Daniel expressed an interest in playing one of the Dominion games last night, so we had a go at my simple campaign system for the War of Spanish Succession, but using Great Northern War armies. The campaign system probably doesn't really replicate the politics of the GNW, but it was good enough to hang a series of games off of it.
I drew up a couple of sets of tables for generating both Swedish armies and their Russian or Saxon opponents. I decided that the campaign would start just after the Battle of Narva, with the Russians temporarily out of the war and with Charles XII attacking Augustus II in Poland/Saxony. There was a mechanism whereby the Saxons would give up the fight after a certain number of Swedish victories, at which point the Swedes would invade Russia and the tables would change accordingly.
To be honest I didn't feel that either the tables or the mechanisms were entirely satisfactory, so whilst I have them written up in a safe place they need a lot more work before I'll be posting them here. However they gave us pairs of armies for an entertaining evening's gaming.
Daniel was brave enough to take the Swedes, whilst I was their opponents - initially Saxon.
I'm afraid that my skills do not stretch to coming up with fictional names for battles in Eastern Europe, so I shan't bother. And you will also be please to know that I won't give you a blow-by-blow account of each battle either.
The first battle tested the army generation tables thoroughly, giving Daniel but three infantry units, all of them elite and disciplined - a formidable but brittle force. My force was almost entirely infantry, with some supporting artillery. I defended. Indeed the rules weight the onus of attacker towards the Swedes as that's what they tended to be most of the time.
Some field defences in my centre did me no good at all, and in the first few combats the Swedes smashed their way through the Saxons.
However the Saxons came back, rolling a couple of well-times sixes to break the Swedish army and pick up a win, albeit not a decisive one.
Here's the final Swedish charge being broken by musketry.
I didn't try and create backstories for the battles, but we did interpret the various defensive bonuses into terrain for the look of the thing. In the second battle the Saxons were the attackers but still had their centre formed up on a village. In this battle they had help from Polish cavalry.
It didn't last long though.
However teh Saxons prevailed again, and I started to build a useful hand of cards for the final reckoning.
The Saxons attacked in the third battle, with their wings anchored on rising ground. The Swedes were smashed again, losing their third battle in a row.
But the Swedes came back. In the fourth battle they were the attackers. We had them forcing a river-crossing against a inept Saxon defence ...
... and in a furious engagement ...
... the Swedes swept to a decisive win.
With a win under their belts there was a chance that the Swedes would now switch to Russia. They didn't, and instead continues their attacks, trying to take a fortified town by storm. I broke out one of my redoubts for this battle, which saw a small Saxon force well-entrenched.
The Swedish assault made no headway and they continued their general trend of losing battles.
The sixth battle saw the Saxons defending behind a marsh and some rising ground.
The Swedes started well, with a epic cavalry charge pushing teh Saxons off the hill. But their cavalry ran in to delayed Saxon reinforcements, and were thrown back in turn.
The Saxon cavalry then proceeded to roll up the Swedish army.
So far we had seem five Saxon victories, three of them decisive, against one Swedish win (also decisive). And yet still the Swedes kept coming. They attacked a Saxon position based on a fortified village.
And it all came together for them; for the second time the Swedes got a decisive win.
The seventh battle saw the end of the campaign, and checked our accumulated cards to see who came out best in the treaty. This is based on making the best possible poker hand from what you had. I'd picked up three kings early on, and had a nice full house off the back of it. However the last battle saw me lose one of the kings, leaving me with a king-high straight instead. Daniel had lost several battles so I reasoned his hand wouldn't be too great. In fact he had three eights and a couple of queens, so had the full house I'd just lost. Essentially the Swedish win in the final battle saw them prevent me from winning the campaign and gave the Swedes and unlikely victory.
And we never even went to Russia.
Thanks to Daniel for a great evening's gaming, and for such a dramatic finish to the campaign.
(Thanks to Caesar for the first photo in the post)
No comments:
Post a Comment