Battle of Ferrybridge, parts I, II and II

For Wars of the Roses actions, I am presently getting to know the Test of Resolve rule set. The previous post gives a detailed look at these rules (link below).

As a result Andy Johnson’s book (historical novel) Bloody Meadow, concerning the Battle of Towton 1461 has jumped the reading queue. The opening pages of the book gives a vivid account of the contact between the Yorkist and Lancastrian armies the day before Towton.

While Towton is a very big battle, the actions the previous day were a series of ongoing small scale clashes concerning Ferrybridge, that are very kind to the size of the smaller collection.

The first scenario book from the Test of Resolve camp, presents the Ferrybridge battle as three separate but closely related actions and in their order of occurrence, lists them as Parts I - III as follows;

Part I - Warwick attacks. Edward IV (Yorkist) has sent Warwick ahead to seize the bridge crossing at the River Aire. It has been partly destroyed and Neville (Lancastrian) defends the far side.

If Warwick’s attack succeeds (Lancastrians disperse), then he recovers half of his lost Battle Morale and all of the surviving company losses - Part II will be played. If he loses, then that is the end of that, the Yorkist attempt to gain the positional advantage has failed  and the Ferrybridge action ends.

Part II - Warwick defends the bridge. Warwick holds the ground taken in Part I, with the surviving troops from that game. Clifford (Lancastrian) enters the table to counter-attack. Warwick’s forces are encamped and need to become ‘alerted’ to action. There is an event card in the play deck that allows that. If Warwick is chased back over to the other side of the bridge, then the Lancastrians win and Part III will be played, otherwise we have a Yorkist victory now and the Ferrybridge action ends.

Part III - Fauconberg's counter-attack. Clifford begins with the forces that survived Part II. The Yorkists attack with a fresh force under Fauconberg. These are mounted troops and are trying to cut Clifford off from retiring and re-uniting with the main Lancastrian army. Part III ends in victory for the winning side (the enemy force is dispersed), unless Clifford gets off the table to join the main army, in which case the Ferrybridge action is considered a draw.

It is fascinating turning to these scenarios having just read the account and they do seem to cover the incident very nicely. 

Of course I will hope that all three actions actually happen (that will need the Yorkists to win Part I and the Lancastrians to win Part II) so that I get to experience the full ongoing action as described in the book. Clifford is certain that he has put enough distance between himself and his pursuers and is confident that he will reach friendly lines shortly, perhaps in the next hour.

However, rather than re-assault across the bridge, the Yorkists found a ford three miles upstream and their mounted force crossed it and actually got ahead of Clifford, setting an ambush - Clifford walked into it … there was a massacre and Clifford was killed. It is this moment that Part III is simulating.

The Ferrybridge action brought the Yorkist army to within proximity of the main Lancastrian army and the following day, Palm Sunday, the Battle of Towton would be fought. 

Anyway, we shall put Part I down on the table and see where that gets us!

The Ferrybridge games are played on a 4x4 and this is our terrain that will stay the same over all 3 games. Only the bridge, the river and the road feature in the scenario graphic, the rest I have added to pretty the table and it will be ignored for play purposes. The river can only be crossed by bridge.

Above - Neville  (Lancastrians) is defending behind the bridge with just one retinue (superior) and two longbow companies. The force has 5 Morale points.

Warwick (Yorkists) is on the attack. His force (Battle) has 4 x Retinue (1 is superior) and 1 longbow company. 2 of the retinue are on the table and another 2 are immediately behind, ready to enter the table. The force has 11 Morale Points.

The bridge is classed as damaged, so units moving over the bridge not only have to halt on entering the bridge, but also at the halfway point.

As I look at this, to my mind Warwick’s force is going to easily steamroller over the bridge and Neville will be lucky to get away!

Narrative;

Almost straight away, the Lancastrians have to make a Missile Supply check. Both units fail, so they have run out of arrows and must move directly to safety behind the bill armed retinue! Ouch! We might assume here that maybe they loosed their arrows too early in ineffective shooting - who knows!

Above - Warwick’s four retinues line up along the road, the superior unit in the lead and move up to the bridge. Their archers shoot from the river bank to support the assault. The Lancastrian billmen move slightly forward to fully block the bridge exit.

Oh My! I didn’t expect that. In its assault, Warwick’s lead company takes terrible losses and routs!

The second Yorkist bill company is pushed forwards …. And they rout too!

The Yorkist archers plug away, but their shooting is not effective.

The third Yorkist bill company, will some trepidation, opens a new assault, but they are soundly beaten on the bridge and also rout. Warwick’s Battle Morale has gone below zero. They test resolve and fail, his battle is dispersed and a very surprised Neville holds the field as victor! 

Conclusion, well, that is the end of that, a decisive Lancastrian victory and so Parts II & III will not get played (not this time at least :-) ).

Even though a small action, that gave a very enjoyable game. These small games are a great way to help get the rules under your belt.

So what went wrong (for the Yorkists)? With the Lancastrian archers going out of arrows it all looked a bit grim for them but …… on the first assault (opposed melee die rolls), the Lancastrians rolled 12 and the Yorkists rolled 1 - it doesn’t get better / worse than that.

In the subsequent attacks, we had the surviving superior Lancastrian retinue being assaulted by ordinary rank and file and overall, it was the Yorkists that took a few hits and that feeds into subsequent melee rounds.

The Yorkist archers stayed around for the entire battle, but couldn’t hit the preverbal barn door. They needed to roll 9+ on a D12 and never did!

I’m sure if I re-ran this, the Yorkists would come off better more times than not, but it is great that this system turned my original prediction on its head. Regardless of what the dice and out of missiles stuff was doing with the bow, I am happy to view that as simply on the day, the bowmen did not get a chance to make much of a contribution to the outcome of the battle.

The Yorkist suffered two very bad die roll differences in the melees, but the rest were mostly closer calls, though tending to just favour the defenders, it the end the drip - drip - drip of Yorkist casualties kept on seeing their melee retinues tipping over into rout.

The interesting thing is, I am in the middle of reading Bloody Meadow by Andy Johnson, a  historical fictional account that covers both Ferrybridge and the Towton battles and his use of very descriptive language, together with giving some of the common soldiers and their leaders voices, makes the hack & slash, exhaustion, archers running to the rear as the billmen approached, leaders galvanising their troops for just one more attack and fighting being done at the company level, very vivid and I noted that in this game, I was reading the fighting in that same context. The system does help convey that narrative.

Anyway, another exposure to Test of Resolve and I am increasingly enjoying it. It is nice to see the Wars of the Roses boys back out on the table again.

I will be discussing the re-basing of my archers over the next few days on my Commanders site (link below).

Resource Section.

Link to the previous post that describes the Test of Resolve system;

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/06/first-contact-test-of-resolve-rules.html

My sister webspace ‘COMMANDERS’  showcases the various figure and boardgame systems that I am enjoying and gives a flavour of where current projects are up to. Link.

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html