We have a Renaissance gaming day coming up at the club, and I got a few people hooked in to play By Fire and Sword with me. So I got Serge to try out another practice game with me on Wednesday so we can learn the rules a bit and get out some of the kinks. I was reading the book after and found lots of things we did wrong!
Anyway it was again a Polish skirmish force with lots of cavalry vs my newly painted Outpost Defense skirmish force for the Holy Roman Empire. My group came out to 5 points vs 4 or 5 for the Poles, so we set up for the Ambush scenario. One of the big selling points of this game is that you can have games with armies of unmatched points value. So I wanted to test that out.
I forgot to get a picture before we started but this one is after the first moves. The way this scenario works is that the weaker player is setting up an ambush, so they put down a bait unit, in this case the Wallachian cavalry at the bottom by the woods. The stronger player then gets a deployment zone 40cm x 40cm 20cm behind the bait to set up. Finally the weaker players sets up the rest of their stuff more then 20cm from the stronger player. There are also some negative rules for the stronger player. One big thing is that one unit is randomly selected to be disorganized, this was one of my big units of musketeers, who were facing down the Polish Panceiri cavalry crap!
So as you can see the Poles charged avoiding my pikes, and I put down what defensive orders I could.
My unit in the woods was able to fire on the cassock style cavalry as they came in. This killed a base forcing a morale test which they failed, so one unit is saved. The other unit was caught without orders and disorganized however, so the elite Poles started killing them and forced them to flee.
I tried to bring my pikes into the came, and put a bit more fire on the cassocks to not much effect, and the Panceiri kept pursuing my other infantry unit. The Wallachaian scout cavalry charged into my pikes and got a bit lucky, and I got some things wrong, and they broke those guys.
The Wallachians then continued into the flank of my next infantry unit and then we called the game.
The way victory works is the casualties of the stronger played used to determine who wins and by how much. In order to win they need to take light losses. I was really into the heavy losses side of the table, so it was a good victory for the poles.
It was pretty bad luck for me on what unit got disorganized, and the pikes probably should have had a good chance at holding that unit. But it was a fun game anyway I thought. It does seem like their way of balancing forces with scenarios is workable which is cool. I also figured out some things we got wrong also so hopefully will do a bit better at the club.
Thanks;
Mike
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