War of the Roses Clash

About eight weeks ago, late one cold and stormy Friday night, Paul's Lancastrians made the long march to my garage to challenge my freshly painted Yorkists. Now my Spanish had suffered a savaging at the hands of these Lancastrians and their damned English longbow! That was last year. It's taken me the best part of a year to get the Yorkists ready. So the challenge was on- and uniquely both armies had exactly the same composition. Why? Well why not? Totals: 9 units of longbow, three dismounted Men At Arms, three bill-men, one artillery piece and four units of knights.  I'm very sure that it is very rare that two wargames armies are not only exact in points but in composition as well!! Predictability in wargames??? No way!

My Knights- Heavy Metal!

English vs Spanish

Paul recently made a very sensible, prudent, erudite and timely purchase, showing he has great taste, towering intellect and some spare cash  - he bought a lovely 28mm War of the Roses Lancastrian army- from me! And so he decided that he should use said army against me- where's customer loyalty these days?

Well, he of course was lacking any real experience in using such an army,   I confidently fielded my Trastamara Spanish with lots of pike, arquebus, some field fortifications, a couple of knights and the famed jinetes!

Deployment was a bit problematic for Paul as he had 9 units of Longbowmen, so he just put them in a long line on his left flank, and packed the rest of the army on his right.
Bad move. Really bad move.

The loooooong line of longbow. With stakes. ( thin 'red' line- or is that from another era??)