I wasn't sure how this game would work, but it seems to have gone very well. I agreed with Nick (the designer) that the subject seems suited to a megagame - the lords of the time certainly behaved like typical megagame players - bending the machinery of state to their own ends, siphoning money into their own personal funds and raising private armies to pursue their own interests. Warwick even went so far as to turn to piracy to supplement his income while Captain of Calais.
I certainly enjoyed myself thoroughly, and while I was worried about how junior nobles would find things, the local game of collecting revenues, putting down revolts, and pursuing land disputes through the courts etc seemed to keep people occupied when they weren't angling for jobs or otherwise playing politics. In fact, the regional games seemed to be so involving that it was quite (realistically) difficult on occasions to make lords see the big picture or to persuade them to leave their cosy estates and come and get involved in the ongoing York-Lancaster struggle.

The game started in the early months of 1456, with Henry VI having relapsed into madness after being beaten up at St Albans, and with the Duke of York established as Lord Protector. York is at the height of his legitimate powers. As Queen Margaret, there was thus little to be done other than sit in on privy council meetings and heckle the Duke of York, and tour the country trying to garner support for our cause (there seemed a lot of fence sitting, which was unsurprising, but even the avowedly Lancastrian lords seemed more concerned with what was going on locally than nationally). I also made contact with the King of France (my uncle), looking for money more than anything, and his envoy the Duc D'Alencon duly arrived in London and funnelled about £100-200 per annum into my coffers. In good hard cash, too - none of this trade goods nonsense. Nice one, uncle!
York made a brave stab at governing the country, and I was quite surprised at how the council rallied round to dig into their own pockets to make up the shortfall in revenue (which ran at about £1,000 per year). The Bourchier brothers; Cardinal Thomas, the Chancellor, and Duke of Essex Henry, the Treasurer, were particularly notable in this regard.
Finally of course, the King recovered his senses. York feared that once he had stepped down as Lord Protector, I would have him and his mates stripped of their offices and pass the jobs out to my cronies - which I certainly intended to! So he took the decisive but dangerous step of abducting the King and dragging him away and pretending that he was still ill. Then he tried to move the King to York - this seemed a strategic error to me, since it placed his Majesty closer to some of my key supporters in the north, like the Percies and Lord Clifford. Finally, perhaps aware this was not a viable long-term strategy, York tried to poison the king into being unwell again!
Dropping off my three year-old son Prince Edward with Lord Percy, I got Percy's younger brother to come back south with me and 500 of his men to camp outside York and demand to see the King. York had a similar number of men inside the city. The Archbishop of York stepped in at this point, trying to broker a deal, and, together with the Sheriff of York, took custody of the King - who gradually recovered from his arsenic poisoning and decided he wished to see his wife. So I finally got to see the King, persuaded him to come with me and his 'loyal supporters', and called a Parliament.

At this point I thought Richard of York might try and get some more men together and snatch back the King, but he seemed to decide to fight this one legally at first. At the parliament he grudgingly stepped down as Lord Protector, and easily saw off the Act of Attainder (which would have stripped him of his lands and title) that I tried to have promulgated, keeping the overwhelming backing of parliament. Now the fun would start…
With myself now effectively in charge of the Royal Seal, the court moved back to London and I began to start trying to govern. To begin with, I was determined to push my own favourites, just as Margaret had done in the past. However, apart from Japser Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, and the younger Percy, none had shown much inclination to leave their estates. So for the moment I had a council stuffed with Yorkists, including the Bourchiers, Warwick, and York himself. Yet the Bourchiers seemed not to worry unduly about the change of government and kept on as normal. And since they seemed to be quite competent (and miraculously un-corrupt) administrators I left them in place. And Warwick didn't seem to be entirely behind York either. But before I could sort things out properly the Duke of Buckingham turned up at the head of a large group of non-aligned lords. They didn't seem to have a cause or a programme other than to be a Third Force and push their own interests. Nevertheless, they seemed much better organised than either the Yorkists or Lancastrians, and it swiftly became clear I would have to accommodate them or see them go over to York.
The best thing to do seemed to be to try and set the two non-Lancastrian factions against each other, so I decided to strip York of the title Constable of England, and gave it to Buckingham instead. York scuttled away northwards, taking the Royal Artillery with him. I gave Buckingham and his supporters leave to pursue him and demand he hand over the title.
At this point, just as Lord Grey had been trying to warn me, Scotland took advantage of the chaos in England and invaded. My supporters in the north swiftly occupied themselves with dealing with this threat - mostly to protect their own lands. Actually I would far rather that they had been with me in London, and let Buckingham deal with the Scots, but I realised raising a Royal army would take time, especially with York refusing to stand down as Constable, so perhaps it was just as well they stepped in. Nevertheless, it occupied my most valuable supporters at a time when a Yorkist revolt seemed imminent, and I felt very vulnerable.
However, York seemed determined to prove himself as Constable, raising his own army and marching off to deal with the Scots. Buckingham caught up with him and demanded he surrender his title and command of the army, waving a Royal writ. York refused. Got him! Refusing a Royal Writ is treason, and I made it known that he was now an outlaw.

At this point, I was expecting a full-scale Yorkist revolt. But somehow it never materialised. The Yorkists later told me that they felt York had gone too far too quickly, and had also failed to show sufficient leadership (but given how difficult I found it to lead a faction spread across the entire map I can sympathise with York on that one). Perhaps they also felt it would be too unpopular to revolt at a time when England was fighting Scotland. In any event, they stayed quiet, York's army melted away, and he himself boarded a ship for Burgundy. Which was just as well, since Buckingham seemed to be taking an inordinate time over raising a Royal army, and back in London all I had left to protect me was the Constable of the Tower - previously another man with Yorkist leanings, but who also seemed to have realised which side his bread was buttered on, and whom I had increasingly come to rely on to protect the Royal Person.
The two flies in my ointment were: (a) my 'loyal supporters' had managed to carelessly lose the Prince of Wales to York and (b) Scotland, with Burgundian money, was trashing us. My uncle the King of France was anxious to broker a deal between England and Scotland and so shut out the Burgundians, and I finally decided that I could only deal with one problem at a time, and I would have to come to terms with Scotland so that I could secure my rule in England. In order to try and spread the blame, I put the proposed peace treaty before the Privy Council: Scotland would gain Berwick, but agreed to withdraw from all of the other places it had captured (Bamburgh, Alnwick etc). Since we had no way of recapturing them until we could sort England's finances out, it was actually a pretty good deal. In reality it would have made Margaret very unpopular, but I was trying to play the part of a French Queen who had no idea how emotive a subject Berwick was and who was quite prepared to give it up to buy time.

The sad truth was, we simply couldn't afford to wage a war at that time. The unrest in the country had decreased tax revenues, and in spite of the Bourchiers' continual selfless digging into their pockets, we were broke.
One of the nice things about the Royal finances, given how badly in debt the country was (£20,000 - actually only a fraction of the real debt in 1455 - £372,000, but I think Nick had scaled all revenues accordingly), was that Nick had provided a list of the government's liabilities, along with the probable consequences of not meeting each item. This allowed a good degree of informed judgement in our financial discussions. Fortunately, The Duke of York's treachery and the "unfortunate" death of the Earl of Oxford allowed the Crown to write off £3,000 of its debts, making life much easier for us, and we had been able to raise a £1,000 loan to fight the Scots. It had become clear this would not be anywhere near enough, so although Buckingham got about half of it, I pocketed the rest. But I then forgot about it when time came round to raise revenues for the upcoming year, and so we had to tax more heavily than usual and the entire country exploded in tax revolt. Oops!
Well, this occupied all of my supporters - old and new - in putting it down, and I seemed to sign off an inordinate number of Commissions of Inquiry etc to reduce the level of dissent. However, by the end of that period it did feel that we were beginning to get a grip on the realm and things were falling into place.

But the problem of York and his faction had not gone away. He had opened some long-distance negotiations with me, using the Archbishop of York as an intermediary, asking for a royal pardon in return for the safe return of the Prince of Wales. I tried to string him along and hold out some hope, since I was sure that he would kill my son as soon he felt he had no need for him - that would after all make him next in line to the throne. But then the 'Yorkists' still in England came to me with a novel proposal. They would invite York back to lead a revolt, and then betray him into my hands, along with Prince Edward. They seemed genuinely aggrieved at York's actions, but I still felt it could be a trap. Still - what had I got to lose? There was bound to be a Yorkist revolt at some stage, surely? Better one I was prepared for than one I wasn't, I reasoned.

The Earl of March, York's son (and future Edward IV), raised a force, as did Warwick, and both marched to the coast. I had my northern lords maintain their forces in readiness, and Pembroke shadowed March to the coast, while Buckingham remained in the Midlands with the Royal army (although I wasn't sure how much I could trust him either…). I gave the Constable of the Tower more money to increase the forces in London - but I wasn't sure if I could trust HIM - it was a nervous time for me. And I waited.
And so, York landed, and Warwick was as good as his word. He slew the traitor and delivered up the Prince safe and sound (he later admitted he only let the Prince live because he didn't think he could get away with killing him - which he wouldn't have!).
And so came the parliament to dole out rewards to those who had helped me through this difficult time. Buckingham secured an estate for Stanley, one of his followers - I have to say that Buckingham had kept faith with me and kept his requests reasonable, and so I was inclined to give him whatever he wanted. I let the Earl of March inherit his father's lands without hindrance - he and Warwick had, oddly, helped me more than anyone, and there even seemed to be the possibility of some reconciliation. And the rest went to a couple of nobodies (one of the awards was due to sheer pester power by Alex Kleanthous) plus Pembroke and the younger Percy, who had seemed the most active of my followers on my behalf (sorry to Lancastrians who thought that decision a travesty, but that was the way it seemed from London). And yes, the Constable of the Tower got himself made an Earl for his loyalty, and Lord Grey became Earl Grey of Westmoreland for his prompt and accurate intelligence work with the Scots.
The Wars of the Roses were far from over, of course. The situation at the close of play in 1458/9 was similar to the historical position in 1460, with the new Duke of York and his crony Warwick still plotting away and my son's accession to the throne still far from secure. But that would be for another game…

I think this was a fab game, and very accurately captured the flavour of the politics of the era. A couple of points that people remarked on perhaps bear further discussion. Firstly, there were very few battles. This was basically because they were 'all or nothing' affairs, so people were unwilling to risk it all in the uncertainty of a fight - quite realistic: the 'Wars of the Roses' saw few full-scale battles. Secondly, no-one (other than Scotland!) raised a sizeable army. Nick had deliberately kept money tight and also introduced the concept of most money being in the form of perishable goods which could not be kept from year to year, in the hope that this would produce the typical WOTR campaign whereby a large force was raised but only kept for a short season and then disbanded. However, the actual effect was that people only raised small numbers of men and kept them on all year. I think part of the problem was the slow pace of movement and the difficulty of coordinating raising an army across several lords and regions. Also it was difficult to know what ones opponents were doing, and raising forces could only be done once per season, so you rarely got people mobilising in response to other peoples' mobilisation.

Finally, it must be some kind of success that no-one ever mentioned the word Kingmaker (oh, damn…)