FoGR Early Renaissance in the Southern League, Southampton 2013
French Italian Wars vs Caroline Imperialist
Game 1 French Italian Wars vs Trasamanta Spanish
Game 2 French Italian Wars vs Trasamanta Spanish
Game 3 French Italian Wars vs Caroline Imperialist
Time had sort of evaporated, as the three short-ish game format meant the traditional "rush to the pub" lunchtime routine was severely disrupted and unfeasible. Fortunately we all found a huge mushroom in the car park, which occupied us all for several minutes in contemplative speculation, and after that it was back to top-table action yet again.
Game 3 was yet another Colunela army, Caroline Imperialist. Having started the weekend thinking that Colunelas were pants, I had found myself taking on three armies built entirely around the things, but with two victories under my belt there was room for optimism that my theory would be proved correct.
Quite how the Caroline Imperialist got to be named after Caroline is anyone's guess....
The lists for the French Italian Wars and Caroline Imperialist from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Southern League Southampton can be seen here in the FoGR Wiki.
The pre-set terrain had again cast up a textbook battlefield, with an obvious Swiss Motorway between the terrain features. The opponents this afternoon had stacked up on Superior Colunelas, but as the French had already proved, as long as their artillery could chip off a rank of each Colunela before the Swiss and Germans got into contact the plan should be relatively simple to execute. The terrain left little for the Gendarmes to do, but they would probably not mind too much sitting back and applauding a Swiss victory..
As was traditional, the game started with a barrage of enemy artillery fire which knocked a base off one of my mounted units and reduced it to DISR before it even had a chance to move.
Reaching out.. for Caroline Imperialism!
As the battered Gendarmes scooted back out of arc of the Imperialist gunnes, the rest of the French army sailed forwards magnificently, flags fluttering and massed for a decisive strike at the heart of the enemy line
Soon both Kiels were closing in on the Imperialists, and whilst their right flank was coming under some purely nominal pressure from Imperialist skirmishers, plenty of French mounted units were moving round from left to right flank and soon would be turning the tables on the Imperialist crossbowmen. Meanwhile the French arquebusiers had discovered an almost perfect piece of terrain and were busily attempting to occupy it as an Imperialist Kiel looked on in bemusement from their front.
Whats Happening Here? The French attack is being vigorously executed against the Imperialist centre, and the French have also redeployed much of their mounted wing towards the almost undefended Imperialist left. The Imperialists are starting a slow, nominal envelopment, but have very little combat power on table outside their main line of Colunelas, and so in reality are relying on the resilience of their Superior infantry against the two Kiels as their main battle plan.
Unusually, the Swiss were first into combat, their additional movement distance meaning they had covered the ground between themselves and the enemy in double-quick time. The French mounted had by now regrouped and were about to initiate an unstoppable push on the right of the Swiss to sweep away any lingering Imperialist skirmishers, and the Landsnechts were also not far off striking home too, against two Colunelas who had already taken a substantive beating at the hands of French artillery and shooting
The Imperialist Army - Reviewed
On the left the uneven terrain was well and truly occupied, and with support from the Arquebusiers and more Gendarmes, even the French Carabins felt confident enough to move up to bully some enemy LF
The Swiss were fighting viciously, but were making little headway against 2 Colunelas who both had the benefit of Generals adding to their innate Superiority. The Swiss had conspired to lose 3 bases to the Imperialists 1, but time would surely see their martial prowess come back to the fore..
Caroline Imperialists - a sweet army?
The Landsnechts also steamed in against an only marginally intact Colunela and its partner - with advantage of numbers, and of depth the German mercenaries were confident of outshining even the legendary Swiss in this battle
Landsnechts and German Death Metal - whats not to like?
The Swiss continued to lose bases slowly but surely - their cohesion and confidence was intact, but they were steadily shrinking in numbers and the opponents they faced steadfastly refused to lose even a single base…
The initial impact of the Landsnechts was also not as decisive as maybe one would have hoped for, and the battle developed into a more protracted slogging match where surely the Germans numbers would come into play… Only one more base and half their opponents would break and flee..
The French arquebusiers were then astonished, as a mercenary Imperialist Kiel marched straight into the uneven terrain and took them on in what should have been their exclusive habitat! 2 rounds of close range arquebus fire had achieved very little, and the Arquebusiers then immediately found themselves on the wrong end of some serious pike pushing action..
Back on the Swiss side of the battle line, things were going from bad to worse - the Swiss had not only failed to achieve any sort of breakthrough, and with so many bases now lost were also no longer technically a Kiel - with their flank having been exposed to an enemy charge they now were DISR, meaning that their Gendarmes had been called into action to make a supporting saving attack on a Colunela - which they managed to themselves lose, despite the odds in their favour!
Live Action...
The Swiss were hanging on grimly, taking one helluva pounding from the "hit with every dice roll" Imperialist Colunelas they were facing, but digging themselves out of the pooh with some very competent death tests and cohesion rolls..
Whats Happening Here? The Swiss are failing to win the battle on their own, and without their success the French attack is slowing to a crawl. The French attempts to push Horse at the thinly held Imperialist flanks are taking too long, as the Swiss lose bases in almost every round of combat that passes, for no return
But, this stoicism could not last forever, and eventually the still-coherent, originally 14-man Superior Swiss Kiel was broken, from base losses alone…! As they broke, so did the Gendarmes who's attempt to countercharge an infantry Colunela had also ended in dismal failure… the battle plan was coming apart at the seams
Whilst the Swiss had been fighting almost to the last man, on the other flank some of the most powerful troops in the French army were busy running down Imperialist peasant crossbowmen, and making heavy going of it as well as the Gendarmes caught the fleeing LF, but failed to beat them in the impact phase … the French were by now looking for any units they could in an attempt to maximise their score from a game they would surely lose.. but the Gendarmes lack of decisive rear charge competence meant that the Imperialist artillery park might now escape capture before the game surely ended in French defeat
The slogging match in the middle was slipping away from the Landsnechts and French arquebusiers as well as the Colunelas continued to refuse to lose bases and POAs..
Soon the remaining French infantry crumbled, and with them the game was lost
The result is a disappointing 20-5 loss..
Post Match Summary from the French Italian Wars Commander
Menage a trois! What on earth happened here? A plan which had worked with perfection in the previous two games seems to have come off the rails, and this even 200 years before trains have even been invented - who could have foreseen such a debacle?
When I saw the Swiss turn and break I thought to myself, Tel Aviv, how can this be happening!! The Imperialists only needed to lose one base from each comedy Colunela and they are all a POA down against my 4-deep Pikemen, but for 14 Swiss to lose 9 bases and only kill one in return is a case of mais oui, mon pleasure, mais oui!
Au contraire Rodney, au contraire. At least my two great victories in the previous two games have seen me claim a creditable 3rd place on the podium, but for the gods of dice it could have been much more… !
Bonnet de douche my friend, bonnet de douche!!
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
You blithering French idiot - falling victim to one of Wargaming's greatest and most easily spotted errors, you rightfully slipped to a defeat which in all probability should also have been yours in the preceding games as well. The Swiss were truly fearsome troops in history, but that was in the real world, and in battles against their historical opponents - and even so they were still competent mortals, not superheroes.
An aging, brain-addled goat has more brains than thou, and would surely realise that your small metal men, cute as these Mikes Models figures actually are, are just that, they are not the living breathing embodiment of the Swiss of the medieval and renaissance battlefield, so they are most definitely not supermen - they are merely toy figures in a game, and a game with dice at that. If you in your albatross-biting incompetence ask them to perform actions which are beyond that achievable by a 14-man Superior Armoured Pike unit they will fail - and charging down gunnes and taking on multiple units of effectively Elite Pike and Shotte with no support and insecure flanks certainly falls well into that excrement-wallowing category.
This my whey-faced friend was a defeat brought upon yourself by your reliance on some small metal men and their dice, when tactical intelligence and a little forethought (deploying your rump-renting Gendarmes beyond 24" of the enemy deployment zone when moving 2nd for starters …) would have made much more of the difference, and allowed the capabilities of your men to be most effective, rather than relying on those capabilities to be a substitute for any sort of plan.
All in all I think the one positive from this debacle is that you have found the type of army which suits you - one where the obvious and correct thing to do is to attack like a banshee with troops who are often capable of fighting their way out of the poor tactical positions you tend to put them into with amazing frequency. If you could ally this with even a modicum of skill and forethought who knows what heights of semi-competence you could achieve. But of course, that will never happen, as we both know…
That's the end - so why not go back to the Match Reports Index and read some more reports?
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Game 1 French Italian Wars vs Trasamanta Spanish
Game 2 French Italian Wars vs Trasamanta Spanish
Game 3 French Italian Wars vs Caroline Imperialist
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