Musket & Pike: Fehrbellin 1675

A dose of Musket & Pike today and my second game with the series. The battle of Fehrbellin was fought between the Swedes and Brandenburg. The Swedish have mostly heavy infantry and cavalry, but the Brandenburgians field an all cavalry force.  The Swedes must hold off the attackers until the bridge to their rear is repaired.

The game started with Sweden trying to take the Brandenburg artillery position on some low hills behind thickets. They managed to capture one battery easy enough, but were then driven back by the Swedish dragoons. In the center, the Brandenburg cavalry force launched an all out charge on both the right and left flank of the Swedes, estimating the pikemen in the center to be too much to chew.

The Brandenburg cavalry force prepares to charge the Swedish line.

The assault proved a partial success, with the Swedish cavalry on the flanks out of the way, but the Brandenburg cuirassiers couldn't quite manage to swing past the flanks to surround the heavy infantry. They were left scattered on the field with their formation broken instead.

At this point it looked like the cavalry attack had done a lot of damage, but if the heavy Swedish infantry would counterattack, the disorganized cavalry would be as good as dead. At this point, the lines of communication apparently broke down on both sides. The Swedes couldn't change their orders from "receive charge" to "charge" and the Brandenburgians couldn't stop their own charge orders. This meant that the heavy infantry units could not touch the formation broken cavalry in front of their noses and the Brandenburgians couldn't retreat them as the orders were to charge. Instead. they were forced to charge the few organized forces they had left against the Swedish line of pikemen - a suicide.

Towards the end of the game, Brandenburg managed to get their act together and pull back, while the Swedes could not catch the cavalry even after finally getting their orders changed. The game ended with 31 VP in favor of Brandenburg, a draw. Neither army was routed, but casualties were high. It was a better than historical result for Sweden.

I'm still having difficulties getting to grips with cavalry tactics. They seem like such an one shot weapon. They charge in, and both the attacker and the defender melt away. The remaining units are scattered and in a very bad threat of being overrun by a counterattack. I suppose it's realistic, but I still have a lot to learn in how to use them.

The orders system is quite interesting. It reflects the difficulty and uncertainty of making a change in plans after the battle starts quite well, and rewards players who change the order level gradually instead of trying to turn a rally into a charge in one instant. If anything, my hunger for the series has only grown.

A week worth of games

Looks like its autumn here in Finland. You can tell when people suddenly regain interest in boardgaming. Considering it's a "normal" week with no preplanned games, I got quite a few games played.

First up, a game of Battle Cry with my wife. So far it's the only wargame she'll agree to play with me, but I think that is plenty when it gives me an opportunity to use my freshly painted 6mm ACW collection. Instead of the four infantry figures the game poses as a unit, I deploy four stands of ten figures. It gives even a Commands & Colors game that nice mass effect feel. I'm tempted to do the whole set with miniatures and miniatures terrain etc. but on the other hand I like the cardboard components of the 150th anniversary edition.
We played the Pea Ridge scenario and the game was decided with heavy fighting and daring cavalry charges on the union left/confederate right. I won this time, but lost the on we played before. After the game I suggested to the Mrs. that we play War of 1812 next time, and she didn't refuse. Everything is proceeding according to plan *diabolical laughter*.

Second, a Risk 2210 session made all better by some whisky with friends. Laphroig and later Vat69 if you must know. Of the risk games, I think I like this one best, and it is good fun in a Beer and Pretzels sort of way. Somehow nobody seemed to attack me even though I took Australia and Africa on the opening turn, and I won by consolidating my position and taking the sea areas around me. Afterwards, we played some Dominion and Monty Python Fluxx, but my memory is somehow hazy on how those went.

Last, but definitely not least, I ended my long dry spell of Advanced Squad Leader last night. It was the first match in maybe 6 months and me and my regular opponent were a bit rusty on the rules. The scenario was "Romanian Hammers" from a third party Rally-Point publication concentrating on the axis minors. In the scenario, Romanian infantry forces attack a village held by the Russians. Midway through the game, two German Stug IIIG's come into play from the Russian rear. The axis forces must scatter the defenders from the village in order to win.
The Russians had deployed an MMG into a building overlooking the lines of the Romanian advance. The only safe-ish approach was a narrow stretch of woods coming to the house which the Romanians could use as cover. As the troops in the woods advanced, the Russian machinegun, made much more deadly by the 9-2 leader directing fire, was cutting down the infantry in the open. The first turns were miserable to the Romanians and they failed to survive into melee with the MG. The German tanks arrived to the Russian rear and had success against the two Russian tanks but the failure of the Romanian infantry brought disaster. The MG was pushed back by point blank fire momentarily, but the Romanians ran out of steam and we could safely stop the game without finishing the last turn.