Lutzen 1632 - A Twilight of Divine Right refight

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:

View from the side: Swedish and German allies to the left, Imperialists to the right

Looking at the Imperialist army

The Imperialist Right

The Imperialist Centre

The Imperialist Left

Looking at the Swedish Army from a vantage point behind the Imperialists

The Swedish Right

The Swedish Centre

The Swedish Left

The Battle:

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.

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!

Okay, battle is joined in earnest - the Swedish Right does manage to get over the road, in  part.

And then in full - the Imperialist Horse is more pushed back than defeated though, and the combat continues

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

The Imperialist Horse showing up well against the Swedish Right

Losses mount in the centre, without anything much else occurring

Fire from the Imperialist musketeers and artillery has broken a regiment of Swedish/German Horse (see gap on road) in the centre

The Swedish Foot is finding it difficult to make headway in the centre

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...

Okay, the Swedish Foot have eliminated the lead Imperialist Foot units and are over the road

A wider shot - the Swedish progress has been bloody, slow and small so far!

The Swedish-German left has been attrited away into serious trouble! The briefly got past Lutzen but have been counter-attacked with heavy losses

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)

Weimar's wing (the Swedish Left) has been worn down to nothing.

Which is really unfortunate, as the Swedish Foot are just starting to make real headway in the centre!

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)!

Things cannot hold - the Swedish Right turns and runs

And the Swedish Left - the little that remains - likewise leaves the field of battle

Abandoned by their flanking Horse, the victorious Swedish Foot must flee also! At least the incoming fog spared them any meaningful or organized pursuit!

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!!

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! 

 

The Wyre Forest Gamers actually posted their pictures of Lutzen and very nice they are too.

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.

 

 

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).