Brietenfeld and Lutzen with Dominion of Pike and Shot

 Two decisive battles of the Thirty Years War, and featuring King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and his exciting new model Swedish Army. The revolution in military affairs and all that.

 First up Brietenfeld, which was fought in Saxony in September 1631. The Swedes and the Elector of Saxony took on Tilly and the Imperial-Catholic League. In all the games below, I used Alan Saunders suggested modifications for mixed pike and shot units.

Battlefield from the north (Swedes/Saxons closest to the camera). The village of Podelwitz and the marshy wooded Loberbach stream are nearest the camera. Gobschelwitz is to the left and the actual village of Brietenfeld to the right in the left rear of Tillys army.

The Swedish front line is Saxons (musketeers and pikes), elite Swedish infantry (musketeers, pikes and organised into battalions with light artillery etc) then Swedish horse who are apparently just average. The reserves are another elite Swedish infantry and another Swedish horse. I've marked the Swedish infantry by using attached light artillery pieces, as Gustavus liked to do. 

Tilly's Army is quite formidable, armoured cuirassiers on each flank, and two units of armoured musketeers (and pikes), one in the centre and one in reserve. They are described as being in big blocks, so I've used four bases for these units, while the Swedes and Saxons are more linear. Gustavus outnumbered Tilly irl, and does have a larger army.

Tilly is the attacker so picks his bombardment target first. Historically he put his guns in the centre on a low rise so I did too although it is a bit pointless as even if he forces a unit to retreat, it will juts be replaced by another Swedish infantry. In the event neither sides artillery hits anything.

tbh the Swedes are really up against it in this scenario, they don't have any favourable matchups at all as all the Imperials are armoured, the best they can do is 50:50 using the Swedish infantry, but the do have superior numbers. The weakest unit is the Saxons which Tilly duly routs (they can only hit the cuirassiers on a 6 with their muskets and unsurprisingly miss). They are replaced with a Swedish infantry which at least had a 50:50 chance against the cuirassiers.

The Swedes also have a 50:50 chance against the Imperial infantry (their +1 elite cancels out the Imperial -1 armour). They get lucky and rout the Imperial centre, which is replaced by a reserve musketeer unit.

The Imperial cuirassiers attack the Swedish left but are unlucky and are shot down. The Swedes then outflank the Imperial centre and rout the last Imperial infantry. They fail to rally so it is a win for Gustavus.

I tried that again, and again the artillery barrage was both a bit pointless and missed in any case. It is only worth prompting an enemy cavalry to charge if you have an advantage over them, and similarly no point in retreating an infantry unless the reserves are worse. This didn't apply to either army, but the  smoke looks nice I guess!

The Imperials charge the Saxons but bounce this time (no losses on either side), and the Swedes rout the Imperial centre.

The Saxons are made of stern stuff and rout the cuirassiers (they rolled a 6!). The Imperials don't have any reserves now so the writing is on the wall.

Rapidly followed by the rest of the Imperial army, although they did rout one of the Swedish horse on the way (who are at a considerable disadvantage against the Imperial cuirassiers). Another win for the Swedes, although they were pretty lucky to pull that off. What was it Napoleon said about lucky generals?

One last try, the Imperials try to tempt the Swedish horse into charging and fail.

And although the Swedes lose the Saxons and one of their horse, the Swedish infantry blow the Imperials off the field. Three convincing Swedish wins, so it looks like I misjudged my initial assessment. I think this scenario (marginally) favours the Imperials, but the Swedes certainly rolled some hot dice which always helps. tbh I'd be inclined to make the Swedes both Elite and Armoured, their new military system was so superior to what had gone before that it revolutionised infantry tactics and made the musket the dominant weapon. 

Next up is Lutzen which was fought in November 1632. This time between Gustavus Adolphus and Wallenstein. Gustavus was very keen to bring the Imperials to battle, and Wallenstein reluctantly accepted, fortifying his position against the Swedish attack.

Compared to Brietenfield this battlefield is fairly bare, there is a river off to the left and the village of Lutzen on the right. This is the view from Wallensteins position, the front line is musketeers (and pikes) flanked by cuirassiers, and in reserve are more musketeers, cuirassiers and a unit of Croat carbineers, essentially light cavalry armed with muskets (missile cavalry). None of these troops have any special attributes.

The Swedes are attacking with an identical army to the previous one, two units of horse, two of (elite) Swedish musketeers and another unit of average musketeers. Their front line is horse, Swedish infantry, horse with the others in reserve. As before the Swedish infantry have attached light artillery. 

Again, there isn't much point in the artillery firing at the centre as there are units in reserve, so they pick on each others cavalry to prompt a charge and both miss.

The Swedes attack the centre where they have an advantage and are promptly blown away! Historically this was a very bloody battle and even victorious units took heavy losses.

The Swedes plug the gap with their reserve infantry and the Imperial cuirassiers charge on the left.

Routing their opposite numbers. The Swedes launch another catastrophic attack in the centre, being routed and are forced to commit their last infantry reserve to plug the gap. The Imperials are now outflanking them on the left.

Surprisingly they Imperial centre is now routed and the Croats move up to fill the gap, but the Cuirassiers on the open flank ride down the Protestant infantry and the Swedish army is routed.

Ouch, that was a pretty convincing win for Wallenstein. Historically the Swedes scraped a win, at the cost of heavy losses on both sides and the death of Gustavus Adolphus himself.

OK, lets give it another go. Once again the cannonade is on either flank, but this time the Imperials manage to  hit the Swedish horse!

The Swedes are spurred to charge and are duly routed by the Imperial cuirassiers.

Maybe not so great for Wallenstein as their place is taken by those scary firepower led Swedish infantry.

The Cuirassiers give it a shot anyway, the Swedes miss and the heavy cavalry ride them down.

They are replaced by regular infantry who this time defeat the cuirassiers, who in turn are once more replaced by the Croats. I rather like the idea of mounted musketeers - perhaps if they were armoured and had tracks...

The Croats sadly don't last long and are replaced by more cuirassiers. Wallenstein engages the Swedish centre...

Which after a bitter struggle duly collapses, but not before one of the Imperial infantry has been routed.

The following turn the Swedes are utterly routed, although at heavy cost to the Imperials. That was a real slog for the Swedes and I can't help feel that fortune favoured the Imperials in this one. In all five games both sides rolled appallingly to rally their routed units (every single attempt failed).

I enjoyed both those scenarios, although I'd like to revisit both of them and see if I can recreate the historical outcome for Lutzen and also to see if there is some mysterious Swedish superpower at work in Brietenfeld! Both these battles make useful test beds to compare traditional and modern pike and shot tactics in terms of fiddling with troop modifiers. 

The Swedish cavalry should probably be superior in some way too, as everyone busily copied their tactics as well over the next 30 years. I slightly wish I'd used some river sections to add to the terrain although they don't affect the gameplay, they do make the battlefield look more interesting. 

Airborne Assault on Crete with NQM

 In a precursor to his Front Scale NQM game planned for Partisan, Chris had arranged to run a Corps Scale game of the invasion of Crete at Patriot Games in Sheffield. The event was organised by Tom, an occasional attendee at our evening remote games and Friday f2f sessions at Tapton.

I first went to Patriot Games when it opened in a small shop in the town centre, but now it has much grander premises nearer the ring road in Sheffield in an old factory building with a large shop, cafe and huge games area with dozens of tables. 

Chris getting ready to run the game and had just happened' to bring down a box full of NQM rules for sale! Patriot Games do a game mat printing service, and they'd printed three custom mats for this game, gridded out in 10cm hexes.

Initially we had three British players (I was cast as Freyberg and overall CO) and just two German. They were joined by two more Germans in the course of the morning.

Chris gave an initial briefing on how the rules work as I was the only one who had played them before. This is the view looking north from Crete, you can see the coastline on the custom game mat. The Aegean is in the mid ground and 'Greece' is way over there stacked with boxes of Germans. As this is a high level operational game, the hexes represent 6km of ground.

The game at Partisan will mainly focus on the German efforts to capture the airfield, so our job as the British was to provide an active defence. As historically, the defence was divided in two, West and East, a mixture of New Zealand, Australian and Greek troops in the main.

While the Germans looked in boxes we set out guys up. The various brigades had pre-designated starting areas with some flexibility - our guys were clustered around Heraklion (nearest the camera), Retimo (centre near the long river) and Maleme in the north. I put my Corps HQ in Suda (at the north end of the shorter river). The critical terrain features are obviously the towns and nearby airfields, and the single coast road crossing several bridges. There is also one road across the island to a small port on the southern coast. 

As CO I was responsible for the general scheme of defence, but also running the airforce and navy. With Admiral Cunninghams hat on, I had HMS Warspite and four cruisers to play with. There was also a notional destroyer flotilla near to Crete.

The RAF had three wings of fighters (Hurricanes) and two of Bombers (Wellingtons) which I distributed among the airfields.

Although we had lots and lots of ground units, many were very weak with only one or two strength points. We also had little artillery, all the available AA was concentrated in the east, we had two decent artillery units split between east and west and one coastal battery with 1SP(!). We had some logistic units but they had an enormous front to cover.

I had quite a lot to do in the game as I was acting as a player-umpire and helping the newer players with the rules, so I didn't take as many pictures as usual.

The Germans had this rather lovely Dorner flying boat to rescue people floating in the sea.

One of my first jobs as CO ws to decide what to do with the RAF, and based on my experience in Greece, I decided to pull them back to Egypt. Good job too as the opening attack had waves of German bombers blasting the airfields, a pasting from which little would have survived and left the runways cratered. The planes could operate from Egypt, but it was at the far end of the fighters endurance, so would be somewhat random.

In the west the German put down a couple of regiments quite far inland by parachute and glider as they were anxious about landing on top of troop concentrations or dropping in the sea. They got down quite well and began marching northwards. The big explosion is them coming into range of the 25pdrs east of Maleme. The defenders here had plenty of time to reorient themselves to the threat and get dug in facing inland.

In the east the next wave of Germans landed south of Heraklion. They didnt do so well and strayed a bit close to the British AA which duly shot an entire battalion out of the sky. The Germans put down about a Regiment here. The force ratios are more favourable to the Allies here.

The Germans attacked Heraklion quite aggressively, which looks like a doomed effort in this photo, but of course it doesn't show the fleets of German bombers and strafing fighters which hammered the defenders. Even so, the British (well, Greek and Australian) forces managed to put in a brigade sized counterattack which pushed the German back. Supported by the nearby Corps heavy artillery, it also saw an FJ battalion overrun.

The Germans obviously fancied their chances more at Maleme as that is where their third wave landed, including FJ artillery, assault engineers and logistic units. Covered by the Luftwaffe (who have flown home in this photo), the formed up and massed south of Maleme. 

They were soon to be joined by what was left of the seaborne invasion fleet! In a 'battleships' style mini game, 5th Gebirgsjager Division was mounted on ships and sailed across the eastern Med at night, while I (as Cunningham) tried to stop them. HMS Dido found one convoy and blew it out of the water, Warspite found another and it fled in terror back to Greece while a third slipped past the cruiser screen and made it to Maleme. The RAF bombed it as the sun rose, but the Luftwaffe returned the favour and Dido was heavily damaged.

At Heraklion the surviving FJ were forced back well into the interior by the counterattack. They were reduced to their regimental and divisional HQ, but found this very convenient demolished monastery on the top of a hill to hide in. Must write that idea down for future reference...

At Maleme the Gebirgsjager stormed ashore, and with heavy Luftwaffe support just managed to take the airfield! The players were now discovering the value of fresh units when attacking battered ones (every hit  knocks 1 off the advance/retreat roll).

In the east the Germans had noticed that Retimo and Heraklion were only held by AA units, so their transports were ordered to crash land on the cratered runways. At Retimo this worked well and the a couple of battalions landed successfully under the guns of the nearby Bofors regiment.

At Heraklion it ended in disaster however as a combination of AA and RAF fighters operating from Egypt saw one battalion shot down and sent the other transports packing.

At Maleme however, the well organised FJ now pushed northwards to the coast. Despite being heavily outnumbered, their superior quality and massive (Luftwaffe) fire support swept all before them and Allied units now began to surrender as they were overrun. A battalion of brave New Zealanders managed to hold the road south, but the Germans cut the road west to Maleme. Once their engineers had cleared the runway, the Germans would be able to fly reinforcements in directly, and the battered Allied units weren't in a position to counterattack against the fresh FJ and Gebirgsjager units.

Freyburg ordered a general retreat and evacuation at that point, to save as many men and as much equipment as possible. That was pretty much where the retreat was ordered in the real campaign too, but the unfortunate Australians never got the order and were left to fight it out on the east end of the island.

That was an excellent game, very enjoyable, and hugely ambitious with the combined air, land and naval aspects. After a while the players got the hang of the movement and combat mechanisms although we were very much playing a somewhat cut down version of the rules as written. The big 'cockpit' around Maleme did slow down a bit at one point, but we were resolving four or five separate combats at a time, and in the main it all rattled along well.

The game at Partisan was planned  to use brigade stands instead of battalion ones, but even so aimed to cover the whole campaign over the course of the day, rather like the Longstop Hill game. I covered it briefly in my recent Partisan report. 

Teeny tiny decals for the Austers.

 Regular readers may recall that I painted up a couple of Austers AOPs recently (see  https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/2025/07/bpm-1144th-scale-auster-aop.html). At the time I bemoaned the fact that they are so tiny that none of my stock of decals would fit the fuselages.

In fact it isn't hugely obvious that they are 'improperly dressed' as the wings are so disproportionately large, the markings on those stand out and distract from the lack of fuselage markings. 

However, apparently along with being a control freak, I am something of a completionist (who knew?!) so the lack of fuselage markings has niggled. Strangely this compulsion doesn't extend to the underside of the wings but hey ho.

Anyway, riding to the rescue came John A who came up with the brilliant suggestion of using 1/300th scale decals instead of 1/144 scale ones. He duly pitched up with a pair of yellow edged roundels and a pair of stars n' bars, both Doms Decals. 

My goodness, they are tiny! 

I realised at this point that I've never applied a 1/300th decal in my life. I've always hand painted markings on 6mm vehicles and aircraft. The main thing with these ones is that they are on a continuous strip, so you need to trim them as closely as possible. 

I started with the roundels and left a bit of a gap around edge so I could grip them with my fine tweezers. 

The US markings were easier as they are a bit bigger. You can see how small they are compared to my big fat fingers, which is why I use tweezers for this sort of thing. 

In the end they went on without any fuss at all. Unlike my I-94 decals they didn't need soaking for three minutes each (!), 30 seconds did the trick. The only minor disaster was that I put one of the US ones on upside down, so it had to come off and go on again. 

If you squint very, very hard you can just see the markings on the fuselage. Even though they are largely invisible, I'm pleased to have sorted that out. While it was OK doing a few of these micro decals, I really can't imagine marking up a whole squadron of 6mm planes, so I think I'll stick to painting them where possible. Less feasible for US planes I guess. 

Tigers at Minsk - The Poupeville Exit

 More US Paras in Normany with Tigers at Minsk. This scenario was originally in the US Para expansion for Squad Leader published in the AHGC General, but it was reproduced in Fireball Forward. I largely based the  game on the FF version.

Battlefield from the south. Poupeville lies across the exit of causeway 14 from Utah Beach (the flooded area behind the beaches is off to the north) and was one of the D-Day objectives of PIR 501, 101st Airborne Div.

Each of the buildings is worth 1VP, apart from the tall building at the top (2VP) and the church which is the German HQ and worth 5VP. The side with most VPs wins the game which lasts 55 minutes. Historically the Germans collapsed when their HQ was captured.

The German defenders from GR 919, 709th Infantry division. Two rifle platoons with three sections each and a sniper. In the FF scenario they also have the potential for an MG team as a variable attachment, but in the original Squad Leader scenario, they have an MG mounted on a kubelwagen!

Well, I thought that would be much more fun. I don't have an armed Kubelwagen, but I do have  a Horch with an MG, so I used that.

The Germans are all poor quality so their sections rally on 5+ (unmodified) and their force morale is 3.

I had to make up some rules for the sniper - treat it like an FOO for target purposes and it rolls 1D6 and can only ever score a pin.

And the mighty 501st! Lt Colonel Julien Ewell managed to assemble about 40 men to attack Poupeville, including various odds and sods from his HQ section.

Here they have four 'heavy' squads in two platoons with 3D6 and high morale, plus a squad of typists etc with 2D6 and normal morale. They did have a bazooka section attached which I modelled as an AT availability of 3, I thought it might be useful against the Horch. There is also a .30 cal MG team with the HQ. 

Overall the force is high quality and has a force morale of 4.

There is a lot of blocking terrain and covered routes to the German HQ, so the defenders were necessarily forced to spread out. I tried to make sure all the open ground was covered by fire and that there was a reserve. The Horch was hard to position - it can't enter building hexes unless on a road and there is a good chance it will bog if trying to cross a hedge. In TaM softskins are also destroyed by a single pin result! In the end I put it on a road behind a hedge covering the left hand side of the village centre. On the roads it can easily move around.

Otherwise the Germans spread out to minimise bunching penalties although the sniper was in the southern house on the N-S road with a rifle section.

The centre didn't look very inviting for the US, but there was cover on both left and right flanks. I went right flanking as I could take advantage of the covered route to get a two hex move for the Paras behind the small orchard. Three squads stacked up there and one occupied the buildings next to the orchard.

The HQ team and .30 cals set up a base of fire just east of the crossroads. They had a pretty good field of fire from there, despite all the hedges and buildings.

The Germans are obviously loaded for bear and gun down the US Paras in the buildings with boxcars. US morale drops to 3. Not a very good start.

The US response is fairly subdued. The .30 cal pins the German section behind the hedgerow while the HQ squad misses. The other Paras deploy in the woods and buildings, one squad to a hex to minimise bunching. 

This time it is a different German squad which rolls boxcars and another Para section is destroyed in the 'house of death'. One of the US squads in the orchard is also pinned. Perhaps there are 88s in the town? US force morale 2...

The Germans also shuffle up their reserve section and move the Horch along the road to cover the front of the hedge line.

A shame I didn't take a photo of the Horch moving, as the first thing the US do is shoot it to pieces with small arms fire! You can see a big puff of smoke at the edge of the village. The Paras have clearly got their eye in as they also finish off the pinned German section behind the hedge. German force morale drops to one! The other pinned Para section rallies (anything but a 1).

The German response is a bit pathetic and largely misses. Now the US paras manage to take out another German section AND score a whopping two hits on the combined rifle/sniper group and the sniper is removed. German force morale is reduced to zero and they have to take two fallback tests.

Although some of the Germans manage to pass one test, they all fail at least once and one fails twice. Once all the retreats are done there are two sections clustered around the church and the section from the western hamlet has retreated right behind the hedge! It is a good job LOS from the .30 cal is blocked or it may have been gunned down in the open.

The Germans are fortunate that the remaining sections all end up in command and they hastily occupy buildings in the interior of the village. They have given up the outskirts now the US are deploying their full firepower. 

The US take advantage of the German retreat to double move all their units up to the edge of the village as they are out of LOS of the defenders. 

The US move into the buildings and both sides settle down to shoot at each other. As everyone is in cover and the buildings break up line of sight, this is singularly ineffective and a couple of turns pass with loads of bullets in the air but very few units actually hit. 

The Germans still hold the majority of VP buildings, so are currently winning despite their morale being zero. All they have to do is hold out a bit longer. 

Colonel Ewell looks at his watch, 44 minutes on the clock! He decides to break the stalemate with bold action. The HQ squad rushes the church, this locks the defenders into close combat so that the two Para Squads can push forward too without being opp fired. One takes the northern exit building and the other reinforces the church assault. 

The defenders fight bravely (pinning the HQ squad) but outnumbered 2:1 in combat dice, they are wiped out. This triggers another German fallback test. They guys in the house southwest of the church hold firm and shoot at the Paras to no effect, while the Germans in the hamlet retreat (again). Perhaps they are Ostruppen? The Germans have to use their turn to put them back into cover. The game clock now stands at 50 minutes. 

On what is almost certainly the last turn, the US rally their HQ squad and one of the Para squads occupies the buildings SE of the church to prevent sneaky German counterattacks. The. 30 cal pins the last German section in the village under under covering fire from the MG, the other Para squad changes the cowering Germans who are duly wiped out. 

Amazingly the Ostruppen stand and fight, but they can't mount an effective counterattack over the open ground and just shoot at the Paras over the fields, pinning them. 

Time runs out and having captured the church, the US have 12VP to the Germans 3, a convincing win and very historical. Without the church they would have lost, and amazingly I didn't roll a single random event the entire game, which is a shame. 

That was really good fun and very much captured the spirit of the original Squad Leader scenario. The really great addition was the force morale concept, as once the Germans reached their break point, their defence became badly disrupted and the US could pick it apart. I did think the US might be doomed after their catastrophic opening moves, but in the end quality told and they swept all before them. 

I think I'm getting my head around how infantry combat works now, my biggest error in the game was misplaying the armed Horch and it ended up being destroyed without firing a shot. The US also spent too long locked in a firefight in the town, and it was marginal as to whether they would run out of time.