History to Table - Creating an Orewin Bridge, 1282, Scenario

"Upon this rock, I will build Welsh Nationalism"

from Wikipedia article on Orewin Bridge [CLICK]

In similar fashion to previous posts about creating a wargame scenario from history to tabletop [here] using the battle of Hereford, and [here] using the battle of Crug Mawr, I set out to create an expandable scenario for Orewin Bridge, 1282 [click above] for a group of variable size [2-6 players]. Once again, I turned to the old reliable "One-Hour Wargames" by Neil Thomas [CLICK], my go-to starting point. OHW should be familiar to all followers of this blog, it having 64 posts!

First, to get a quick summary of the battle, I used the Wiki article above. The most significant features of the battle are:

- Welsh hold River Crossing

- English outflanking it by a ford

- English attack and rout the Welsh

- Death of Prince Llywelyn

With that in mind, I already knew the exact OHW scenario to use, #12 "An Unfortunate Oversight".  It features the above two points. But how to expand the battle in ways that made sense and were also tactically interesting?

This gets into the social aspect of the hobby. 

Today, it is a lot harder to get firm commitments from people about doing anything, even something as *critically* important as a wargame.  With an uncertain number of players, but likely around 4, and being willing to play or not myself, I was pretty certain of 4-5 players. So I would need at least one additional OHW scenario, but preferably two, which would expand the game to total of 9 feet by 3 feet at 3 feet per scenario.  The third scenario would be "optional", and could be dropped if short of players.  But the key aspects of the battle would be there.

With this in mind, I took my handy-dandy laminated OHW scenario map cards and tried a few concepts. Keeping in mind the feel of a strong attack from an unexpected direction, the outflanking of the Welsh bridge position, I considered:

#12 "An Unfortunate Oversight" [rotated 90 degrees], as I didn't want to fight down the narrow end of the table, but allow each scenario to be a fully alongside the others.

Ever-reliable Scenario #8 "Melee", alonside #7 "Flank Attack" were early choices. While 8 was suitable, it had too much deployment time for the attacker, and I wanted the battle to develop quickly.  I considered replacing it with #4 "Take the High Ground" but that involves a lot of subtlety using the hill as a line of sight block to save the 2 Units that start upon it. Also, 7 "Flank Attack (2)" had the attacker too far to the right flank, and the English attack was an operational but not a tactical surprise, since the Welsh redeployed to meet it.

Below, #11 "Surprise Attack" and #14 "Static Defense".

I felt that the pacing of 11 would be good - it gets right into the action, and puts the defender under a lot of pressure quickly, which seemed to suit the tactical situation. #14 I decided to use as it helped me introduce the use of the Town [black square at right] as Prince Llywellyn's camp, which was a suitable objective.  I pushed the hill forward a bit and added a road continuing from 11's road.  Thus the objectives all made sense - the capture of either the hill or the camp interdicted the road behind, which was the line of retreat for the Welsh. Same with scenario 11, the seizing of the crossroads would trap the Welsh units fighting in scenario 12.   I added the town at the bridge as an objective also, giving a total of 4 terrain objectives. 

The 5th was killing Prince Llywellyn, who would arrive as a reinforcement the turn after either objective in 14 was taken. It would be his task to try and turn the tide.  I also decided that the Welsh would win if 0-2 objectives were taken, the English win if 3-4 were taken, and a complete decisive victory if all 5 happened - the death of the Prince was the death knell of an independent Wales, which is the purpose of fighting this campaign at all, historically.

I was very satisfied with this scenario.  Altho there are many differences between Neil Thomas' rules and the venerable "Chainmail" we would be playing, I felt that the faster move rates would be compensated for with a wider table; the larger units might crowd the space a bit, but I was pretty sure I would have fewer units per side, probably 4 instead of 6.

For the fight between Prince Llywellyn and the knight who slew him, Stephen de Frankton, an English centenar from Shropshire, I plan to use the man-to-man combat rules from "Chainmail".

Next post: Assembling the feudal array!