FoGR at The Worlds Koblenz 2014
Early Swedish vs Caroline Imperialist
Game 1 Early Swedish vs Hungarian Transylvanian
Game 2 Early Swedish vs TYW Germans
Game 3 Early Swedish vs Later Swedish
Game 4 Early Swedish vs LoA Anglo Dutch
Game 5 Early Swedish vs Caroline Imperialist
Game 6Early Swedish vs LoA Anglo Dutch
The lists for the Early Swedish and Caroline Imperialist from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at The Worlds in Koblenzz can be seen here in the Renaissance Wiki.
The battlefield was almost as bald as a well-slapped wargamers’ forehead after a succession of bad dice rolls lasting several months as the Carolinians set up with a lumpy deployment order, big blocks of unassailable foot intermixed with a scattering of skirmishing light horse and highly mobile shooting and strike cavalry. Yet again the wide open plains left the Swedes with nowhere obvious to anchor their flanks, with the end result that the entire army was spread rather haphazardly across far too wide a table for their liking.
Learn to Speak German
"Verschüttensieineneimermitinfanteriegroßerhöhe"
"A somewhat careless deployment"
The two flanks were both pretty open, but the most open was on the Swedes left and it was also stuffed full of juicy 4-base-deep infantry targets, and so their 4 gunnes were aimed that way
The right flank immediately saw a couple of delaying Carolinian LH units race to the sound of the Swedish marching boots, slowing the not exactly lighting fast advance of the Swedish infantry even further. The Swedish army was tough enough to live without too many generals in combat, but on occasions like this one the lack of a 4th general did severely hurt their ability to continue to push across such a broad frontage
On the left a much more coherent plan was apparently afoot – Superior and Average brigades (Blue and Green – sorry if you are colour-blind) walked carefully towards the Swiss as a second echelon of defensively formed carbine horse and commanded shot protected their left flank anchoring them to the edge of the board. The Swiss would need to be beaten, so hitting them with artillery, then hitting them with the Swedes best shot seemed like the only way to go.
Swedish Special Forces
The left was a slow task in pushing the enemy LH back – the Swedes had to be careful with the dragoons who were extending their lines being fearful of the risks of being shot up or charged down by enemy LH – the only spare Swedish General was meanwhile busy marching the Average Pistol horse around the table to provide a threat on the skirmishing Imperialists flanks and – at some point in the obvious future – providing rear support to the battle against the Swiss
As the Swiss advanced they were refusing to lose bases to artillery or shooting in any meaningful way, and even as the Swedes angled to get maximum firepower the Swiss continued to shrug it off.
Rules Hint
Armoured infantry are harder to hit with musketry at long range. This rarely applies in the later period (where muskets replace the shorter-ranged arquebus) but in these anachronistic matchups the armoured Swiss can advance to close range against enemy musketry with relative impunity.
The battle lines are pretty much drawn – everyone has committed what they think are their best troops to the fray, although the Swedes weight of numbers in infantry has been reduced by the surprising arrival of an inconspicuous Early Tercio which has distracted their attempts to charge part of the Swiss frontally
Learn to Speak German
"Schaffungperfektensituationdieschiefgehenwird"
"Over confidence in your own battle plan"
On the left the Swedes are definitely not facing off against Swiss – thin air and retreating horse flatulence is all they have to grasp at.
The Imperials are flooding away from the pedestrian Swedish advance and are rapidly looking to join their colleagues on the left hand side of the table having clearly decided that standing behind a Swiss Kiel is better than standing in front of a Swedish 7-pack with regimental gun
It’s In! Both Swedish units manage to engineer a charge, with the Superior blue unit getting a technically difficult but actually fairly legal frontal charge into the side edge of the Kiel and then conforming back to the front, taking them gently away from the puzzled Tercio.
Rules Hint
erm, yeah. Kinda hard to explain but if your charge can ONLY hit the side edge of a unit, but you don’t start the charge with a base totally behind the front edge of the target unit its counted as a frontal charge. .
The spectacular Salvo Impact charge with regimental guns and 2 units rolling 8 dice (3 superior) results in…. 1 hit. Both Swedish units have lost at impact to an enemy who was down a POA and only managed 3 hits themselves.
The Imperial gendarmes also try their luck with a charge on the well protected carbine horse.
The TYW
The outcome of these charges was not really that great – Swedish horse down a base, Swedish Superior Commanded shotte DISR, and the superior Swedish brigade also DISR after its 1-casualty loss…
The thin line of Swedes were slowly advancing, but the Imperialist LH remained elusively out of reach of the 6” shooting range of the Swedish brigades and dragoons. This was real 3”-a-turn stuff all the way across a 48” table…
Even the usually rather rubbish Imperialist Reiters pistols were proving deadly, as the other carbine-armed unit suffered a base loss to close range pistolling. Not a great situation for an average 4-pack to be in… but even worse was the situation of the commanded shot – as the accompanying horse were dragged sideways to conform to an overlap position the shot suddenly found themselves utterly isolated!
Rules Hint
Rules hint. I probably should have advanced them a little bit and done a free slide sideways to line up with friends, but I was still rather too pissed from the night before to manage this. If its’ even legal.
By now the Superior Swedish brigade had conspired to suffer another single-casualty loss, and fail another cohesion test – with the Tercio now bearing down on it at close range it was rather irritatingly FRAGGED – and with cohesion losses and base losses elsewhere too, it was leaving the whole Swedish flank of 6 units in a very precarious place indeed.
One of the Swiss shouted “BOO!” and the Superior brigade turned and fled!! They had suffered 4 hits and no base losses in three turns…
Learn to Speak German
"Nichtaufdemspielfeldankommenbiszumendedespiels"
"Failing to live up to your potential in battle"
The Imperialist Reiters piled in…
And exploded the 2-pack after beating it’s 3 superior dice (needing 5/5/4) with its 2 average dice (needing 4’s) 2:1 and seeing the Swedes then roll a 1 on their death roll.
The carnage around them was doing nothing positive for the morale of the Average Green Brigade either.
And then, the dominoes started to fall (that has to be a line from an Abba song, surely..?) even more quickly – first a unit of Carbine horse lost 50% and fled the scene
The Green brigade turn and rout, the other Carbine horse do the same and now only one 2-pack of commanded shot – bereft of any supporting troops – are left intact (for a short period of time). 6 units down in double-quick time and this is already now only at best a pre-10:30am damage limitation exercise for the Swedes.
The crème of the Swedish army meanwhile are slowly advancing, almost unopposed, on the Imperialist baggage, shooting at the Carolinian light horse on a regular basis…
Everything now is routing or obliterated on the left. Nothing more to see here – move along…
Damage limitation in Swedish Brigade terms means damage causation – and finally the Swedes start to find their range and chip bases away from the retreating Imperialist LH units, who’s ability to continue to delay their advance is now greatly hampered not only by the risk of incipient death from being reduced to 2 bases from shooting, but also from the lack of actual table space in which to manoeuvre
The Swedish artillery park is now really only functioning as a pair of on-table markers which will signify when the Imperialist have advanced their Tercio and Kiel enough to actually win the game outright, with a lone unit of Swedish Average Horse mulling over whether it is even worth bothering to try and intervene of if they will just hasten the inevitable. The decision-making process is not about if they will win, more about if they will survive long enough to allow the Yellow Brigade to capture the enemy baggage
A very significant Swedish force is now entirely off table, preparing to be flat-packed
Assembling Ikea Furniture
But the baggage is really close to being taken – three Swedish units converge on the defenceless camp in some trepidation, as their colleagues martial efforts have not been sufficiently competent this game to fill them with confidence that the motley collection of women, children and chickens is going to be a simple task to take down.
Gendarmes and Reiters add their weight to the march to capture the Swedish gunnes, giving the 4 Average horse rather too much to do to try and prevent the entire Imperialist army re-crewing the Swedes artillery facilities in the near future
The Reiters are the most immediate threat and with the enemy baggage almost within grasp it’s them that the Swedish 7th Cavalry (potentially led by their own Custer) target to make their last stand. This is not that bad a matchup, with Impact Pistol Armoured Swedes against Impact-free heavily armoured Germans… although the presence of a Swiss Pike Keil which the Swedes unfortunately also have to charge is of course a tiny Helvetic fly in the ointment …
But in perfect keeping with the theme of the game so far, the Swiss, shocked that anyone with blonde hair and blue eyes and a the breath of a dyed in the wool herring consumer would have the bravery to even take them on, lose the impact and drop a cohesion level !
Learn to Speak German
"Schlussminutetaufregungdienurverzögertunvermeidlicheschande"
"A final flourish of competence"
The battle goes to a rather unwelcome melee phase…
The Imperialist Gendarmes are also suddenly finding advancing towards a large artillery park rather challenging, and, inches from securing another 2 APs, they lose a second base and drop to FRAGGED! There is still no real thought for victory on the part of the Swedes, but respectability is almost within grasp…
The baggage finally falls to marauding Swedish dragoons…
But the bravery of the Swedish Horse may be short lived, as they are now faced with a combination of single and double minus POAs from their two enemies ... and even the Swiss have found time to recover.
They quickly drop to FRAGGED themselves… the imminent charge from the Tercio will finish them off in spectacular style…
But, there is no need even for that. After a brief hiatus, abysmal morale and combat returns to haunt the Swedes and a near-fatally-damaged enemy LH unit FRAGG’s some Dragoons and the game is –thankfully – over. The Result is a major defeat for the Swedes.
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 Early Swedish Commander
This opponent was an old fashioned army but one which had the hesft and weight in it's huge infantry blocks to stand up to the worst my boys could dish out - and this time, let down by the pesky dices again, they not only had little success in the dishing front, but often had naught to do either.
I have many friends in the European nobility called Caroline, but none are as nasty and vindictive as this one - how she managed to persuade her men to exercise their wizardry on my dice to make my cohesion tests into such a shambles I will never know - the empty table and my deployment order made catching anyone a hard task, but those that did do the catching were rather hopeless and fumbled the ball most surely indeed at every opportunity
When a game comes down to needing the Average Horse to save the day, and that moment arrives barely 2 hours into the match things are already out of control, so actually scoring the points I did seemed to be in reflection a rather better result than I was at one stage expecting so that at least gives me encouragment for the final round.
Because of the bunching up aspect I also seem to still be in with a vague sniff of a podium placing, and given that all of the men here at this event have already voted me the "general we'd most like to see on a podium" maybe there is still hope for me yet?
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
What a sorry shambles of offal wrapped in tubes of intestinal linings and stuffed with sawdust instead of pork your planning and execution were in this game. Undone by an opponent from before the modern era of warfare? What foolishness is this that sees men with sticks beat the cream of Swedish military evolution so comfortably? A game where your fast moving forces are outmanoeuvred by a Grand Tercio is indeed a sight to go down in the annals of history, but it is not a good one to record in the books of the Stockholm military academy I am afraid. Frankly you achieved far more than you deserved, and were I the adjudicator I would be asking for points to be deducted on account of the inherent unfairness of anything positive coming out of your wretched display.
The enemy army plan is hardly poorly telegraphed when they consisted of one troop type who’s only skill was forming a line and shooting at you – but here your own execution was one of almost Brownian motion for your handful of isolated units, with the end result that a piecemeal attack was taken to pieces and feasted upon by the simplicity and clarity of your opponents execution. A simple charge up the middle, maximising generals and adding in ample rear support would have served you better, and it is a rare and dark day indeed when one can say that your strategy was insufficiently simple to succeed. And, I ask again, how on earth can you allow a Tercio and Kiel to outmaneuver your army? That's shameful in the extreme! Your lack of Generals cost you dear here and your lack of a plan was merely the icing on the top of the turd that was your execution.
The aim of battle is not to engage all of the enemy's best troops with a rag-tag assortment of untested and sub-optimal passengers who made up your left flank. THose troops are not to be committed unless in extremis, and you surely were not in that state. Yet again you would have been better served by just sitting where you deployed and letting the enemy attack you at will instead of moving your troops into less advantageour positions. And I think now is the time to have stern words with the controller of your artillery park - to shoot all game with 4 guns at a Kiel and a Tercio and only shave off 3 bases in the process is making a mockery of the artilleryists art. Someone needs to show them what being fired properly actually looks like!
I have no idea how you are still in contention for a placing after that mess, and I am sure you will find that your last game sees you pushed down to closer to your rightful bottom dwelling place. Roll on the next game
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 Early Swedish vs Hungarian Transylvanian
Game 2 Early Swedish vs TYW Germans
Game 3 Early Swedish vs Later Swedish
Game 4 Early Swedish vs LoA Anglo Dutch
Game 5 Early Swedish vs Caroline Imperialist
Game 6 Early Swedish vs LoA Anglo Dutch
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