After half a dozen failed attempts, I finally got around to playing Alex at the club for our Maurice campaign. There’s an in character write up of the battle here if you’re interested. This is the not in character AAR. We chose the terrain type (Plains) and having equal numbers of cavalry each, we had a straight die roll to see who would be choosing to be attacker or defender. I rolled a 1, Alex rolled a 6, and he chose to be the defender. That meant after we set terrain up, he had to place his forces first, defending the objective in the town. I then set up my forces, so that we had the following initial positions:
Initial Positions
From left to right, I have 2 artillery, 3 cavalry in line one behind the other, then two lines of infantry, my elite grenadiers being the 2nd and 3rd in from the right on the front line. My commander was positioned between the ranks of infantry just next to the cavalry, and my Notable, Alain Comte de Finay commanded the first horse. My other Notable, the Rev. Howard Whitehouse, had a roving role. All units other than my two elite grenadier units were regular trained.
Alex’s initial positions
Just about all of Alex’s were trained regulars apart from one of his cavalry units (the ones to the right of the town) which was elite and which was joined by his notable. Alex had similar national advantages to me, with both of us having Lethal Volleys and Depot Battalions. I also had Rally to the Colours, while he had Artillery Academy to make the most of his 4 artillery units, positioned on the left just outside of the shot. Alex is still painting his units up, so used plain bases for the most part.
As I was the attacker, I got to move first. I immediately started to move my infantry forward over the hill. Onward for the meat grinder!
Here come the Marlenedietrichsteiners!
Alex proceeded to blast me with his artillery, something he did for the first few turns. Since we had very similar troops, I had two advantages and one disadvantage: Firstly, in a stand and shoot game which this one promised to be, I had the edge of more units. Secondly, I had rally to the colours, which meant that my rallying would be more likely to be successful than Alex’s. My disadvantage was those artillery – they’d be blasting me on the way in to volley range, and once in volley range, they’d be blasting me with double dice, and possibly in my flank. Something had to be done…
Horses Forwards!
In every game I’ve played, my cavalry have been sorely outclassed, and so after the first few games I quickly learned to put them in reserve where they wouldn’t get quickly destroyed by my opponent’s superior cavalry and where they might be useful to plug a gap or chase off an enemy unit with quite a few disruptions. Since I needed to do something about those artillery, however, I changed my usual game plan and sent them forward. I had the advantage in that my movement brought me to just within charge range for the following turn, but outside of cannister range, so they were poised to to charge home and take out the batteries.
Infantry Forward!
Another mistake I’ve made and which has led to more than victory for me when my opponents have done so too, is to lead with the cavalry and then have them left in the open to be shot at by infantry and without being able to either extricate them or rally them. Not wanting to fall into that trap, I then moved up my infantry alongside them. Another turn of movement, and we’d be into volley range.
All units forward to volley range!
Predictably, my cavalry charged Alex’s artillery and wiped out three of the four units. My next move was to move my infantry forward too to volley range – this meant that next turn Alex would be able to fire first, but sneakily I also had a First Fire card that gave me the advantage instead. Alex decided to put a spanner in the works by using Markus’ favourite card, That’s Not On The Map, and a small swamp appeared, but again luckily for me, I had a card which enabled me to ignore rough terrain for my move, and so I sauntered into the swamp without a care in the world.
A few rounds of Volley Fire and…
The next few turns were spent on a repeating pattern – we would have a volley phase in which some to most of either my or Alex’s or both units would become disrupted, followed by the active player rallying. Now that the artillery was out of the picture, this was where I had the advantage, being better at rallying than Alex’s units were. However, I couldn’t stand and do so for too long – I still needed to either destroy his morale or take the heavily defended town where the objective was, otherwise I would lose. Eventually I decided to shake things up a bit and sent in a few units to assault. While this didn’t have the best effect – I ended up losing a grenadier unit in the next turn due to shooting since they were on their last legs afterwards – I did manage to take out a couple of Alex’s units and left others disrupted. By losing two of my units, I’d also taken out two of Alex’s, which meant that my numerical advantage became better – I know had seven units to his four in the field. It didn’t take long before my shooting advantage and a final charge routed the rest of his infantry other than those defending the town.
The enemy cavalry have been sighted!
With only his cavalry and the infantry in the town left, Alex decided to try a sneaky rear attack on my infantry, and started moving his cavalry around the woods. Things were getting dicey for me – I only had about 8 morale left after some truly atrocious rolls (Alex on the other hand was rolling 1s and 2s for morale, so despite losing most of his army, was still in the game). Alex was even dicier though, only having a couple of points left. If he’d done nothing with his cavalry, then I’d have been able to gang up on the town, and even though assaulting or firing into hard cover is difficult, sheer numbers (and the presence of my other elites) would have gained me the objective, I think.
The Rear Attack!
I turned some units around to face the incoming attack, but Alex’s cavalry still managed to wipe out one unit. This left his front cavalry unit on 3 disruption however, and on two morale. This is when I played my secret weapon – a card which allowed me to snipe at one of his officers, and with it, Alex was down to 1 morale point left. Having charged, he was out of cards, which meant he could do nothing to remove or rally his cavalry next turn, though he could deny me a volley phase in which I hoped to finish him off. Unfortunately for him, I had one of those pesky cards which forces a volley phase after all, and his cavalry were sitting ducks. I had two units able to fire on them, one were disrupted, and the cavalry were elites, which meant I was rolling 4 dice at 5+ and 3 at 4+ to hit, and then needing two kills on 5+, which I could re-roll. I just scraped two kills.
The Death of the Enemy Elites
And so with the elite cavalry destroyed, Alex’s morale fell to zero, and the little that remained of his army fled the field. Luckily he has Depot Battalions, otherwise almost all his army would be conscript for the next game. As it is, half of them are conscript. Despite being on the other team, I’m guessing Alex is hoping Dave wins his match against Anthony in a couple of weeks so that all his conscripts can be promoted back to Trained.
This was a fun game, two really even forces with similar advantages. Taking out Alex’s artillery early and being better able to rally probably won me the match, but I also benefitted from some fortuitous cards at times. The luck didn’t go all my way – for several turns in a row Alex played cards to either increase his own chances of shooting or to decrease my chances, which really helped him, but in the long haul, my early game plan won out. If I had been defending, this could have gone the other way, especially if I’d had to send troops up table to take out his artillery. It was a fun game though, and my victory puts me at the top of the points table in the campaign, though Anthony still has a game in hand, so that could easily change.
