Early Renaissance at Warfare 2015
Early Danish vs Imperial Austrian
Game 2 Early Danish vs French Hugenot
Game 3 Early Danish vs Imperial Austrian
Game 4 Early Danish vs West Sundanese
Day 2, and The Austrians - an army stuffed with more Kiels than you can shake an Austrian-flavoured stick at.
The lists for the Early Danish and Imperial Austrian from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Warfare can be seen here in the Field of Glory Renaissance Wiki.
Review of a different Austrian army to this one
In a new innovation here is a video panorama of the enemy force arrayed in all its glory
The Austrian Army
Game 3. Davis Austrians
Posted by Madaxeman.com on Sunday, 15 November 2015
The terrain was pretty paltry compared to the previous game, with some classically positioned woods and a village narrowing the flanks a little leaving a solid gap in the centre for the Austrians to shove a stonking great wall of pikemen into. Subtle it ain't.... I had partly stacked my deployment to the right, again hoping to use one of the Levy units to keep the enemy bottled up in a wood.
The Austrians cautiously advanced towards the highly unusual levy 10-pack, whilst wondering what a 10-pack of foot and a 6-pack of Reiters might be able to achieve - well, someone had to take a guess ..
After a quick flick through the combat factors, the Austrians worked out that this was not a place for unarmoured bow-armed horse, and turned tail and retreated. A victory of sorts early doors for the baconeers
The right flank had a classic gap next to the table edge, and the Danes plan was to drive a unit of Reiters down it, again causing problems for the Austrian mounted bowmen who suddenly found themselves on the wrong end of a shooting matchup.
Why Austria is Interesting
The Austrian Szecklers retreated in a nearly-caught evading sort of fashion as the heavily armoured almost-Gendarmes stormed forwards, allowing the Reiters to move up and unleash another half-hearted volley of carbine fire.
With all of this irrelevant faffing around on the flanks now concluded, the main meat and no vegetables of the battle was starting to shape up quite nicely in the middle of the table, with Kiels creeping towards each other under a hail of often ineffective artillery fire.
A-hah! The Szecklers suddenly decided that it was worth their while having another go at the advancing levy and Reiter combo, and returned to the fray. With the light artillery blocked by the Reiters, the shooting odds were a touch more favourable and the Reiters responded by losing a base. But, as a 6-pack, surely they could outlast the enemy here?
The cat and mouse game of trying to get off 2 rounds of arquebus fire as the two lines advanced towards each other broke out in full effect.
A typical evening in the pub in Austria
The levy had battered one Szeckler unit, and the Reiters then charged home against the other - but another base down, they were starting to feel both better in combat but also vulnerable to another loss..
Catastrophe! The Reiters autobreak with 3 losses and rout back, bursting through their own guns which are then promptly captured by the pursuing Szecklers! The Danes have suddenly lost a slew of units and have enemy cavalry running freely in their rear areas!
But not quite - the Szecklers pursuit has also taken them into the levy unit, who shuffle across in combat and start to use their armour and halberds to hack away at the enemy horsemen - with quite a degree of success it must be said, as the Szecklers pick up markers. Luckily the Levy are themselves DISR, so the Szecklers cannot break off and get away.
The battle is about to be joined across the full width of the table
Having forced the Szecklers on the right flank almost off the edge of the table, the Danish Gendarmes sneak up almost unnoticed on the Austrian artillery park. Unfortunately with the Kiels now at nose-hair-examining distances the shooting has mostly been concluded, but the VPs are always nice to have...
The Szecklers have retreated in good order, but now have nowhere to go other than a patch of rough ground. The Carbines look to find their shooting boots...
Building key Austrian stuff
The other Szecklers are not in quite such good order, and as their morale collapses the prospect of a similar rout/burst through/hit a new target scenario opens up in front of the gleeful Levy!
The wide Austrian units are unable to get out of the way of the routing Szecklers, and they burst through multiple lines of Teutonics, causing havoc as they go
Gunnes are duly captured - not the ideal scenario for crème of Danish chivalry, but effective non the less
A hush descends over the battlefield as two lines of deeply packed troops take a deep breath and prepare for man on man combat
Finally the Reiters manage to expand out to gain full shooting capability, and immediately the first volleys shatter the Szecklers morale and hope of escaping their predicament
A typical evening out in Lower Saxony
The right flank is pretty much all Danish now, with the jubilant mounted wing sweeping towards the rear of the Austrian line of Kiels A lonely unit of Austrian skirmishers hides in the woods, trying to not be noticed...
Pretty neat huh?
Both sets of Kiels are being slowly whittled down by attrition, and combat factors slip on both sides as the depth of the pike files inexorably reduces. The Danes however are maintaining the advantage of the ++ overlap, with the halberd-armed levy in a 5-wide formation easily outmatching the Austrians ability to spin out the doppelsoldners to their own flanks.
How did people carry large two-handed swords ?
The densely packed infantry push at each other, each relying on the strength of the men beside them to win the push of pike....
The levy on the left have followed up their glorious victory against the Szecklers by advancing almost totally unsupported into a wall of Austrian gunfire, and even the presence of a general is not enough to keep their morale intact.
Yet more unworthy targets for the Gendarmes, this time they give chase and catch up with the skulking Austrian light foot, who are unable to run fast enough to evade the charge.
Realising they may be too far away from the battle to do anything important, the Reiters form a column and move threateningly towards the Austrian camp - no doubt a virtual cornucopia of pork and bacon based products topped with cheese. Perfect Danish fodder...
The battle rages, with the Austrians starting to show some concerning reductions in morale whilst the Danes own Landsnechts remain resolute, if somewhat reduced in numbers. The tide is swinging towards the land of the Vikings...
Things must be bad when charging in with the Average horse is the best option that can be seen...
The Levy break and flee as the Austrian infantry step forwards and shout a loud BOO at them
When the Levy Breaks
The middle is where everything is happening, and everyone wants to join the party - even the Szecklers who are press-ganged into removing a ++ overlap for the Danes
With the two sides locked together in a death struggle, the Austrians are the first to lose a Kiel - and, added to the loss of the flanking Szecklers, LF and the artillery this tips the gluewein team to defeat! Denmark have triumphed yet again!
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 Danish Commander
Bacon-bleedin'-tastic my hearties! The sublety, the maneuver, the sheer genius of a long line of distinuguished Danish military commanders was all on display here as surely as if they were etched on the face of a Jorg Jensen timepiece, set carefully on the desk of some 1980's polo-neck-wearing middle manager!
To outflank an enemy is superb, but to do so and threaten both the camp, the rear of a Kiel, and then capture artillery is truly a mark of my enormous genius - the poor Austrians had not even a digeridoo to shake at my men's Scandic competence as they advanced, Reiter-first, through and then over the delaying tactics of the cowardly Antipodeans!
This masterstroke then gave my brave mercenary men the mental toughness to take on, face down, and walk over their mercenary opponents in the clash of the Kiels that ensued in the middle of the park, and so the victory over the mounted Tupi warriors was even sweeter than it first seemed.
Can we please gloss over the careful delaying action on the left and move onto the next game?
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
This was not a win, more a game snatched from the very gullet of either defeat or the toss of a coin to decide who had won amongst two near identical front-footed forces thou bootless shard-borne clotpole!
Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with incompetence? Because your willingness to enter into lotteries where there is nothing to put between the two forces of you and your opposition save the thinnest sliver of bacon-infused wafer thin ham continues yet to confound me at every turn
I see no hope here, as surely your luck has run dry and the debacle of the left flank will no doubt prove to be repeated across the whole table and you will be exposed for the bull's-pizzle, the stock-fish that you are, as the breath of defeat will utter aloud exactly what it is like to be thee!
Defeat is knocking - it is time for us to open the door to the
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 2 Early Danish vs French Hugenot
Game 3 Early Danish vs Imperial Austrian
Game 4 Early Danish vs West Sundanese
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