The Rejects got together over the weekend for another game of Richard's most excellent French Wars of Religion rules, using his 2mm Irregular Miniatures armies.
Both sides were given the map above a week before and had to place our troops on the map. Lee and Dave were the Huguenots, while myself, Surj and Steve were the Caholic army, (although, Steve couldn't make the game day) Each Battle had to set up in any of the 6 zones, while our camp had to be placed anywhere in A to D
The Huguenot army of Admiral Coligny has been operating in Normandy, but has found itself facing a powerful Catholic force led by Tavannes. In order to avoid an unequal fight, Coligny has retired south towards La Rochelle and the relative safety of friendlier areas.
Unfortunately for Coligny, he has been out-marched by Tavannes. The Huguenots have been caught before they can make a juncture with the forces led by Condé that are moving from the south. Without any alternative, Coligny turns to fight close to the small town of Le Truc.
OOB
The Huguenot Army (Lee & Dave)
Vanguard
2 units of gens d’armes (heavy cavalry)
2 units of chevaux-legers (medium cavalry)
Main Battle
1 unit of Landsknecht pike
3 units of Huguenot pike and shot
2 units of Enfants Perdus (skirmisher infantry)
1 artillery battery
Rearguard
1 unit of Reiters
1 units of Huguenot pike and shot
1 unit of Landsknecht
3 units of arquebusiers (firearm only infantry)
The Catholic Army (Ray & Sirj)
Vanguard
4 units of gens d’armes (heavy cavalry)
1 unit of Argoulets (light cavalry that can either fire from the saddle, or can dismount and by used as arqubusiers)
Main Battle
2 units of Swiss pike
4 units of French pike and shot
2 units of Enfants Perdus (skirmisher infantry)
1 artillery battery
Rearguard
3 units of gens d’armes
2 units of Swiss pike
2 units of Enfants Perdus
We chose sector 3, 4 & 5, with our camp in C
The Huguonots set up in 1, 2 & 3 with their camp in A
After seeing the set up, we were allowed to redeploy, in those same zones. The redeployment was done using Richard's Event cards, we had to bid cards to deploy each battle,
We had the upper hand getting the Huguenots to deploy most of their army before ours, but we lost a few good cards in doing so. Would this hinder us during the game? Only time would tell.
Here's the whole table, it was a little disconcerting, as our right flank was open to abuse, as they had the far better cavalry and their right flank was very weak, this is where we placed our Vanguard, which was almost all of our cavalry, they had 1 unit facing our 5!
A closer look at the Huguenot's, we were all told that the wonderful looking castle did infact have artillery in it, which could fire out 18 inches!!!
Some of the Catholic armies Swiss in our Rearguard, my command
In our centre was our Main Battle, more Swiss and French Pike & Shot units.
Shared command
Surj's Vanguard on our left flank.
Lee's cavalry on their right. It was quite obvious that our enemy had decided to defend and let us do the attaching. We decided, we would attack on our left and in the centre, our right would defend, but still push forward hoping Lee would attack our Swiss pikes?
We start the advance.
Leaving my cavalry out on the right, just incase????
The Huguenots also moved forward, but only to get into a better defensive line, note the empty flank on the right.
Surj had to stand over on the enemy's side, to move his troops!
The story so far.........
Dave started to turn troops to face their flank.
A closer look at the Castle and town of le Truc, all from the fab Brigade Models.
Lee positions his artillery.
End of the next turn, Lee had swung his infantry round in the centre, to threaten our main battles attack in the centre. While Dave has pulled his Reiters around to their extreme right flank.
Another move later, Surj is poised to launch his cavalry attack on our top left. Lee pushed his enfants perde forward in the centre, while I move forward on the right, while hanging my inferior cavalry back.
Why won't Lee charge my Swiss pikes?
he should be charging toward my cavalry, his are so much better than mine.
I deploy our artillery, next to the hedge.
We split our Main Battle, half still moving forward, the rest turned to face Lee's troops.
While Surj stops 2 inches away from the enemy cavalry, whoever wins initiative next turn will be charging?
I missed a few pics, The Huguenots won the first move and charged
But lost and were pushed back going undermined. But its a pyrrhic victory as one of our Gendarmes is also undermined.
I enter the fields with my Enfants Perdus, to threaten Lee's troops.
Oh No! The Huguenots have another Battle entering the table, they emerge out of Le Truc and decided to move towards their camp.
With our Swiss infantry from our Main Battle we attack the Huguenot infantry and Arqubusiers.
Nothing happening on the right, thank gawd!
Its a bit of a mess at the top of the pic, but you can just make out a unit of Swiss hitting a Pike & Shot unit in the flank, that's gonna hurt.
I can't see us losing this?
The Catholic camp.
Our Swiss hitting the flank of the enemy, its didn't help, when you see the dice throws, Dave wasn't having much luck.
We umm'd and arrgh'd about charging, but decided to sit put and shoot instead.
Still not a lot going on, on the right.
Now here's where things get really confusing. There are 3 attacks here, the one on the left by the red dice. Our two units attacking the Arqubusiers on the right and slap bang in the centre, Surj's Gendarmes charging another Arqbusier unit.
Dave and Lee. deciding what cards to throw away for initiative.
The game was all but over by this time, it was clear Dave couldn't hold their right flank anymore.
And here's the final shot of the game, the Huguenots flank had collapsed, even though they had Lee's 4 units of Gendarmes racing toward it from the town.
During the game whenever you lost a melee and a unit went undermined, you had to surrender a token to Richard the umpire. We didn't know how many each side had started the game with. In the end Richard had 2 of ours and 6 of the enemy, so it was a clear Catholic win!!
I love these rules!!! Richard has come up with a really fun set of rules which are specifically made for the French Wars of Religion, they make you play to the period, (if you don't, you're gonna lose). The Command and events cards are brilliant, giving you just enough fog of war to make the game more interesting. You could play a scenario loads of times and get a different game each time, just because of the cards you draw each turn, here's a small selection of them.
Two Commander, each Command card has a trait at the very bottom. I had the Commander above, but he was pretty useless as I had no artillery???
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The number at the top left of the card is the Unit activation number, in this case 2, which means the player can throw 2 D6, taking the best result as the number of actions his battle has this turn, so if your highest dice is a 4, that means you can move 4 units in the brigade. Things do start to fall to pieces through as the action intensifies, any unit outside of the commanders 6 inch radius has to use 2 action points to move, so don't go charging units left, right and centre or pretty soon you won't be able to move anything! The first commander has 3 dice to throw, obviously giving yiu a better chance of getting high movement.
The 1 on the top right of both cards s the bonus the commander will give any unit. I think the highest is a 2, the lowest is 0.
Here are 5 random event cards, you draw 6 at the start of the game, out of a pack of 30 odd cards, for each side. on the right is who the card is for, in this case, Both sides
Top right, in this case 7, is the worth of the card, at the start of each turn to gain the fist move and initiative, you can lay up to 3 cards, add the numbers up, whoever wins, goes first.
Then there's the event, the passage at the bottom, in this case "One selected unit will automatically recover from having its morale undermined"
Some cards are better than others, but the hard thing is to choose whether to keep a really beneficial card and hopefully use it to damage the enemy or throw the card out in the initiative, to win the first move.
This card is only any good for the Huguenots, so this would be a added to our cards to hopefully win the initiative.
Take a look again at the card above with a 7, yes your almost guaranteed to win the first turn, but do yiu really want to lose the event "Ending the opponents turn with immediate effect!"
Check out Lee's and Richard's blogs later this week, they'll both have photos from the game as they saw it, it should be good having a post from all 3 sides of the game.
