A few days ago, I had a go at the next
Twilight of Divine Right scenario, that for the
Battle of Lutzen 1632. It appears in the second Twilight of Divine Right Thirty Years' War scenario book,
To the Peace of the Pyrenees. It is an interesting battle - I remember reading a scenario for it in one of the very early Miniature Wargames, and I am pretty sure I have done it before, using Neil Thomas' rules for Pike & Shot games (update:
I had indeed). In any case, this scenario also proved to be 'interesting' - but I will save the detail of that for the Game Notes at the bottom...
At the beginning of the battle, the numbers are reasonably equal - although the Imperialists do seem a tad stronger - but the Imperialists are due to be reinforced by Pappenheim's column of Horse and Foot on turn 6. And a heavy fog is due on turn 8. The Swedish leaders are rather more dashing than the Imperialist leaders, as something of a counter-balance.
The Swedish Army: 7 infantry brigades, 11 cavalry units, 3 artillery units
The Imperialist Army: 9 infantry units, 1 musketeer unit, 14 cavalry units, 3 artillery units (and 3 infantry units and 4 cavalry units with Pappenheim)
Both armies have some commanded shot, and most of the Imperial infantry has regimental guns attached.
The Set-Up:
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View from the side: Swedish and German allies to the left, Imperialists to the right
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Looking at the Imperialist army
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The Imperialist Right
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The Imperialist Centre
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The Imperialist Left
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Looking at the Swedish Army from a vantage point behind the Imperialists
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The Swedish Right
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The Swedish Centre
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The Swedish Left
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The Battle:
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There wasn't much space for manoeuvre and with Pappenheim due to arrive, it fell to the Swedes to attack and hopefully create some gaps to exploit.
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Some very good shooting by the Imperialist Army on Windmill Hill in the centre wipes out one of the Swedish attacking infantry brigades. Not an auspicious start!
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Okay, battle is joined in earnest - the Swedish Right does manage to get over the road, in part.
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And then in full - the Imperialist Horse is more pushed back than defeated though, and the combat continues
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And suddenly some of the Swedish Horse is simply cut down in the centre, the ebb-&-flow of battle now threatening the Swedish Right (visually, many of the Swedish Horse units are in the single row formations, whilst the Imperialists are in double rows, in an approximation of the 'Dutch' style); you can also see that there is an ongoing firefight in the centre: the Imperilalists are holding their positions, but perhaps suffering somewhat heavier casualties in the process
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The Imperialist Horse showing up well against the Swedish Right
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Losses mount in the centre, without anything much else occurring
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Fire from the Imperialist musketeers and artillery has broken a regiment of Swedish/German Horse (see gap on road) in the centre
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The Swedish Foot is finding it difficult to make headway in the centre
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The ebb-and-flow of the Horse fight continues on the Swedish Right, but the centre of the Swedish Horse looking distinctly shaky - and there are no real reserves at hand...
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Okay, the Swedish Foot have eliminated the lead Imperialist Foot units and are over the road
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A wider shot - the Swedish progress has been bloody, slow and small so far!
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The Swedish-German left has been attrited away into serious trouble! The briefly got past Lutzen but have been counter-attacked with heavy losses
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In the centre however, the Swedish Foot are just about hanging on; but note that Pappenheim's column has arrived to reinforce the Protestant Left (top-right)
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Weimar's wing (the Swedish Left) has been worn down to nothing.
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Which is really unfortunate, as the Swedish Foot are just starting to make real headway in the centre!
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The Swedish Right is in trouble too - although they have made decent progress next to the Swedish infantry, they are beginning to crumble to the far right - note the gap that the Imperialist Horse are about to advance through (centre-right)!
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Things cannot hold - the Swedish Right turns and runs
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And the Swedish Left - the little that remains - likewise leaves the field of battle
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Abandoned by their flanking Horse, the victorious Swedish Foot must flee also! At least the incoming fog spared them any meaningful or organized pursuit!
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The position at the end of the battle - Wallenstein has triumphed and beaten off Gustavus Adolphus. Hey, not all bad for the latter though - at least he survived this time!!
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Game Notes:
An exciting battle, if not perhaps a very tactically interesting one, if you know what I mean! I felt that the OoB felt a little hard on the Swedes compared to my (very limited) understanding of the battle, but I am sure that the experts at the Wyre Forest Gamers know better than me. However, what did feel odd was the scale of the battle/size of the table. I use single base units on a 60mm x 30mm-sized base: the Polemos standard, if you will. Twilight of Divine Right is designed for each unit to be two bases strong, both 60mm x 30mm. Now, the exact size is explicitly not supposed to matter, so don't think I am doing anything 'wrong' here. The main difference is that my infantry units are somewhat deeper than those envisaged by the rules, although the only battle that has mattered for so far is White Mountain, where it was quite hard to fit in all the units in the required depth. But the issue in this scenario was one of width, which shouldn't be affected at all. But the scenario as written proposes a 4'x3' table, which when reduced to account for my smaller width units, should reduce to 2'x1.5': my board above was actually bigger in the sense of deeper than that as designed. However, the number of units designated as in the first line for the Imperialists was simply bigger than the width of the board!
But it seems to be a much more spacious affair! So the somewhat crowded battlefield really limited the Swedish options for manoeuvre, as well as the Imperialist Right, which could hardly do anything but locally respond to the Swedish attack. So, very interesting translation of the battle.
In any case, the refight was good fun. The quality of the Swedish commanders, especially Gustavus, enabled them to stay in the game longer than the raw numbers might have implied, but I do think they need a bit of luck somewhere to win this one. Perhaps an interesting variant would be for the Swedish player to favour the draw and invite the Imperialists to attack, and then counter-attack. Some of the rules around infantry fire and close-combat superiority are a little involved (the Swedes can change the ratio of their pikes-to-muskets and thus who has combat advantage) and I maintain that an action test to get a +1 would amount to much the same effect in the end, but it wasn't hard. I don't recall having any real issues with the rules in this one, which is always a good thing!
Figures by Baccus 6mm, buildings were a mixture of Leven and Battlescale.
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