BF&S Winged Hussars in Courland AAR

This weekend Andreas and I tried out our intended armies for the Polish championship, I ran the Gosiewski foray with Lithuanian Winged Hussars while Andreas ran Courland with some new additions that were WIP. We played two games, both were the dreaded "attack on the village" scenario which I suspect will be the toughest on my army due to the low amount of infantry troops.

In our first game I ran a tiny 8FSP list with the bare bones, meaning:

Commander Vincenty Gosiewski
3 Winged hussar bases
2 bases of cossack style cavalry
2 bases of Reiters
3 bases of Dragoons

Andreas ran a small Courland list at 5FSP, can't remember the exact list but he had bases of the militia Lehnsfahne cavalry, two bases of mercenary reiters that were ordered to make a flanking maneuver and arrive on turn two the earliest, and the rest of the force was infantry.  Two infantry units started in the village. The  additional effect suffered by the Lithuanians was "Panic", which we totally forgot about it could have proven been vital.

The Lithuanian force deployed dragoons on the far left flank, reiters at the center and Winged hussars and cossack style cavalry on the right. Command and control proved difficult with only one commander and such a stretched battle line but both the dragoons and the Reiters managed well enough on their own using only the "Move" order, firing during the "shooting after movement" step at the end of each turn.

BF&S Cossack attack on Courland village AAR

Christian and Andreas also played a game of By Fire & Sword, using the same huge Cossack list that Christian had faced my Poles while Andreas fielded 5 pts of Courland troops.

The scenario was attack on the village and the wildly outnumbered Courland troops were defending their territory against the Cossack onslaught.

As I was only watching the game in part here is a short summary of the battle:

Courland infatry occupies the village while the Reiters form a large squadron and move towards the Cossack flank where the wagon train is at. Cossack forces form a squadron of their best men (Registered Moloitsy) on the left flank in the woods a few yards from the wagon train. Regular Cossack infantry form a squadron and move on the village head on in the center, while Cossack cavalry attempt to flank on the right.

The Cossack wagon train is strafing the village with musket and artillery shells while the Cossack horde moves towards the village through the return fire of the Courland militia. The distance and obstacles combined make it a noisy spectacle with lots of smoke and few dead.

BF&S Poles vs Cossacks "Patrol" mission AAR

Things have been moving very slowly the past couple of weeks, lots of work and real life stuff getting in the way - topped off by a weeklong cold that had me coughing my lungs out.

I hope things will pick up again over the next couple of weeks as I received my order of By Fire & Sword minis that will allow me to field a wide variety of new western/Polish type army lists. Most exciting of all is that me and my buddy Andreas are travelling to Poland at the end of next month to participate in the By Fire & Sword tournament in Warsaw (expect some awesome blog content to follow from that trip).

And speaking of By Fire & Sword, here is a much delayed AAR from one of the two BF&S battles fought two weekends ago. Christian had painted up most of his Cossacks to a tabletop standard and was very eager to give them another go - this time with a more adequate Cossack wagon backup than last time!

The lists were

13 FSP Polish early skirmish force (maxed out)

2 Banners of  Pancerni with spears
1 Banner of Pancerni
3 banners of cossack style cavalry
2 banners of dragoons
2 banners of Volunteers
Colonel 4 command points
Rotamaster 1 command point

15FSP Cossack skirmish force

Colonel with 4 command points
Esaul (proxied with mounted commander mini) 1 command point
2 plastuny scouts (proxied with Polish-Hungarian infantry)
1 sotnia of Elite mounted cossacks
3 Moloitsy sotnias
3 Register Moloitsy sotnias
1 sotnia of Reigsterer Moloitsy  veterans
4 wagons

BF&S Royal city of Gdansk vs Prussia AAR

In our second battle this weekend we pitted the Royal City of Gdansk (still only available as a Polish language PDF) against the new Prussia list.

The Royal City of Gdansk is fairly close to the Courland list in terms of being a sneaky defensive "cheap" list filled with average units and the ability to pull off effects such as an Ambush during battles regardless of how good or bad your reconnaissance was.

But where Courland is made up of poorer troops, most Gdansk soldiers are average or just as good as those of Poland-Lithuania or Sweden. This is another list to try out for those players out there with a collection of Musketeers and Reiter miniatures.

As I played Gdansk I put together a list that looked like this:

Major: 3 command points
6 bases of mercenary Reiters
10 bases of mercenary musketeers
2 bases of sharpshooters

I was tempted to add the city mounted militia but decided against it since the list only has a single commander and he only has 3 command points at his disposal. It would make commanding the list very difficult.

Andreas who played the Prussian territorial defense force this time around put together a list that looked like this:

Lieutenant Colonel 3 command points
Captain 1 command point
8 bases of Prussian musketeers
6 bases of Prussian territorial defense Reiters

Being 2 points weaker Andreas rolled for scenario, and picked the Attack on the Village, where he depoyed two companies of musketeers evening out the difference between the forces, though once again we managed to calculate the Prussians wrong and see them have 2 bases of musketeers less than they should have. I don't know how we managed that as we both read the list and wrote the same mistake twice in the army roster.

BF&S: P-L Commonwealth vs Prussian militia

A new skirmish list was released last week, the Prussian territorial defense force, which Andreas and me were both very interested in trying out. So I ended up running the Prussian force, while Andreas borrowed my Polish-Lithuanian minis and ran a late Polish Crown skirmish force.

The lists were

13 FSP of Polish troops:

Colonel 4 command points
Rotamaster 1 command point
6 bases of Elite pancerni
3 bases of Elite cossack style cavalry
14 bases of cossack style cavalry

9 FSP of Prussian troops

Lieutenant-Colonel 3 command points
Captain 1 command point
6 bases of Prussian territorial defense Reiters
8 bases of Prussian musketeers
4 bases of mercenery Reiters

As the defender I rolled and picked the "River crossing", the additional effects saw a squadron of Polish cossack style cavalry panic at the start of the battle, and the Polish commander had a bad day and had his command reduced from 4 down to 3.

The Poles sent their elite cossack style cavalry to flank the Prussian positions, their appearance was expected from turn 1.

The shallow spot across the river was guarded by a combined squadron of all the Prussian infantry under supervision of the captain, while the bridge was guarded by the territorial defense Reiters.

Meanwhile, the mercenary Reiters were used to intercept the appearing Polish elite cossack style cavalry. Outnumbered by the massive cavalry force the Prussians hoped to scatter the cavalry units as they attempted to cross the river by firing at them with concentrated fire from the hard hitting Spanish muskets. The fight would pretty much be decided by the musketeers and their ability to fire and scatter each approaching unit from the left before the Prussian territorial cavalry guarding the bridge buckled under the pressure from the Polish attack across it.

If all went well, the friendly cavalry would hold out long enough for the infantry to finish their fire along the left flank and turn their attention to the right and start firing at enemy forces crossing the bridge.