Worcester Living History Weekend 17th Feb - Thoughts on the day.

Yesterday saw the first of what hopefully will be an annual event, the Guildhall in the City was a great room to play in with plenty of natural light and room to move around, the building dates back to the 1770's which really gave the day that historical feel.

It was a low key affair with representation from us and the Wyre Forest Wargamers who are based out of Kidderminster, together and Andy and the gang who run Worcester Wargames, who put on the event.

http://worcesterwargames.co.uk

It would be great to see more of the local clubs and gamers there next year.

I know you are out there...

9.00am and ready to go..

Plenty of interest from members of the public who were mostly unaware of the hobby, but they were soon drawn in by the history and levels of painted figures on display.

Will we drum up any extra members, I suspect not.

Did we raise awareness of the hobby for sure.

The Battle of Ramillies 1706

Germans vs Romans.

ECW - Somewhere just outside Worcester

WW2 - France 1944

When we discussed what would feel right for the day and what would give a suitable overview of traditional gaming we opted for a Marlburian epic - Ramilies 1706.

The History Bit.

Battle of Ramillies, (May 23, 1706), victory won by Allied (Anglo-Dutch) forces led by the Duke of Marlborough over the French during the War of the Spanish Succession. The victory led to the Allied capture of the whole north and east of the Spanish Netherlands.

The battle was fought at the village of Ramillies, 13 miles north of Namur (in modern Belgium), between a 62,000-man Allied army under Marlborough and a 60,000-man French army.

A strong Allied attack on the French left forced them to shift reinforcements from the centre. 

Marlborough, however, called off this attack because the marshy ground would not permit cavalry support. Half of the battalions from this wing then marched, undetected by the French, to the centre to support the final concentrated Allied assault. 

This smashed the overextended French army. The French lost about 17,000 killed, wounded, or captured and by the next morning were thoroughly dispersed. 

Allied losses numbered about 5,000 killed and wounded. 

Much like the events on the day the Cavalry were the stars of the show, crashing into each other until neither were capable of exploiting the gap in the enemy lines. Both sides attempted to cross the marshy ground and stream. each side lost a good number of troops as they faced off over the boggy ground.

As the day closed the British Guards were finally able to gain a foothold on the French side.

 

A hard fought draw and entertaining game.

We used a variant of Blucher it was perfect for a battle of this scale were Corps and Brigades are represented, It has a fantastic mechanism where you don't know exactly how much you can do, because your opponent rolls the order dice and conceals them from you. Your can move Brigades and units, but once you go down a command level you can't go back up.

There were several turns were both sides were about to strike the master blow only to find they could only move 3 units!!!

It would be good to see this event return next year and with some better advertising and more support it could really help pulling in some new recruits for all the local clubs.

If you have stumbled on here following the Living History Event in general.
Wyvern Wargamers can be found here.
http://wyvernwargamers.org.uk/
We play the 1st and 3rd Sunday of every month - In the village of Bishampton 15 mins outside of Worcester.