Happy new years everyone. I had the pleasure of kicking 2021 off against Vince's Polish common army with my Burgundians in a 400ap game. It's nearly a historical match up, and both of us using Perry's so it should be a decent looking game!
Charles the Bold was leading his troops on a summer holiday to eastern Europe. Vince's army was entirely mounted - knights, cavalry and superior light horse. Given this I took some boggy flats and a wood. Vince in response took a large gentle hill. The terrain was certainly favourable for me, with the hill on my back edge and the difficult and rough on both flanks.
The Burgundians deployed first and, considering the mobility of Vince's army I decided to rush as fast as I could to pin the light horse and cavalry down in front of my longbow and artillery. The pike (4 deep, should have been 2!) were there to anchor the army, having little fear of cavalry and being able to bog knights down pretty well.
The game started with a skirmish on the Burgundian left between the Tatars and English longbowmen. After an initially equal trade, the English began to get the upper hand, and the remaining light horse began to withdraw.
On the right the grand battery spoke, and loudly, killing a knight and a cavalry. Vince swung his hussars around the woods, but to both of our shock two of them were killed by the mounted crossbowmen without achieving anything.
The losses on the right disheartened that command and nearly disheartened the left (but not quite). However triple sixes brought good news for the Poles as the Lithuanian flank march arrived on the 2nd bound (well came on, on the 3rd). This put the Burgundians on a bit of a countdown - they needed to break the Polish before the Lithuanians hit their rear.
The artillery filled their part, breaking the Polish left, and the pikemen pushed into the center, killing a cavalry to no losses. On the right the longbow killed another element, bringing that command tantalizingly close to being disheartened.
The Polish, being on the ropes and needing to hold on committed all of their knightly reserves against the Burgundian knights - they did have an overlap but the circling longbow meant that a long fight would be death for the Polish nobility.
The Burgundian knights, 5 of them an Charles just needed to hold for one bound against 6 knights and a general...
Anyway, by the end of the bound 3 of the Burgundian knights were dead, Charles was surrounded and the longbowmen broken due to the knight losses. Shit.
Charles was duly killed in his own bound, shattering the knights command and putting the Burgundians firmly on the defensive. The Lithuanians swung behind the Low countries pikemen as the Burgundian guns scrambled to reposition.
The guns would account for one spent Lithuanian, but the pike were quickly surrounded and with hard flanks and rear charges across the board the Polish won a stunning comeback victory despite losing 30% of their army in the first couple of bounds!
Well... copy-paste previous comments about my knights here, but beyond that this was perhaps the most impressive turn-around that I've ever seen. One more turn of longbow shooting would have almost certainly ended the Polish, as would a single loss of their knights but Vince played well and deserved the win. The biggest mistake I made was deploying the pike 4 deep, I was worried about knights cutting through 2 deep pike, but this did narrow my army and put pressure on the knights to, you know, win something. Beyond that I didn't expect the Lithuanian flank - it's only 55ap (or something like that!) and I just assumed looking at Vince's army that what I saw was it, a mistake that cost me dearly!
Beyond that, guns are very effective against knights. It doesn't matter how well trained you are, or how expensive your Milanese forged plate is. A cannonball is a cannonball is a cannonball...
Very nice...
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