Joe and I played a game of
By Fire and Sword. I played my Polish and he played my Swedish. We played 12 points on each side, so since the armies were equal, we played the patrol scenario.
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| The board post deployment |
The Swedish consisted of three big blocks of Veteran Reiters, and one section of Veteran Dragoons.
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| A menacing wall of Reiters |
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| And some more Reiters on the far flank |
The Polish list consisted of a big block of Pancerni, two small blocks of Cossack style infantry, two blocks of Wallachians, and a block of Volunteers.
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| Wallachians and their advance deployment |
I had enough of a reconnaissance advantage to advance deploy one unit, which ended up being some Wallachians to start near on of the objectives, and also outflanked a unit of Cossack style infantry, which would start rolling to come on the board on turn three.
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| The rest of the Polish line - Volunteers screening the meaty stuff |
We each had two commanders, and we each bought the extra command point upgrade on our main commander. We rolled for random effects, and I was able to permanetly strip one command point off of his main commander, and he started one of my units disordered - which ended up being a Wallachian banner.
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| Disordered Wallachians! |
And with that, we're off!
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| The Reiters start to move out. Big wide battle lines are hard to maneuver |
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| The far flanking Reiters start to move towards the center |
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| The open-order Polish have a much easier time maneuvering around the terrain, since they aren't wheeling |
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| Volunteers charge forward like the meatshields they are while the Pancerni start to line up |
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| Wallchians taking to the woods on a defense order |
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| The Pancerceni and Volunteers surrounding the center house |
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| Cossacks filling the gap on the left flank |
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| The Swedish battle line moves up and Dragoons prepare to garrison the center house |
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| The Volunteers are eager to charge in to the Reiters |
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| On turn three, the outflanking Cossacks arrive on the far right flank |
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| The Pancerni charge into a large Reiter block with moral support from the Cossacks to their left |
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| The Volunteers don't quite get close enough enough on their first charge move - they're going to take some heavy fire! |
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| The Dragoons garrison the center building. They're going to be a lot tougher to move from that! |
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| The Wallachians that were disordered on turn 1 start to move towards the fight |
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| The Dragoons put two wounds on the Volunteers |
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| And the Reiters do a third to remove a stand, but the Volunteers hold strong and finish their charge |
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| The Pancerni also lose a stand moving in for the charge |
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| And they lose combat, twice, being forced to eventually flee! |
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| And off the table edge they run :( |
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| As to be expected, the five Reiters break the Volunteers, but the Volunteers claim one stand from the unit. Op success! The outflanking cossacks move into their rear arc, but the Swedish reform on a defense order before the Cossacks can make use of their advantageous position. |
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| Meanwhile the other Reiters, that just broke the Pancerni, move up |
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| The last remaining Volunteer runs off the board |
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| The Reiters then charge the Cossacks, who get caught between a Reiter and a hard place. |
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| Joe's tape measure photobombs this shot |
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| The Cossacks charge the Reiters in the rear, but they're too little and too late to break them |
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| The Wallchians charge towards some Reiters |
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| Run 'em down boys! |
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| Wallachians actually do some serious damage to the Reiters, but between the Reiters Good Tactical Discipline and the Wallachains Poor Tactical Discipline, they still bounce. |
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| Parting shot - board at the end of the game! |
Both sides scored 6 VP for scouting the objectives as per the scenario, but the kills were so heavily in favor of the Swedish that they scored an additional 7 VP, making it a historic victory for the Swedish.
And from Joe: My primary goal with deployment and early movement was to just get my Reiters into a position to move freely at 5 wide. Possibly because of that limited focus, I felt like I was outmaneuvered on both sides with units able to get around my flanks and move up behind me. Fortunately the outflanking cossacks couldn't change their order to a charge to exploit their positioning, and Scott's inability to spread to 6 wide with his Pancerni made up for my lack of foresight in dealing with his cossacks coming around my right flank.
After action thoughts from Scott: Splitting up the Cossacks was probably a mistake - three strong banners don't do much, especially against five and six strong elite troopers. I was disappointed by the less than spectacular performance of the Pancerni, but sometimes the dice just say no!
