tiistai 27. helmikuuta 2018

Breitenfeld

This post is about half-a-year late, but I figured better late than never. There's been no new progress on my fortifications so far, mostly due to other projects. The First Battle of Breitenfeld was fought on September 17th 1631 and was one of the significant victories of for Sweden during the Swedish phase of the Thirty Years War. This was also the scenario featured for the Swedish phase in the Pike & Shotte expansion The Devil's Playground.



Gustavus Adolphus in the Battle of Breitenfeld by Johann Walter Me and Antti were demoing P&S in Ropecon 2017 and we tried out the scenario beforehand at my place and played it twice during the event. We had good participation in the event and people certainly seemed to like the game. Special thanks to Aleksis Meaney for volunteering to us out demo the game and doing it for both days, even though he was originally participating as only a visitor. The following report is a hodgepodge combination of the three games we played.

 
Battle of Breitenfeld - Initial dispositions, 17 September 1631 (The Department of History, United States Military Academy) In the historical battle, the Saxons were routed by Imperial cavalry and the Swedes the crushed the Imperial left flank with Swedish cavalry led by Gustavus Adolphus also capturing their artillery and the Imperial line finally collapsed under Swedish fire. Curiously enough, nothing like this happened in our own games.


Initial dispositions, basically the same in all games. This picture from my house.



The initial dispositions at Ropecon 2017, pictures by Antti Lahtela

As I have a Swedish army, I will be writing from that point of view.
In all our games the proceedings were basically that the Swedish center held and managed hold against or repeal the Imperials, the right Swedish cavalry wing was systematically defeated by Imperial cuirassiers and there was a bit of variance between how the left Swedish flank fared. If I recall correctly, we managed to get a Swedish victory, an Imperial victory and a draw from the same scenario, so when it comes to equal opportunity for pulling a victory, the scenario seems to be well balanced.

But you probably want to see pretty pictures of miniatures instead of reading me rambling, so here they are!


From the pre-demo game, the Swedish cavalry wing proceeds with commanded shotte at the front, attempting to soften the Imperial scum before a crushing blow from the Swedish cavalry and Finnish hakkapeliittas - or at least that was the original plan.

Again, it should have worked, even as I managed to lure a unit of cuirassiers into a position where I had Swedish cavalry at the front, Hakkapeliittas at the rear and commanded shotte at the flank - and all had a supporting unit behind them! What could possibly go wrong after such clever manoeuvering as this!
Meanwhile, on the left Swedish flank, the Scots and Swedes put pressure on the Imperial Harquebusiers.
It's not clearly visible, but here the Swedish right flank has already broken and is retreating, whilst the Imperials are consolidating their positions. The Swedish left flank has secured their advance better.







During RopeCon we played the scenario several times with both Swedish and Imperial occasionally winning the day. What was almost a constant feature was that the right Swedish flank tended to fail every time, which didn't match the historical result and the center held rather well where as the Swedish left flank tended to be the side where the breakthrough was made. This may be a problem regarding the scenario in Devil's Playground or how Swedish cavalry vs cuirassiers are portrayed in the rules.

It was also quickly established that the rules for Gustavus Adolphus in Pike & Shotte are rather unbalanced, although it certainly does provide for glorious charges lead by the king. It may capture the spirit and incite players to play the king aggressively, but gameplaywise they are too strong and a bit silly too if considering the historical aspect. Perhaps an another approach would have been better. We may have to make house rules later on to cover for this legendary personality.

All in all, very enjoyable games and we had a constant audience present with some total newbies to wargaming that picked up the gist of the rules quickly.

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