FoGR TYW in Farnborough 2013
Tillys German Catholic vs TYW Swedish
Game 1 Tillys German Catholic vs TYW Swedish
Game 2 Tillys German Catholic vs Scots & Parliamentarian
Game 3 Tillys German Catholic vs Royalist
Farnborough, a 650 AP competition using Big Toys, and 40mm = 1MU movement - another chance to get the Warlord Games-based army out on table.
The lists for the Tillys German Catholic and TYW Swedish from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Farnborough can be seen here in the FoG:R Wiki.
With the benefit of having done a couple of these events before, I decided to take a small but high quality army, picking the German Catholic army of Tilly. Unusually it involved some Later Tercios - normally a rather iffy choice given the increased vulnerability of 3-deep infantry to artillery. However, with 40MU movement units artillery were likely to be less useful, so I gambled that the greater staying power of the 9-base Tercios would offset any losses from artillery. The army also featured the rather enormous 12-base Tillys Tercio, a real monster, which in 25mm was almost a foot across…. Also the horse was equally pokey, with 2 superior and one Elite cuirassier units to overwhelm a wing - Nice!
First game up was against a Swedish army - a real test for the theory of winning a war of attrition against the Salvo attacks of the Swedish foote. Survive the initial impact was the key part of the plan…
The two armies lined up and pretty much filled the open part of the table - the Swedes had maxed out on foote, leaving their horse as a poor relation in the army list planning stakes.. The table was narrowed by a marsh on the Catholic left, a ice simple plan ready to execute as the three Tercio's steamed up the middle
The game started inauspiciously with the Swedish artillery savaging the Cuirassiers supporting the Catholic right wing
The Catholic army was advancing rapidly - everything would be decided in combat, so there was no need to delay the inevitable. The one unit of carbine armed cavalry in the Catholic army were despatched to the right to watch over some Swedish dragoons who were thinking of being sneaky
Tillys Tercio was making steady progress as the Swedes attempted to work out how many sets of drawers and flat packed wardrobes might be needed to keep any trophies they could collect should they defeat the countless multitude approaching them
Swedish Infantry
On the left, the only Average Tercio was advancing, supported by two units of Cuirassiers.
The Cuirassiers were being faced off by a traditional budget mix of Superior Commanded shotte with little guns, and crappy carbine armed Horse. The Cuirassiers had already decided to charge them anyway and see what happened…
Tillys Tercio had gotten to charging range relatively unscathed. Oooh!
With Tilly in command, the Cuirassiers and the first Tercio piled into the enemy commanded shotte and Carbine horse. Battle was joined after a straightforward advance to contact
The Grand Tercio and another unit of Cuirassiers charged home against an isolated Swedish Salvo foote unit. The Cuirassiers were doing the brunt of the fighting, but the Tercio would be able to gradually slide across to apply more bases to the combat as it developed - especially if the Cuirassiers had to break off…
Catholicism....
But, despite being Superior, supported and led by a general the massive Tercio conspired to lose the combat 2-0, and then fail a cohesion test with a net -1 (lost by 2, lost to salvo vs Supported) , as did the General-led Cuirassiers. Ooops…
The same sort of thing was happening to the Catholics on the other flank. Not great so far… but if they could recover cohesion they were still well set to win an attritional battle
Losing the melee phase by a single casualty, the Grand Tercio failed (this time on evens - supported vs DISR, as the Swedes had done nowhere near 1 casulaty per base on the 12-strong unit) again and dropped to fragged - as did the Cuirassiers, who promptly broke off
Moments later the entire army again suffered a wave of failed cohesion tests, and broke and fled. A short, sharp and unpleasant lesson in losing a wave of cohesion tests...the Result is a 0-25 defeat for Tilly
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 German Catholic Commander
As the Catholic leader, I must say that my fanatical devotion to the Pope knows no bounds, however even I would have been tempted to pray to another god if they could have held out the possibility of giving me at least mildly sub-par cohesion test dice in this particular engagement, rather than the astonishingly poor set of low spot-totalling abominations which afflicted the table each time they felll from my (clearly never used for anything else, even though my vow of celibacy has on occasion given me occasional impure thoughts) right fist.
The terrain in this game was sort of ideal for my army, and even with the defeat I struggle to see much wrong with the composition for this format and stryle of game. Just the combat results need modifying in my favour for victory to be mine
Anyway, I need to run as I have a very important church service to attend and I can't afford to be late, as it's a critical Mass.
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
Thy vile canker-blossom'd countenance curdles milk and sours beer, and both drinks are but a bitter aftertaste compared to your claims that bad fortune alone were responsible for this debacle.
The Swedes were an army you were in many ways ill prepared to take on, as the logical thing here would be to chip them away with a sustained artillery barrage before launching an attach... however your self-inflicted vulnerability to artillery sort of took that option from you like you were nowt but a cockered shag-eared skainsmate. Losing at list building stage is never pretty.
Even so you made more mistakes thou quailing common-kissing puttock - I saw many pictures of the Average Tercio leading an attack, but none of the Superior one which was presumably left well behind and not engaged in a critical attack on 4 enemy units as was the Average one.... I thought not...!
Surely even a surly flap-mouthed measle such as yourself could see that attacking with the weakest unit in the army would not end well. And if you are indeed Tilly, anc committed to winning in combat, at least have the cojones to lead your own Tercio into that battle... as only then are you truly rolling (and re-rolling) all the dice to try and win favour.
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition
You can also comment, "like" or give feedback on these reports on either the Madaxeman.com Facebook Page or the Madaxeman.com Blogger Site.
Game 1 Tillys German Catholic vs TYW Swedish
Game 2 Tillys German Catholic vs Scots & Parliamentarian
Game 3 Tillys German Catholic vs Royalist
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