Narrative OHW Campaign Battle 2: Battle of Lochmire

Campaign Briefing, Battle 02:

Following the success of the Dutch Army at Fernbrae, its leader, General de Ruyter ordered a somewhat leisurely pursuit of the Spanish force towards its Lochmire, where it was besieging that important town, its castle and its Scottish garrison. The Spanish commander, General Sarsfield, covering his retreat with his powerful cavalry arm, moved his main body back towards Lochmire to focus on the siege. However, De Ruyter, screening the Franco-Spanish cavalry with his own, conducted a surprise march to attack a portion of the Spanish lines outside Lochmire.  Sarsfield scribbled an order to an aide, telling him to present it to the commander of his brigade of Dragoons and to return to Lochmire post-haste. Meanwhile, his troops prepared to resist the Dutch attack.

Forces:

The Dutch Army:

C-in-C: General de Ruyter

1st Brigade (C. Murray): Colyear's, Lauder's, Murray's Foot Regts

2nd Brigade (D. Saxe-Weimar): Portmore's Foot Regt, Saxe-Weimar Dragoons, de Vries' Foot Battery,

Garrison: 42nd Foot

Murray's and Colyear's regiments are Veteran, Portmore's is Raw.

The Spanish Army:

C-in-C: General Sarsfield

HQ: Siege Battery, Clermont's Battery

1st Brigade (Reding): Limerick, Ultonia, Royal Eccosais, Light Artillery Battery

2nd Brigade (Meagher): Leon, Toledo

3rd Brigade (Cortes): Mahony's Dragoons, Crofton's Dragoons, Ferrari's Dragoons

The Toledo regiment is Veteran, everyone else is Trained

 

The Set-up:

The garrisoned town with castle to the SW; the advancing Dutch Forces to the West (left); the defending Franco-Spanish Forces to the East (right, centre, top)

A view of the garrison

Saxe-Weimar's Brigade

Murray's Brigade

The Limerick and Ultonia Regiments of Reding's Brigade

Two batteries and the Royal Eccossais garrison the entrenched camp.

Meagher's Brigade

Another view.

The Battle:

As de Ruyter has decided to attack with his Left (top-left), Reding's Brigade tries to redeploy under some irritating artillery fire

Murray's Brigade forms up for the assault

Numbers and skill tell - a couple of devastating volleys and the Spanish brigade is routed!

Reding's troops are making some heavy weather of the redeployment, partly due to the artillery fire but partly sheer incapacity and confusion. However, the French artillery is playing effectively on Saxe-Weimar's Dragoons (centre-left)

Cortes' Brigade of Spanish Dragoons (okay, Italo-Irish!) arrives, hopefully to stem the tide!

Another view. Two regiments are mounted, one on foot.

Reding has at least got his units deployed to protect against any river crossing

Things go from bad to worse for the Spanish: one of Reding's battalions guarding the bridge breaks under artillery fire

Desperate to restore the situation, Cortes' leads his dragoons in a desperate charge

Whilst Dutch (i.e. Scottish) infantry attempt to splash through the river, Reding reforms his troops

The musketry of Murray's brigade beats back the attacking Dragoons

Some success at last! Colyear's regiment breaks under the heavy French artillery fire; however the dismounted Spanish (okay, Italian) Dragoons are about to succumb to the effects of the Scots' musketry (top-right)

Cortes orders his surviving troopers into one more charge...

Which is no more successful than the last! Crofton's Dragoons are destroyed...

And Mahony's Dragoons ride for the rear!

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Spanish Army has had enough and its broken units flee, its unbroken units retreat

View at the end of the battle.

Game Notes:

 The Spanish Army will have to retreat and re-group after two defeats at the hands of the Dutch. The invasion of New Dalrydia is misfiring badly! Hopefully I will get to part 3 soon...

 

A fun game and a reasonably comprehensive victory for the Dutch: most things they tried worked, most things the Spanish tried did not! Ruse de Guerre gave a good, swift game although it is very generically 'horse & musket' - in particular the artillery is probably a little too powerful, although it isn't the biggest issue in the world. You wouldn't think it perhaps from the game but I did slightly change the firepower calibration to requiring a 7+ to shake an opponent (although I kept at 10+ to break, still wondering if I need to move that to 11). More specifically, the Spanish kept on getting awful tempo point allocations on key turns, mimicking quite well the 'shock' that armies can experience when attacked in surprising and impactful ways. So it worked quite well as part of this mini-campaign.

 

 

Very well done to anyone who twigged the scenario this was taken from: it as an NT-esque adaptation of the Castillon scenario from back in Miniature Wargames 02 - it seemed to take the treatment quite well and the broad scenario fitted quite easily into the campaign narrative.

Figures by Baccus 6mm, mostly the buildings are from Leven, and the fortifications are from Irregular. 

 

Alte Veste 1632 - Twilight of Divine Right refight

I managed to get a miniatures game in today, the first in quite a while. I re-fought the Battle of Alte Veste from the Thirty Years' War, the next battle along in the series of scenarios in the Europe's Tragedy scenario book which accompanies the rules I was using, as ever for these games, Twilight of Divine Right. 

 

This one seems to get slightly less love than other contemporary battles for games - possibly because Gustavus Adolphus lost? Or because there is somewhat less love for the Imperialists than some of the other factions involved in the war (e.g. Sweden, Spain, France, Bavaria)? In any case, this battle was quite new to me, and it is tactically very, very interesting, because it combines elements of 'attack on a fortified position' (as the Swedes attack a fortified Imperial campaign) with elements of 'meeting engagement' (as various large contingents reinforce each side).

The Set-Up:

A Swedish army under Gustav is marching, mainly through some woods, to attack a fortified Imperialist camp. Wallenstein's troops must hold the position until Wallenstein himself can bring up reinforcements to save the day.

The Imperialist camp, with a few fortified outworks in the middle of the field.  The Swedes are advancing in the backround...

Imperial infantry occupying the outworks, about to face the full wrath of the Swedish army...

Another view

The right-hand corner of the Imperialist camp, with a third outwork protecting it.

The Battle:

The Swedish Army advances: relatively slowly, due to the complications of moving through the woods.

The Swedish left flank, under the King himself, leads the Swedish advance, hoping to achieve superiority at this point.

A slightly wider view of the same...

The Swedish infantry advance up the hill to try to get to grips with the Imperialist defenders, through the storm of shot and ball...

Can the Imperialist reinforcements (bottom) arrive to support in time.

Most of the remainder of the Swedish army is in position to attack, although a couple of straggling units are still in the rear.

One of the leading Swedish units disintegrates under Imperialist fire; the remainder are struggling to get forward.

The first batch of reinforcements arrive: dismounted Swedish cavalry - please use your imagination somewhat here, in the real battle, the dismounted Horse were apparently mainly used as pikemen (!)

They advance to try and turn the Imperialist Left

The Swedes seem to be making some progress in the centre - can a few Imperialist gunners hold them off?

Yes - long enough for reinforcements arrive, and a regiment of musketeers to move down from the hill to discomfit the Swedish main body (right)

Reinforcements have arrived and are clashing, over on the Imperialist Left/Swedish Right; the Swedes have overrun the left-hand outwork (top-right)

A wider shot: the Swedes made some progress, but have been stalled by the counter-attack from the Imperialist reserve.

The Imperial reinforcements arrive in the nick of time, to stop the fortified camp being breached and entered on a wide front.

At last (cente-right), the Swedes have dispersed the Imperialist musketeers who were causing such damage to the edge of the Swedish attack

However, the Swedish left flank column, which sustained heavy casualties trying to get through the outwork on the hill, is now being attacked in its flank!

The Swedish forces just cannot break into the main camp, and losses are high - and mounting

Although the Imperialists have the numerical advantage on the Left, the Swedes are holding their own - thus far.

The Swedish Left has been routed!

And the Swedish Right is incurring unsustainable losses, despite some unlikely successes in repelling the Imperial Cuirassiers (centre)

At this point, the Swedish Army's morale gave way, the Foot had made its final effort

The last ditch efforts of the Swedes to break through the centre have proven fruitless.

 Game Notes: 

A very interesting game, especially since I did not know (or at any rate, could not remember) the course and outcome of the historical battle. The scenario is very well designed, especially in terms of the reinforcement mechanics, which enforce a probability distribution of outcomes so a player knows roughly what is likely to arrive in which order, but it isn't always entirely certain; and the 'when' is even less certain.

The immediate tactical problem for the Swedes is in how fast against how organized they want their initial attack to be, knowing that time is pressing and their task will be much harder once the Imperialist reinforcements arrive: this was the justification for attacking on the Swedish Left before the Centre was really ready. Here, the luck really favoured the Imperialists, quickly dispersing one Swedish brigade and holding off the rest. The Imperialists in all the outwork positions fought hard, frustrating the Swedish advance, although all were ultimately doomed. The Swedish infantry tactical advantages could not quite compensate for the strength of the Imperialist defensive positions.

Having sorted out exactly how the support modifiers worked with very deep formations, there was somewhat less emphasis on such things in this battle, although with quite a lot of musketeer units on both sides, then there might have been less emphasis regardless, as both sides needed to try and maximize their shooting. 

I don't think I encountered any rules issues with this one. The rules make it quite difficult for units to turn to flank and so on when they are in quite dense formations - which seems fairly realistic - so a couple of times musketeer units got around the flank into very nasty enfilading positions, which seems a fair risk/reward trade off of trying to use mass to carry positions.

Anyway, all very good fun, was good to get a game on the table!

Figures by Baccus 6mm, earthworks mainly by Irregular - the latter are apparently stopping (temporarily at least) production of their 6mm ranges. This is a bit of a pity - I am not a huge Irregular customer, but I do have a fair number of their terrain bits and their boats (plus my 6mm Vietnam stuff is mainly Irregular too).