October 2024 Report

Another month of gaming draws to an end plus a visit to The Other Partizan.

First up was another trial run of Dave’s El Cid collection. We’re still not there yet and further work is definitely required.

Our first full battle of the month was a refight of Dreux, 19th December 1562, the first full battle of the French Wars of Religion. A set piece battle where both sides drew up and then waited around for hours for the other side to make a move 😏 Eventually the Catholics advanced and battle commenced.

In short the battle was a series of uncoordinated attacks by the Huguenots. On the right the Admiral Coligny smashed through the Catholic left and pursued them to their camp although Coligny himself was unhorsed and briefly held prisoner. On the left the Prince de Conde had a far more difficult time as his attack centred on the Royal Swiss who stood their ground long enough for the Catholic reserves under de Guise to sort themselves out and attack the now exhausted Huguenots, capturing Conde. At this late juncture the now freed Coligny managed to rally an assortment of cavalry and re-enter the fray causing enough of an impact for both sides to draw off in the darkness and both claim victory 😀

The battle is noteworthy for both sides using lance armed gendarmerie, the move to pistoleers by the Huguenots doesn’t take place until later much to the dismay of us die hard Huguenot players who want to field pistoleers from day one 😂 taking that into consideration both sides fielded lancers and I reduced the normal unit sizes to best match that of the actual contingents. The rules were our long standing set ‘For King Or Faith’

Our refight was interesting. The catholic gendarmes under Montmorency & St Andre hurtled forward in an attempts to overwhelm the protestants and St Andre certainly saw off some reiters who got in the way pretty quickly.

Then it was time for the protestants to counter with Conde taking on Damville and Coligny taking on Montmorency in a clash of the leaders.

The cavalry action continued with St Andre beating up some more reiters and then smashed through some protestant foot and onto the flank of the landsknechts who lost their captain in the melee. St Andre was having a top day!

The catholic roll continued with the Royal Swiss shrugging off pistol losses from another unit of protestant reiters and charging home – you can imagine the mess 😮

The protestants tried hard but when you are desperately throwing gendarmes in against veteran Spanish you know that it’s not going to be your day.

With their forces scattered and achieving very little the protestants decided to call it a day. A good game with plenty of action and anguish.

Our next effort was our newly developing 6mm Cold War Gone Hot effort using ‘Cold War Commander’ In this game we had a Soviet tank regiment breakthrough aiming for a town on dominating high ground. The Bundeswehr defenders deployed an under strength Panzer battalion.

This was a tremendous game with a lot of kit on the table and the Soviets flinging in off table artillery, air attacks and helicopter assaults to support a pincer attack.

In the early turns the Germans lost their Marder battalion as they tried to manoeuvre to utilise their Milan’s and left the infantry defending the flank from cover. This end of the pincer was closing.

On the other end of the Soviet pincer one tank battalion secured some high ground to duke it out with some Leopard 2’s.

This proved to be a mistake 🤣😥

However the Soviet advance ground on with losses being shrugged aside and artillery pounding away – very on historical prototype.

There was some light relief for the Germans however when a pre registered artillery strike pounded a Soviet tank battalion 🤣

However, the Bundeswehr inevitably reached their break point and duly tested and failed. A major Soviet victory and a great game.

By way of a pleasant change our next effort was a western gunfight. Our skirmish collections don’t get much of an outing these days as the direction of the group has changed a bit so it was nice just to do a couple of hours shooting it out on main street of an evening.

A well worn scenario. Son of a local rancher is about to be hung and the rancher aint having none of it. Classic stuff.

“Draw!” And everyone did…..

It was fun. Aggrieved rancher bit the dust, deputised local show off shot himself in the foot as he cleared leather – oh how we laughed! another deputy had a dud shell as he fired, the town marshal went down, heroic deputy used his shotgun with skill and blasted a hired gun, the other fled. Just like a movie 😅😃

Up next was a journey back to C5th Gaul where Magister Militum Listorius put together a significant force of auxilia and equites to prevent the Visigoths under Theodoric I from seizing Narbonne. It was kind of historical in the sense that the two did engage outside Narbonne in 446AD but that is the sum total of our knowledge.

Brave Romans.

Visigothic Gardingi on the move hoping to overwhelm the Romans.

Litorius gambled all on leading his cavalry into the first mounted clash of the day. It paid off and the Visgothic first line broke.

Riding his luck Litorius charged the Visgothic Dux, Hermengild, in an attempts to dismay his command.

There was plenty of dismay all right, Roman dismay as Litorius was cut down fighting Hermengild and his bodyguard. The Roman army now ground to a halt, things were looking grim for the province of Gaul.

Auxilia start to rally.

Then, almost as if to say ‘anything you can do I can do better’ Theororic got himself killed!!

This was highly hilarious and with both armies paralysed from adverse morale throws (not surprisingly) and facing difficulties in rallying we called it a day. Fun game though.

Our final game was a refight (two in a month!) of the battle of Camposanto, 8th February 1743 which took place as part of the War of the Austrian Succession in Italy between Austria & Piedmont and France & Spain.

The battle came about because of two commanders, de Gages for Spain and von Traun for Austria being under pressure to force a military victory or face replacement, so after much manoeuvring de Gages crossed the river Panaro and found himself facing Traun who was marching toward the river. Both sides duly deployed and then stood around waiting for the other to make a move – sound familiar? During this lull Traun re-arranged his deployment so that his right was in the air but the troops from that wing reinforced his centre, for reason that are lost in time de Gages kept with his original deployment.

Battle finally commenced at 4.00pm with de Gages launching his cavalry on both wings and driving off the Austro Sardinians thus leaving the infantry centre exposed but not really because the Spanish cavalry disappeared in hot pursuit. The Austrians then led their infantry against their opposite numbers and steadily drove them back until the arrival of darkness curtailed any decisive action and both sides drew off.

Our effort started very similarly with the cavalry but reversed history. On both flanks the Austro Piedmontese were completely victorious ultimately driving the Spanish horse into the river.

The infantry fight was far more brutal.

On the Spanish left the Walloon Guard & the Irish Brigade advanced steadily and ultimately destroyed the two brigades facing them – in fairness the Walloons did all the heavy lifting the Irish just looked pretty.

On the Spanish right the Spanish Guard punched through the first line of their opponents but the second line held and the Guard took heavy losses (two battalions were utterly destroyed), finally routing back into Camposanto disrupting their own second line.

A more even fight took place on the Austrian right centre where the Austrians slugged out with the Spanish line resulting in both sides becoming shattered.

Just like the real thing, darkness started to fall and the fighting drew to a close. The Austrian right flank was completely destroyed and vulnerable to the advance of the Walloon Guards and Irish, the centre had seen the destruction of the Spanish Guard and the weakening of their opponents but both second lines were in good shape. Given the superiority of the allied horse we deemed a retreat under the cover of darkness protected by the cavalry would be the most logical Austrian next move while the Spanish consolidated their position.

That was it for our gaming. We did get a visit in to The Other Partizan in the middle of the month just as punters this time and came away with a mixed view. Yes it was undoubtedly busy and by that criteria a success, but with numbers comes crowding and the inability to give the games a good look over as well as the forever queue at the food outlet. There were certainly plenty of games but I did come away with the view that quantity didn’t mean quality, some of the games were quite average and more than one suffered from detritus leaching onto the gaming area – I do recognise however that this is a bit glass half empty.

In other news Dave is cracking on with his Republican Romans to fight our Successors, a project we said we’d never do because of the inherent difficulties of making pilum v pike work – oh well so much for that 🤣😂

That’s all for this month, hopefully see you November.