Battle Report - By Fire and Sword

So after many years I have finally gotten around to trying out a game of By Fire and Sword. I was a backer of the first kickstarter which funded way back in 2013. Various other projects kept causing me to delay painting for various reasons, but I also backed the second kickstarter. I think last year I gave away a couple of the Skirmish sets I got hoping to get others to paint them and get me some opponents. I painted my Holy Roman Empire set hoping to get a game for Cold Wars which didn't work out, but now Serge has finished painting his Polish skirmish set so time for a game!

The Holy Roman skirmish set has 8 bases of cuirassier 2 of dragoons and a commander, and I did a second commander to bring it close to the polish force which is more points. The Polish force has 3 bases of Pancerni, 4 of Cossack style cavalry, and 3 of Wallachian cavalry. Pancerni being the best hitting unit, and Wallachian being light scout cavalary.

We played the patrol scenario so the objective is to recon the hill bridge and town and kill some bad guys.

To start things I decided to split my force, I think this was a decent idea but should have split it more to put pressure on the Poles single commander. I put the armored cuirassier on the left of the river with my major, and had the other unit and the dragoons along with the colonel on the right. The poles had the scout cav and some Cossacks on the left and the good guys on the right. The Poles had a reconnaissance advantage of 5, and choose to use that to find a prisoner to explain all my pans to them. This meant I started with no orders and had to put them face up for turn 1. The poles likewise had some problems with their Cossacks one unit was robbers and also insubordinate so they also lost their order. Finally I had to roll for desertion as my guys consider this Polish campaign to be a shit show and I lost one point from each unit.

So here we are deployed and ready to go I got some order dials from Jeff to use as command points. My plan is to send the Dragoons into the town, and charge in with my guys left of the river. I am not confident to fight the Pancerni as I am not confident of victory, but not much choice. The Poles cavalry is all ellite which means that they can stay in open order and only close ranks during a charge. My guys have better military drill and can shoot pistols which charging but have to stay ranked up. Anyways turn one we just move up.

I got my guys into the village, and tried to hold back with my cavalary, but the Poles are coming in whether I like it or not.

It ended up that the Pancerni broke my cuirassier pretty handily, and the cossack style cavalary charged into the village through a hail of ineffective gun fire and crushed my infantry. But on the hill I had a decent time against the cossacks getting a draw but loosing a base.

We played a few more turns but I didn't get more pictures. The rest of my guys to the right of the river got chased off or killed, including the colonel. But I forces the cossacks to flee and withstood a rear charge from the light cavalry.

In the end it was a strategic victory for the Poles. I quite enjoyed the game thou and hopefully will get to try it again soon. Personally I like this game especially the skirmish scale of it. Is a little bit easier to figure out then Field of Glory Ren and is easier to get an army for. What we have here is on the small side for skirmish forces, so I think it would be better with a bit bigger armies say double this on the high side for skirmish forces so one charge won't decide things.

I am working on some Holy Roman foot now so maybe will give that a try next time. We have a pike and shoot club day coming up in August after all!

Thanks;
Mike