew pike and shot rules.  These rules started way back when I was living a lot closer to the Naseby Battlefield than I do now.  Looking on my computer it seems that the first draft I saved was back in December 2002, clearly I'm not one to rush these things!  My original objective was to create a set of rules which would allow me to refight Naseby using 2mm figures.  To date that hasn't happened due to life and , well you know, stuff!  

I'm now planning on trying them out for the refight of Stow on the Wold, which I posted the scenario for in the previous post.  I have played a number of other battles solo using these rules and the they have gone out to various play testers but I have never inflicted them on real live opponents before! 

Having real live opponents has forced me to edit the final rules draft to create something other people will understand more easily.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that mostly the editing has consisted of adding cross references and moving sections around so they sit in the logically correct place.  There is actually very little amending of the text going on.

All of which is very reassuring but one thing it did remind about is that I haven't actually generated any traits for the commanders or calculated the over all combat effectiveness value (CE) of the two armies.  In turn that made me complete the army calculator spreadsheet I had left in limbo for a few years.  The value of an army is essentially the initial CE value of all of it's units, essentially the measure of the robustness of the army, sort of like hit points.   It's a rough and ready guide to the fighting power and resilience of an army for players who might not want to fight purely historical battles.  

I have also created a mechanism to give armies who historically had better or worse command structures restrictions on the quality of generals available.  I allocate a point budget equal to 10% of the army CE total for players to spend on generals and their command factors.  Each general has an initial point cost which is dependant on the overall command quality of the army.  That cost is higher for the less able armies.  Which leaves less points to spend on command traits!  So the Swedes at First Breitenfeld might have a base command cost of 4 points while their less able Saxon allies might be on 6 points and the League army under Tilly would be on 5 points.  

Bigger armies generate a larger command budget as the troops CE value is higher but they normally need more commanders so it sort of balances out.  Of course for historical refights I'm going to simply pre-set the ability levels to something which seems correct for each general on the day of the battle.

So for my Stow refight here are the runners and riders.  Parliament first.

The Army total CE is 382  plus another 35 points for the three generals coming to a total value of 417.

The Royalist army totals 311 CE and it's three generals add a further 31 points for a total value of 342 points.

The Royalists have a a seemingly huge disadvantage, as they did in reality.  The actual battle was over and done in about an hour.  So if the Royalists can hold off the Parliament juggernaut for an hour they have done better than was the case historically.