The Fight for Dutch Independence (1568-1633) at Campaign 2014
Later Eighty Years War Dutch vs Dutch
Game 1 Later Eighty Years War Dutch vs Hugenot
Game 2 Later Eighty Years War Dutch vs Dutch
Game 3 Later Eighty Years War Dutch vs Later Imperial Spanish
Game 4 Later Eighty Years War Dutch vs Hugenot
Game 4 Later Eighty Years War Dutch vs Later Imperial Spanish
So, this was the second game. The tournament had 6 players in the group, and 5 games across the weekend and so everyone would be playing everyone - and this was to be the only Dutch Civil War of the weekend.
The lists for the Later Eighty Years War Dutch armies from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Campaign can be seen here in the Field of Glory Renaissance Wiki.
The Dutch Civil War is a little-known piece of history. Unlike the English and American Civil Wars, very little has been written about it by contemporaries or by later historians, largely because of Dutch embarrassment over the idea of calling something a war when in fact the protagonists were two rival families of cheesemakers (one from North Utrecht, one from South Utrecht) arguing about who was in the right when it came to the important subject of what was the correct depth at which to plant tulip bulbs, and the entire conflict was over in less than 15 minutes, and basically comprised of a brisk bout of cross-canal clog throwing, all of which took place over the course of a wet Wednesday afternoon sometime in late March 1635. In a fitting tribute to this important part of Dutch history in this narrative, the "enemy" Dutch will be referred to as the Northern (Deeper) Planters, and my army will be referred to as the Southern (Shallow) Planters throughout the rest of this report.
Astonishingly, the two identical armies were very similar in composition, although unsurprisingly the Southern Planter forces army featured more artillery. Yet again a waterway made it onto the table, only to be removed by the dastardly ship-free Deep Planter terrain dice.
The rest of the terrain fell in some rather uninspiring positions, with almost nothing on my side of the table, and a few pieces that merely served to irritate the Northerners during deployment landing on the opposing base edge (which was 6" in from the back of the oversized tables we were using. Both armies had deployed their Cuirassier wing on the left hand side of the shot (as in photo, not "shotte"). The Southerners defended their right flank using the by-now familiar tactic of "pretending it isn't there and hoping the enemy doesn't notice".
Having astonishingly learnt something in the first game, the Shallow Planter artillery was deployed to concentrate their fire on vulnerable enemy units, starting with the Northern Cuirassiers who were similar in number to the Southern forces, and who seemed rather keen to get stuck in.
One lone unit of red-coated Shallow Planter clog-wearing infantry munched solemnly on their cheese sandwiches as they watched the Northerners start to ride casually into the gaping hole where the ship and the waterway really should have been. This might be a tiring day ….
And, unlike the first game, the massive harquebusier unit was not on hand to dither about aimlessly and appear to be threatening on the flank either. Instead they had been despatched at high speed to attempt to do something useful - influence the Cuirassier battle in some as yet undefined and poorly thought through fashion, as only a unit of unarmoured average horse with no impact capability would be likely to do. Someone somewhere had a plan for sure, but it was currently very well hidden beneath a red waxy rind of incompetence and bad planning.
At least someone had a sensible plan - the Southern Dragoons had raced forwards, and were now already falling back in a steady and measured fashion, slowing the enemy advance and buying time for the massed artillery to do some damage to the Deep Planter forces as they crossed the flat, open, featureless plain of, erm, yes I suppose that is probably quite like Holland actually…
The Northern Cuirassiers had been advancing in checkerboard formation and had arrived a little too hastily at the less imaginative but more, erm, linear Shallow Planter lines, allowing the Southerners to fairly successfully gang up on some of the advanced Northern units and make a half-decent fist ate taking them on with the benefit of overlaps. This was pretty early in the game, and so there was even the vague prospect that once the cavalry battle was resolved, the winners could have some sort of impact on the rest of the game as well… Both sides quivered like slightly rubbery cheeses in red wax shells in anticipation.
Boom! Led by 2 generals, one of whom was even brave enough to lead from the front, the Southern forces struck first, and struck hard - knocking off a base and also inflicting a vital first cohesion drop on the outnumbered Northern unit. The melee round would be potentially 5 dice against 2, and the Northerners were already in trouble as deep as their recommended horticultural preference for buil insertion.
Whilst this impressive episode of smackerooney-ism was underway, a far more traditional one-on-one Cuirassier battle had broken out on the far edge of the conflict. This was much less a game of skill in manoeuver and more one of dice - although a Dutch general had enough time to jump across from the other melee and join in. This was all about the Cuirassiers - even the lurking harquebusiers could do little more at this stage than shout encouragement (and provide rear support if their better-armoured colleagues ever decided to take a cohesion test)
And luck was definitely with the South today. He second unit of enemy Cuirassiers suffered the most terrible fate - base loss and cohesion loss. Perhaps the harquebusiers would be saved from having to do any actual fighting, as the Northern force was crumbling away faster than a badly built dyke in a North Sea storm..
What's Going on Here Then?: The left flank has clashed really quickly, and much as was the case with the first game, the Southern Dutch are gaining the upper hand and may be able to use this to influence the battle in the middle later on. But in this game there are no Swiss, with their invulnerable flanks and so the Northern Dutch centre may prove less resilient if the flank advantage can be pressed home. But on the Southern right, the Southerners have inexplicably deployed literally nothing, and Northern horse will soon be sweeping round this flank and threatening the enemy rear echelons
With one wing going well, attention turned to the other flank, where the Southerners were not so much doing badly as were simply not present at all. The Northern Deep Planters outflanking move was therefore making enormous headway in the face of literally no opposition and was fast approaching the Southern baggage (a highly inventive mobile cheese churning mechanism mounted on a horse-drawn 2-wheeled cart). Noticing this, and realising that it was potentially A Very Bad Thing to have an enemy mounted unit roaming around unchecked in our rear echelons, the Southern CinC tasked his only unit with a proper Dutch flag (lazy I know… sorry) to about-face and march towards the sound of the hooves, thus getting a great shot of himself and also the Old Glory TYW infantry making up the unit into the shot as well.
The Cuirassier battle had now seen one Northern unit vaporised, and the other two were falling back and seeking to rally as the Shallow Planter forces moved ominously and inexorably forward, challenging both the Northern resolve and the spellcheck function on the HTML code editor as they advanced. With only one general, 2 DISR and FRAGGED units and 4 Southern mounted opponents things were certainly not adding up well for the Deep Planter horse.
This was no time for messing about - the Southern Cuirassiers, all still fully intact, charged home again against the wavering Northern lines.
The Shallow Planter horse were resolute and relentless as the Northerners yet again were forced into taking advantage of the breakoff rules to fall back from combat, having lost further bases and cohesion in yet another round of impact and melee in which the Southerners had outnumbered then, outmanoeuvred them and simply ground them down. The bottom of the Northerners' Cuirassier Canal of Hope was about to be well and truly dredged.
As a large and much welcomed cup of tea hove into view in the distance, the right flank demanded, and finally achieved some degree of photographic recognition in the ongoing reportage that is this increasingly verbose and meandering battle report. Despite the best exhortations of the Great Commander (a rather fantastic Foundry dismounted Cuirassier figure), the half-hearted Northern fire from 2 dragoons and a 4-pack of carbine armed horse had undermined the morale of the red-coated unit closest to the unguarded flank and they had started to waver. It was definitely time for the proper Dutchmen to add their weight to the defence of the right hand side of the table.
The left needed no help at all - the entire Northern wing was now in rout, or back in the tin as the entirely coherent Southern forces pursued them with the sort of glee that only comes from knowing that you have just established an utterly comprehensive degree of horticultural hegemony over your cross canal-neighbours which will ensure that any allotment-based disputes are going to be resolved in your favour until at least the end of the Thirty Years War even now raging across the rest of mainland Europe.
As the proper Dutch moved up into shooting range and added their lead to the conflagration, the red-coated infantry took heart and - aided by the stylish CinC - rallied and unleashed a deadly volley of American Civil war style musketry. The Northerners were shocked by this dramatic turnaround, and quickly lost heart and picked up markers as they ungratefully received the hail of balls coming their way. This now looked much more encouraging for the forces who believed that shallow-planting created a more wind-resistant stem and larger, longer-lasting petals.
The Dutch
Astonishing, that Renaissance thing in which the mounted battle resolves itself quickly and the victorious forces then go on to harass the flanks of the enemy infantry centre which FoGR seeks to achieve by allowing mounted troops to move further, and march 50% more often compared to infantry and then also to generally limit mounted unit sizes to the rather more brittle 4's was actually happening in this game for real. Wow! The Northern artillery had chipped off a base but that was no consolation to the Northern infantry who were now facing the very real threat of several hundred fully armoured pistol-packing mounted cheese-eating nutters slamming into their flank whilst uttering incomprehensible battle cries in a language that no-one else on earth can be bothered to learn.
What's Going on Here Then?: The left flank of Southern Dutch horse are now looking to help roll up the enemy flank, as the two centres start to get so close that the Northrners now cannot realistically react to the incoming horse. The Northerners are running free behind the Southerners right flank, and the Southerners are thinning their centre dangerously as they seek to protect their baggage.
The Red-coated infantry wavered again - but the Northern Dragoons were now FRAGGED, and their general was busy shoring up the morale of the harquebusier unit. The odds were swinging towards the Southerners, even as some line infantry moved down from the North and appeared to threaten one third of the Southern artillery park.
Assaulted on all sides the red-coated Southern forces cast about themselves seeking a plan. They looked high, they looked low, they looked left, they looked right, and they consulted the South Utrecht Public Library to see if they could borrow the only surviving copy of the Little Dutch Horticulturalists Book Of Clever And Astounding Battle Plans (for use in extremis only). But, someone else had already borrowed it, and so they just gave up and formed square instead.
FoGR Rules Hint
Square is an all round defensive formation for pike and shot units. For full details of its use see the following pages in the FoGR rulebook:
Both sides were now struggling to perform to an even barely adequate level of martial prowess on the right flank, as the Northern infantry shed bases and picked up cohesion markers almost as fast as the Shallow Planters gave up all pretence at knowing what they were doing as the shuffled aimlessly around the battlefield looking for all the world like a poor-man's 17th Century Death Star made out of cardboard boxes and knitting needles.
At least the Cuirassiers were doing the business on the other flank - both forces infantry were now closing on each other rather vigorously, the Northerners because they wanted to score some blows on the Shallow Planters before the tide of Cuirassiers engulfed them, and the Southerners because they saw the opportunity to work in combination with their fast-returning mounted colleagues to once and for all despatch the heresy that was planting tulip bulbs under more than 12cms of good honest Dutch earth - which to them was a prize well worth fighting for.
The Dutch Death Star was now crawling with Northern Tulip Fighters and someone was about to shove a photon torpedo (I know…) right down its Dutch pipe, as the CinC attempted valiantly to encourage his men to hang on at least a little longer. More Northerners were now arriving, and with the Southern army committed elsewhere things started (as usual) to look grim for the Southern artillery
Dutch TV
Eventually and inevitably, the square broke and routed back towards the Southern shores of the Utrecht Grnad Canal (the not for nothing was the city known as "Venice, but with Blander Cheese". The proper Dutch were now ready to fight …
Unfortunately they proved immediately to be rather rubbish at the actual, well, you know, "fighting people" thing, dropping immediately to FRAGGED as the jubilant Northerners suddenly spied an opportunity to plant their tulips as deep as they dammed well liked on what was now pretty much their entirely uncontested flank all the way across the entire board.
The proper Dutch were off, and routing faster than the redcoated Death Star regiment as they fled. Having the right flag had not prepared them for the realities of combat unfortunately, and now the near traditional "capture of the poorly protected artillery park" was looming in the agendas of everyone reading this battle report.
And, as expected, here it goes….
What's Going on Here Then?: The Northerners are round the flank and making hay as they mop up Southern units - but the Southerners are also doing the same on the opposite flank, and have the game-level advantage in that they have already defeated the Northern Dutch horse before reaching the enemy flank. So, as both sides roll each other up, the Southerners are ahead in attrition points caused.
At least some of the Southern artillery was still in full effect - as the Southern Cuirassiers rampaged towards the enemy baggage the right hand end of the Northern line was being rolled up and shattered by pretty much every tool in the Southern potting shed.
As the envelopments on both flanks carried on apace, a rather more textbook matchup of infantry on infantry finally came to pass in the centre. The Southern Planter forces had the advantage of a General, and supporting fire from their own artillery and this was instrumental in giving them a small initial advantage, as the Northerners picked up a cohesion marker on the way into combat
One unit which would not be needing markers for much longer was the endmost unit in the Deep Planter line however - the Southerners assailed them from all sides, seeking to shatter the already dismayed infantry and plough them not particularly deeply underfoot.
Well, that was the plan. The Northerners rather unsportingly survived Impact and continued fighting for a further phase of melee… in which the Shallow planter forces recorded a rather unsustainable 6 hits, guaranteeing the removal of a base and therefore breaking the Northern unit's resistance definitively and finally, and tipping the game result into a resounding victory which the little lead men rejoiced luxuriously in as they pondered on what this meant for the ongoing supremacy of the Southern Horticultural Paradigm.
The Result is a 20-5 win!
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition, or read on for the post match summaries from the Generals involved, as well as another episode of legendary expert analysis from Hannibal
Post Match Summary from the Later Eighty Years War Dutch Commander
My plan here was awesome. It was comprised entirely of Awesome. It was made and designed by the House of Awesome, fashioned from materials found deep in the deep awesome mines of Awesometania, and I will be recorded in the Annals of Awesome - and nowhere else, because any other book would catch fire and explode from the awesome - and by its awesomeness this result will be known from now until the crack of doom! (thats bit's not mine - I nicked it from Nick Harkaway's Tigerman
Simple, vaguely classical and ruthlessly effective - just like how my light operetta and lavish pseudo-period-costumed stage extravaganzas have been precisely calibrated to extract money from the European Union's ever-growing blue-rinse brigade, here also a plan of overmatching the enemy on one flank whilst refusing the other, and then leveraging that superiority to turn it into a faster rollup than my opponent could manage. I will waltz off into the sunset on the back of this outcome, dropping 50 Euro notes carelessly as I go.
I have never been happier in the confidence that ,y glorious Dutch army can successfully beat all comers in this event, and proving that it is better than another army which is almost exactly the same is a huge step forwards in that endeavour. All of Europe will be soon quailing in admiration beneath my cynically constructed and well honed apparently spontaneous smirks and stage winks before this weekend is out I am now sure!
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
Oh dear, or dear. Confidence is setting in, like rot creeping into the wood of a damp clog from a festering bunion on the sole of a Dutch dyke-builders foot. And having been the unfortunate witness of far too many of these incidents in the past few years I think that I, and indeed, all of the readers have a good idea what is likely to transpire next.
The truth of this escapade dear boy is that you comprehensively won a basically straight up Cuirassier battle, where your only real advantage was in having one uncommitted general in the fight - but given you somehow managed to win without even taking any cohesion tests, his presence was technically utterly superfluous, and the gods of dice alone choosing to favour you in such comprehensive fashion were the sole cause of your victory here today.
Quite why they chose to gaze favourably upon you will remain a mystery to me, because your pathetic post-hoc rationalisation of your "refused" right flank was indeed something more worthy of punishment of a type which - sadly - it seems that the mere mortal Northern Dutchmen you were facing today were curiously incapable of handing out. Their lack of confidence can only be explained by the shock that must have overcome them like a wave breaking over the uppermost flange of a massive dyke in seeing literally no opposition on that flank. If the opposition had redeployed just one Cuirassier unit to that flank instead of galloping to take you on, the entire game would have been over with only your long range artillery having participated in offensive action,
Let us see how long this luck can last. Onwards to the next game
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition
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Game 1 Later Eighty Years War Dutch vs Hugenot
Game 2 Later Eighty Years War Dutch vs Dutch
Game 3 Later Eighty Years War Dutch vs Later Imperial Spanish
Game 4 Later Eighty Years War Dutch vs Hugenot
Game 4 Later Eighty Years War Dutch vs Later Imperial Spanish
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