Maurice Campaign - Round 2

JohnP and I finally managed to get together an play our outstanding Maurice campaign game last night. It was a cobbled together affair; John doesn't own an army, but uses figures borrowed from Caesar. Caesar couldn't make it, so dropped off the figures at my place during the afternoon. Neither of us own a deck of cards, so Peter provided those. And I have a fast turnaround on a Thursday evening these days, and am prone to forgetting things. Which, in this case, meant my army list and my phone. I managed to reconstruct my list (and the casualties from the previous game) from memory, and John obligingly took a few photos on his phone.

Still, on with the game.

The war didn't end after the first round, something both I (The Electorate of Haapasaard-Skando) and John (The Irish mercenaries of Cearbhall's Cataphracts) had hoped for. Both of our armies had mauled each other badly in their first encounter, and consisted mostly of conscript troops. The old enemies faced each other the plains of En y Bold, with the Irish defending this time.

As I said above, there aren't many photos. John concentrated his force on his left flank, where the objective was, so I massed my cavalry, put them in column and swung them around his right, with my Cossacks lurking in some woods. The infantry were to pin the Irish from the front. 

It was a good plan. John responded by bringing his heavily outnumbered cavalry over, and most of the photos are of that getting a thorough beating. 

One Irish unit did break through the Swedish cavalry line, but the Cossacks dealt with it. Unfortunately this cost me time and cards, and I ended up badly coordinating my strong cavalry presence with the infantry, who were now too far back from the battle to be useful.

In a bold move, John pulled his infantry right back, turning it to face the Swedish horse, and their musketry steadily annihilated them. My attention was focused on pushing the infantry up in support, whilst replenishing my cards which had been depleted by the cavalry action. As my cavalry slowly disappeared the Swedish infantry engaged first the Irish artillery and then their infantry rearguard. The damage was done though; the two wings of the Swedish army were too far apart to support each other, and casualties were mounting quickly. The Cossacks attacked an exposed Irish infantry flank, but two charges failed to break the line. One round of shooting saw the Swedes pull back; the Irish failed to inflict any serious casualties, whilst the Swedes routed the centre of the Irish infantry line and came close to breaking one of the Guard units as well. Both armies were teetering on the brink, but it was the Irish who broke one more Swedish cavalry unit to win the battle.

Neither army saw much in the way of post-battle promotions. In fact the Swedes saw nothing. But this battle saw the Ottoman/Swedish/Austrian alliance sue for peace, ending the first war. This means, I believe, that all of our conscript troops (the bulk of the Swedish army now) get to be trained for the next battle.

It was unfortunate that I hadn't brought my phone; there were three other games on the go whist John and I were playing. Dave and Geoff played HOTT, Peter and Ralph played Black Powder Napoleonics with 15mm figures and, finally, Ian and Gary had another go with the WRG 1685-1845 rules (another Napoleonics game)