Today I had the pleasure of playing Alastair Duncan's Swiss with my Burgundians. 450pts at Warlords. Alistair is probably one of my favourite opponents to play since he similarly trash-talks and likes to play a historical match-up if possible (which it usually is with his 50+ armies!)
Fittingly the Burgundians invaded Switzerland, and we ended up with a table of craggy and difficult hills, BUAs and a lake, with us just missing a ski field for the fill Swiss experience. Alistair took an all foot army, most of Pike (S) (shocker), but with a lot of Blade X and Ps(S) to back it up. My Burgundian army was heavy on the artillery and knights, with 6 guns and 8 bases of Gendarmes.
I've faced Swiss before, and I knew that a fair fight against superior pike is suicide. Given that I interspersed the artillery and crossbowmen and placed them up-front in a choke point with a slight opening for a hard flank, and my pike behind. The plan was to swing around with the knights and light horse while the guns broke up the Swiss lines, and hopefully counter-attack with the pike and blade to pin them for a rear attack from the cavalry.
Alistair came forward aggressively into my guns which began breaking up the Swiss line, but failed to kill much in the early exchanges. Meanwhile Alistair repositioned some of his blade to block the flank for my knights. The Burgundian handgunners took the craggy hill on the opposite flank and taunted the Swiss to come at them.
Knowing that I was on limited time before the pike block hit, I put my light horse into the bulk of the blade (X), while the knights chased off the small number of lighter troops supporting them. It went okay, with the light horse being spent, but the knights (eventually) getting through the small number of Swiss handgunners.
In the middle the artillery finally began getting a few kills, cutting down a total of 5 bases of pike and one blade before the Swiss could make contact. It was only a drop in the pond, but it was a start!
With the Swiss about to hit the gun-line time had run out and the knights went into the blade(X). Despite working the overlaps the knights utterly failed and all three lost their lives without taking a single blade with them! This was a bit of a disaster and disheartened the longbowmen accompanying them.
As this was happening, the Swiss hit and, despite a more spirited resistance than should be expected cut through the guns and crossbowmen with little issue. The disheartened longbow also gave way first breaking and then shattering the knight command. Meanwhile the Swiss handgunners finally gave into the taunting of the Burgundians and charged up the hill... winning most of the fights.
The knights breaking disheartened the gunners, hastening their demise but as a last, desperate attempt to stem the flow the low countries pike block, lead by blades and a dismounted general charged into the disrupted pike line, at the same time the gun-line general charged into one of the gaps.
It was a valiant effort and accounted for a couple more pikemen. The Swiss counter-attack failed to make many gains, giving the Burgundians a sliver of hope. It proved to be a false hope however as the knight general went into the double-overlapped blade X... and died. To properly salt the wound, the two-deep Swiss pike also managed to get a double-overlap on the blade general and doubled him! Leaving a fleeing Charles the Bold as the only commander left of the shattered army.
The Swiss are scary, I knew that I couldn't stop the pike head-on but I'd hoped the plan of artillery followed up by a counter-charge by the pike and a flank with the cavalry would give me a fighting chance. As it was the bad luck of the knights against the blade(X) sealed the deal. Obviously this really is a 50-50, and I expected to loose a knight or two, but that seemed worth it to expose the Swiss flank. I didn't expect to loose every single engagement though!
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| The Burgundian line awaiting the Swiss advance |
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| Alistair's Swiss pike, their sheer numbers makes for an intimidating forest |
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| the initial setup- the Burgundian Ps were redeployed on the craggy hill |
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| the Swiss begin their advance toward the Burgundians |
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