Last week, game 3 of our Scourge of Princes rules came up, though this time with swapped roles: Max led my Swedes into the field, and I took over the supreme command of his Imperials.
For this game, we had also printed out the Campaign Cards and played through the complete pre-game, including terrain setup, scenario selection, and everything else by the book.
The starting situation: both armies have deployed. The plan for the Imperials was to win the cavalry clash as quickly as possible, rout the Rytarre, and thereby envelop the Swedish infantry.
So much for theory 😛
Scenario 5 was played; the Swedes had to deploy their loose order units first, followed by the Imperials deploying all their units, and finally the remaining Swedish ranked units.
In the center, the infantry marches up, all the way to the right are the two Rytarre regiments, and massed between the infantry and cavalry are the heavy field guns—four batteries!
The small woods on their left flank are secured by light cavalry, dragoons, and Finns, supported by one of the Uppbad regiments (militia).
The Imperials aim to secure the village in the center with their dragoons, covered by harquebusiers.
On the right side, the two tercios and artillery have deployed, preceded by advancing harquebusiers.
The left flank of the Imperials—three cuirassier regiments, with field guns for support.
The first broadside of the Swedish artillery hits the left-most cuirassier regiment (from their perspective)!
Four disorder tokens mean it is just one disorder away from breaking and is effectively taken out of the game in the first game turn!
The Swedish gunners...
...and their prey, the pride of the Imperial cavalry, ingloriously slaughtered.
The Imperial artillery tries to return fire as best as it can, while the tercios, covered by harquebusiers, advance to force the Swedes from their positions.
The battered cuirassiers seek shelter behind the harquebusiers and dragoons in the center...
...but those cursed Swedish cannons seem to have particularly well-calibrated sights today...
The barrels roar to life again...
...and spew death and destruction upon another of the Emperor's cuirassier regiments, leaving it "Worn" as well.
My tercios advance, and the Swedes send their Finns to slow down this very advance—after all, nobody wants to be hit in the flank by these barbarians.
My cavalry has reached the shelter of the village, though not without taking further casualties, while the Imperial artillery tries to check the Rytarre...
...which succeeds only partially, at least for now. The only ones hitting their marks with absolute precision today are the Swedes, and that across every sector of the front.
The superior Finns (7 dice vs. 6 dice) want to clear the harquebusiers out of the way, which would bring the tercios to a halt, and charge forward in a wild attack...
My boys, however, are not willing to be run down by the northern barbarians—a targeted volley and nimble swords show the Finns who is boss here and beat back the assault!
Shortly thereafter, one of the tercios unleashes a volley, followed by a charge from the harquebusiers, and the Finns are completely routed from the field!
Full of verve after their victory, they try to give some breathing room to the tercios, which are constant under fire from all sides, and advance into the wood where they suddenly pop up on the flank of the enemy's light cavalry.
These cowardly dogs, however, take to their heels in blind panic!
Casualties among the hard-pressed Imperials mount under the merciless and well-aimed fire of the Swedish infantry, but they still hold out bravely through the hail of enemy shot.
Teaming up in a combined arms push, they even launch an offensive on the vulnerable flank of the Swedish infantry line!
Yet even among the Swedes, the Uppbad fight tenaciously and bitterly, unwilling to be beaten so easily, repeatedly turning back the Imperial attacks. They look much more like veterans of many battles than mere militia.
The continuous fire of the Commanded Shot integrated with the Rytarre finally destroys another one of the already battered cuirassier regiments.
In return, my tercio finally manages to rout the Uppbad regiment on the third attempt!
Meanwhile, my dragoons hold firm against a charge by Swedish infantry.
At the same time, however, yet another cuirassier regiment ceases to exist... my last one ...
In a desperate counter-attack, my central harquebusiers smash into the exposed Rytarre regiment, win the seemingly hopeless fight, riding down their opponents!
Their comrades on the right flank are far less heroic, and their charge against the light cavalry fails miserably.
With that, the game clock ran out, and although the Imperials are not broken, the Swedes secured a clear victory without question; conquering the Swedish camp might have salvaged a draw here.
That said, the Swedes still possess several fresh infantry regiments, and the Imperials can count themselves lucky to leave the battlefield in good order, as they still command more operational cavalry to cover the retreat of their half-shattered tercios and dragoons.
Conclusion
Another exciting game where fickle fortune smiled first on one side and then the other.
The Swedes opened the game with incredibly accurate broadsides from their compactly deployed artillery, practically neutralizing two cuirassier regiments before they could even adjust their headstalls or tighten their saddle girths 😕
At least the Imperials managed to pull their cavalry out of the Swedish kill zone and establish a new defensive front that forced the Swedes to react, especially since the thrust toward their left flank threatened their camp as well.
If treacherous fortune had been even slightly kinder to me, the tide might still have turned in the Imperials' favor, but shooting oneself more or less in the foot for two rounds straight instead of hitting the enemy while the Swedes fired with pinpoint accuracy was simply too much of a good thing.
What caught our attention regarding the rules
Cavalry-heavy armies are definitely at a disadvantage in SoP, at least when they rely on close combat like the Imperial cuirassiers and lack the option of Commanded Shot like the Swedes.
While the latter can happily use the enemy as target practice when momentum is lacking (no momentum required), cuirassiers and the like have no counterplay in reserve.
Even if the commander is within 4", a charge always requires 2 momentum per unit—with a maximum attainable momentum of 9, two-thirds of the army is left without orders.
The Swedes can help themselves with the aforementioned "Commanded Shot" option for their Rytarre, and infantry-heavy armies can operate much more freely once the infantry reaches firing distance. Firing, as mentioned, requires no momentum; you usually have more units and thus more momentum, allowing you to operate quite freely on the flanks and create focal points.
Of course, one can argue that cavalry is harder to control—once sent into a charge, that is true—but looking at the composition of armies in the Thirty Years' War, The Deluge, etc., they often featured a very high, sometimes predominant proportion of cavalry, and that ought to be represented sensibly on the tabletop as well.
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