The Battle of Wimpfen took place in 1622, during one of the early campaigns of The Thirty Years' War. There is a scenario for it in the Pike & Shot Society's scenario book, To The Peace of the Pyrenees and following on from my recent re-fight of White Mountain, it seemed a very doable battle.
Naturally, I gave the associated ruleset, Twilight of Divine Right, another run out.
It was a pretty positive experience last time, so I was hoping for the same but a little better, as I got more familiar (once again) with the rules.
The Set-Up:
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| The battlefield. The Imperial-Spanish-Catholic forces approach from the bottom, the Markgraf of Baden's Protestant forces defend a line of wagons, with their flanks hinged on Ober-Eisesheim (top-left) and some woods. |
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| Ober-Eisesheim, with some marshes on the left. Some Cuirassiers look to attack anything moving in the gap between the village and the wagons. |
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| The wagon line, with Baden's infantry defending it. There are some musketeers in the gaps - don't think of these as real commanded shot, they are more just a visual marker that the wagon line will always contain musketeers until the Imperials get over it. |
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| and Baden's left, with musketeers in the woods. |
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| Looking at the Imperialist Army - this is Tilly's wing. |
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| and another view - the Imperialists still favour large tercios at this early stage in the war. |
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| and Cordoba's wing, with the Spanish reinforcements. Cordoba has overall command of the army. |
The Battle:
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| The real action begins with Tilly's left-hand Tercio attacking Ober-Eisesheim, supported by his Cuirassiers. |
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| Tilly's troops make short work of the defending infantry! |
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| The rival Cuirassiers then join in the action between the village and the wagon line. Tilly's tercio has gone through the village (top-left) - some of Streiff's cuirassiers (top) are re-deploying to meet them. Note that the next Imperial tercio column is following up to the right of the cuirassiers |
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| A lot of fighting occurs, but it hangs in the balance for some time...until a couple of Baden's Cuirassier regiments rout and his Right is looking distinctly flaky...especially as Tilly, leading in person, gets his tercio across the wagon line (centre) |
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| Almost nothing of note has happened on the Imperialist Right, until now, as Cordoba leads his Cuirassiers forward |
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| The collapse happens quickly: Streiff's remaining Cuirassiers flee, and this inspires the remainder of Baden's troops to join them... |
Game Notes:
Two games in a week? What madness is this?! Well, it was great to get another game in and continue my refresh on the Twilight of Divine Right rules. This particular battle was totally unknown to me - or if I had ever read about it, in Wedgewood or similar, I had forgotten. It ended up being a relatively easy Imperial victory, aided by having some re-rolls from better leadership and a couple of bits of outrageous bad-fortune for the Protestant die rolls! Still, c'est la guerre...the tactical choices in this are relatively straightforward, but still meaningfull, but much of the game is about army/wing management rather than clever tactics...and as I get more used to the rules again, that bit gets more fun and I can concentrate on the simple mechanics of action tests and morale rolls, which do get very fast once you are used to them.
What I am struggling a little to get my head around in this game is its 'philosophy of firepower', for want of a better phrase. Some units are capable of 'defensive fire', although I am unsure as to how the mechanics of that work and its conditions. Most units appear not to be able to do this. Now, a unit's move is typically longer than the range of musket fire, so it is trivially easy to not expose oneself to counter-sire whilst attacking, especially if the defenders are in a prepared position (in the open, the defender might close the range to fire, but they are not going to do this if they are defending earthworks or a village or whatever). This was important in the game, as Tilly's tercios could move straight into melee combat and avoid the potentially quite dangerous Protestant musketry. And frankly, this seems a bit unintuitive? Anyhow, only artillery has direct fire range to matter, and that is relatively easy to avoid if you want to. I note that Polemos: ECW takes a similar approach and has similar issues.
AsI get older, I see more the logic of the approach taken by Neil Thomas' abstracted approach, with ignores 'real' ranges entirely and concentrates on relative ranges: set the movement rates and ranges to ensure the number of 'fires' a defending (or attacking) unit should be able (in the game, we aren't counting individual volleys here) to fire in a given combat sequence. But perhaps all the above is wrong and I am simply missing something: entirely possible!
Anyway, a neat scenario and a good game, really enjoyed it. Figures by
Baccus 6mm ,buildings by
Leven. I think my marshes look a bit too much like ponds, I need to sort them out a bit. I am still working on my ideas to replace the blue 'Small Unit' counters, hopefully I will get them done over the next few weeks.
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“ Defensive Fire” attribute makes it more difficult fir an attacking unit to move into contact with another unit. It requires a higher score on the ‘“Action Text” for a move to contact. The whole point of Twilight rules is that they do not rely on calculations of fire effectiveness or success in hand to hand combat; everything is subsumed into a simple morale calculation based on the unit’s situation at that moment. If the attackers fail to make contact, because they fail the Action Test they do not impose a morale test on the enemy. Instead, they will have to take one as the failure of their attempted move leaves them within firing range of the defending unit. This extract from the rules makes it clear what the effect of “defensive fire” is:
ReplyDelete“But the Swedish Brigades have defensive fire and so the attacking units will need 4 or better to move into contact, they roll and fail” .
Okay, thanks very much for clarifying, appreciated.
DeleteThe previous poster has mainly covered the ‘Defensive Fire’ point. But to be clear it is units using heavy firepower to try to stop units contact them – so foot firing salvo’s, having attached ‘regimental guns’ and cavalry relying on massed firearms to disrupt attacks like Dutch School cavalry. As mentioned it makes it more difficult to contact than other units.
ReplyDeleteThis brings us to firing generally which is tackled in various ways. In the rules the general action test roll that units have to make to move into contact is the defending unit firing to stop the attacker contacting, ‘Defensive Fire’ just means they are better at doing it. In effect if you attack a foot unit frontally you always get shot at. I am not sure I agree on Tilly’s Tercio being better off going straight into contact but I will assume it is here. Note that it is NOT melee but close range combat which would include firing.
Assuming Tilly’s tercios get an advantage for moving into contact they have a 33% or 50% chance of failing to contact at all because of the defenders fire. The defender will then take a morale test which if they pass will mean the defender can move to fire for free. If in the open they can fall back if they are defending something they push the tercio back. They can use the assumed superior fire in this example they have and the tercio will have another 33 to 50% chance of failing to contact again on their following turn. If the defender fails the morale test it can still pull back in it’s turn but it now has to take an action test to do this and would then be able to get the advantages above. So overall firing has a big impact but just not in the way, and frankly totally inaccurate way, that many rules do.
Finally on artillery I suspect you have missed things here. The key to this is that we are not talking ‘battery’s’ here in the conventional sense . Instead it is immobile and scattered over a relatively wide area. It can be useful for ‘direct fire’ but that is likely to be rare and only the defender’s artillery. The real way to use artillery is in support of other unit’s attacks. It has a 45 degree angle and can fire through units & at units in contact. So artillery fire is usually mostly the artillery giving support to attacks by other units. Artillery in this era is not usually going to be a ‘game winner’ but it is useful and effective. It is just note like most gamers, and rules sets, think artillery is like – in effect they have artillery like it was 100 plus years later.
I hope this helps a little,
Nick
Thanks very much for explaining the thought process Nick, much appreciated.
DeleteGreat to see you getting in another game so quickly:). I know from my recent games of HoW, repeat playing makes things easier, plus you pick up on little bits that you might have missed before.
ReplyDeleteNice to see good clarifications in the comments section to your post game thoughts,
Thanks Steve. And yes, always good when people pop by with comments and clarifications, they are always very welcome.
DeleteJust lovely. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeletethanks Fred
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