Brietenfeld 1631 revisited

 I wasn't hugely happy with my earlier refight of Brietenfeld with Dominion of Pike and Shot. It just didn't feel quite right as the Swedish infantry were far too brittle, and I'd also been quite lazy in the table setup. So I thought I'd do it again with a couple of minor changes, similar to those I did for the Jacobite Rebellion.

Battlefield from the south, I've put the rivers on this time. Brietenfeld itself is the town to the bottom left, the road to Leipzig runs north/south through the middle. Tillys army is at the bottom, two units of disciplined cuirassiers and two deep infantry formations ('Tercios'). I've doubled up the element count for this, so normal units have four bases and the big Tercios have two tercio bases. 

As Gustavus Adolphus outnumbered the Imperials 40,000 to 30,00 AND had his troops deployed in shallower formations, I was tempted to give the Swedes an extra unit, but instead I made the Swedish infantry both disciplined and elite to represent their revolutionary combined arms formations. I almost just used the Great Northern War rules instead, which essentially give +1 for being Swedish.

So Gustavus has two Swedish infantry (Elite and Disciplined) which I modelled as a mix of shot and pike stands in a chequerboard, two heavy cavalry and the poor old Saxons who are just a standard pike and shot infantry unit.

I used Alan Saunders mods for mixed Pike and Shot units with the added bonus to the Swedes that their infantry were disciplined.

The opening bombardment. After the changes in units, the matchups mean that Tillys cavalry is (still) superior to the Swedes, Tillys cavalry and infantry are superior to the Saxons, but the Swedish infantry are superior to anything. So Tilly positions his guns to try and encourage a Swedish cavalry charge, while the Swedes have nothing to gain by firing at all. They don't want to hit the enemy cavalry, and if they force an infantry to retreat, it is just replaced by an identical one.

irl Tilly bombarded the centre, and must have had a good reason to do so, so I'm minded to have a look at some of the other variants and see if I can do something about that. I think I prefer the option in the WW1 set that a bombardment hit makes the target Unreliable.

The Swedish bombardment misses, but Tilly hits and prompts a Swedish cavalry charge which results in mutual annihilation! The Swedes push their reserve infantry into the gap and Tilly puts his reserve Tercio in.

Just so he knows where he is, Gustavus uses his rally and recovers the cavalry which go into reserve. I'm using my new 2mm tent lines to mark each camp, and there is a wagon with each camp too, which changes facing once a rally is used up. I found it hard to remember otherwise, and it gets the toys on the table.

Over on the right Tillys cuirassiers attack the Saxons. Their volleys miss and the cuirassiers send them in flight. The Swedes only have cavalry in reserve so they move to plug the gap.

The Swedish infantry attack the centre and rout the Tercio opposite. Under the standard scenario, this is an even matchup, but with the changes, the Swedes have an advantage (Tercio hits on 6, Swedes on 5+), which is as it should be.

Tilly responds with another cavalry attack on the right, which routs the Swedish cavalry. Tilly also attempted to rally his Tercio but failed. The Swedish reserve cavalry moves into the gap.

Gustavus tries an outflanking attack into the open centre and fails! Even with their advantage, they aren't supermen.

And Pappenheims cuirassiers rout the last Swedish cavalry. Those boys have earned their spurs today.

As the cavalry move to outflank them, the Swedish centre tries another outflanking attack and fails again! Perhaps these fancy new infantry tactics aren't all they are made out to be...

But finally, the Imperial cavalry fail in their own outflanking attack, while the Swedes finally send Tilly packing. A very close run thing for Gustavus, he obviously needs to work on his cavalry tactics...

I was very pleased with how that went, it felt much more like how I'd imagined this particular battle to be, but still felt like a decent contest.

I thought I'd give it another run to see if the outcome was due to outrageous dice....

There didn't seem to be any great need to change the initial bombardment plan. I do like the look of my bigger units too.

After a few turns pounding, things weren't looking too good for Tilly. Just two units left, while the Swedes had only lost one cavalry unit. Even the Saxons were still there!

However once again Pappenheim showed what he was made of and finally sent the Saxons packing.

The Swedes had to commit their last infantry reserve to fill the gap while their cavalry outflanking attack foundered against the deep formation of the Tercio in the centre. Both sides used their rallies and failed to recover any units. 

In an astonishing turn of events, the Imperial cuirassiers routed the Swedish infantry on the right, and then the Tercio routed the Swedish infantry in the centre! All that was left was the cavalry on the flanks. Both sides had one unit left, so fought on...

And given their first strike, unsurprisingly, Tilly came out on top and the Swedes were defeated. Well, that was a result! I really enjoyed both those games and it is nice to see I haven't unbalanced the scenario too much in the Swedish favour.

I really can't help thinking that the Thirty Years War needs a specific treatment (as does the ECW) outside the general Pike and Shot rules, more in the manner of some of the other supplements. I know how hard it is to write these simple rules as you have so few variables to work with, so for now I'm happy to tinker in a scenario basis. I will play some games with the later sets of rules  though and see if there are any backwards compatible ideas.