Lion Rampant; Elizabethan English vs. Irish

We played a game of Lion Rampant this week using the Elizabethan Army Lists available on the Dux Rampant forum, pitting the English vs the Irish. 

We played a slightly modified version of "The Convoy." We used a couple of house rules, allowing friendly units to be within 3 inches of each other and not ending a player's turn when they failed an activation test.  The former was to keep the English player from getting too spread out, he already had a pretty tough job as it was. The latter was to speed up the play a bit.  The Irish won by a wide margin but the English did bloody them quite a bit.  We also let the English wagons leap-frog each other to keep from getting them bottle-necked when the first in line failed activation.

Here's the table:

6" x 4" about half of it counted as rough terrain and the stone walls were obstacles.  The object was for the English to get three wagons of their convoy across the long axis of the board, primarily along the road.  I used one of the Cigar Box mats as the base for this set-up.

The English retinue, one unit each of demi-lancers, longbowmen, calivermen, billmen, sword-and-buckler-men, and militia.  Mostly Foundry and Sergeant Major miniatures with Old Glory cavalry.

The Irish retinue: armored light cavalry, gallowglasses, calivermen, two units of kerns (fierce foot), one unit of "boys" (bidowers). Mostly Sergeant Major miniatures with a few figures from Old Glory's WOR Kerns.

The English convoy tried to move out swiftly but the third wagon kept lagging far behind.

The English swordsmen provided security to one flank.

The Irish set up in ambush amidst the rough terrain.

Irish calivermen rush through some light woods.

The laggardly third wagon falls prey to a sudden rush early in the game.  The surviving longbowmen were badly battered and only rallied with difficulty, removing them effectively from the game.

The first cart, protected by calivermen hold off repeated Irish attacks.

The demi-lancers, lead by the English commander make the mistake of trying to charge across and open field against the Irish calivermen.

The result is not surprising.

The furthest the English get is about mid-board.  The Irish had them boxed in and the only hope was to break through.

In a very hard-fought action, the English swordsmen take on the gallowglasses but fail but are forced to retreat.

This exposes the English commander to an attack.  He is killed but heroically takes a gallowglass with him.  Surprisingly the only unit to break is the swordsmen.  The second wagon, guarded by the militia men hold off the Irish for a long time in the big field where the demi-lancers died but are finally broken by Irish caliver fire and javelins.

The English billmen were the last intact English unit.  They too failed to break through, the Irish cavalry holding them off.  With only one cart left and half of their units gone, the English surrendered.  It had not been an easy fight for the Irish.  With the exception of the calivermen, all of the Irish units were depleted, most to less than half strength and one of the kern units had been shot down by the English militia.  Even though the English started in a bad tactical situation and lost their most powerful unit, the demi-lancers, they still came close to break the Irish - if just one or two of the combats had gone a little different, they would fight won.