Tilly's Very Bad Day: Bolden Hill III game test

 I had Bolden Hill set up from the last two tests of the “In Deo Veritas” 30 Years War rules. I now used the same setup to run a test of “Tilly’s Very Bad Day” rules for the same conflict. The deployment can be seen below. The dice gods would make it a very short test. The pre-game bombardment by Scottish artillery missed.

On the first turn the cavalry of both sides moved forward. The Royalist Foot awaited the Scottish advance. The Presbyterian artillery scored a hit on the rightmost enemy Foot brigade. 

The second turn saw the first cavalry clash. The raw Royalist Horse rolled two dice and got two hits. The trained Scottish horse got three hits and terminated the high church Anglicans with extreme prejudice. One of the Royalist units lost a resolve for seeing this disaster while the Scots recovered a resolve for routing their foe. Newcastle moved up to the hit Foot brigade and rallied them back to their starting strength.

Sottish Foot waded the stream, still out of musket range.

Two cavalry brigades on each side charged each other, both sides with a horse brigade in support. (These rules penalize you in melee if you don’t have rear support. I like that.) The murderous dice continued. A Royalist brigade that was down to 2 Resolve due to seeing a rout squared off with a 3 Resolve Scottish brigade. Each scored 2 hits. The Royalist brigade was gone, the Scots down to 1 Resolve but recovered one by routing their foe. The other Royalist brigade scored two hits on their foe but got three back in return and vaporized. The Scottish unit recovered back to 2 Resolve. 

The supporting raw Royalist unit lost 2 Resolve for seeing two routs and fled the field themselves, leaving cavalry wing leader Lucas quite alone. The supporting Scot brigade lost one resolve for seeing a rout.

 

The Royalists had lost 4 of their 8 units. They broke. Newcastle fled the field, leaving the Scots to ransack East Bolden at will.

 

I had played 3 turns in 43 minutes. This includes perusing the rules some and taking pictures. I’m sure a different game would have resulted if the dice had come up about half hits and half misses. But the hits ruled the cavalry fight and the game was over in 3 turns before the infantry fired a shot. If the infantry had deployed at the standard distance for these rules, they would have been at each other on turn 2 or 3.

 

I imagine some games go on with units having trouble putting each other away, but the cavalry in this just slaughtered each other. Or perhaps I missed something in the rules. But the only saving throw I’m aware of is when leaders are at risk. I like the rules but man, was this a short game.