ADLG-R Polish v Imperial Austrians

One of my club mates, Simon, has been developing a Renaissance version of the ADLG ancient rules so, rather than play Fog-R as we usually would, I thought we could give them a try.

As the pike and shot units are based differently for ADLG-R I thought I'd use Later Polish as they don't have any pike and shot units! Simon used Imperial Austrian, historically an ally but in this case they must have fallen out!

The terrain consisted of a waterway on my right flank and a few fields mainly on the right again. Both armies pretty much lined up across the table and, with the waterway and fields reducing the open space available, pretty much filled the table:

 The Polish right flank, Winged Hussars, Lithuanians and Cossacks:

The Polish centre, masses of Haiduk infantry armed with the fearsome (but fairly useless in FoG-R at least) two handed axe musket rest:

The Polish left flank: more Winged Hussars and Cossacks:

Both armies advance with the Poles starting to take some hits from the Austrian artillery and light troops:

The two infantry lines open fire. The Poles have a slight advantage in numbers:

Following an exchange of fire the Polish Infantry charge home hoping their axes will give them an advantage:

The Polish charge is ferocious! One Austrian unit is eliminated and the others take heavy losses:

On the left the Poles have mainly rallied though one Cossack has had to be committed to an uneven fight against an Austrian Kuirassier:

On the right the two sides continue to skirmish ineffectively:

 In the centre the Polish Infantry have now wiped out the Austrian centre and are now advancing to exploit their breakthrough:

On the left the Austrian Kurassiers charge home against the Winged Hussars but the initial combat goes badly for them:

 On the right the Hussars have charged themselves and swept away the Austrian cavalry facing them:

There is only one Austrian infantry unit remaining now and it is being attacked from all sides:

On the left the situation is just as bad for the Austrians with their remaining cavalry being overwhelmed giving the Poles a clear victory:

It was interesting to try out this version of ADLG, while it is still in development Simon has produced a set of amendments which work in a similar way to ADLG but have some Renaissance flavour to them.

As ever with ADLG I find the armies very small giving me the feeling that I am basically playing a slightly larger version of DBA (which is in fact the attraction for many players as you don't need to buy and paint nearly so many figures).

I think it will be hard to include a lot of the subtle differences of FoG-R into ADLG-R such as the differences between the various ratios of pike and shot in units with their advantages and disadvantages which was one thing I think FoG-R did really well.

Unlike in FoG-R in this game the axes of the Polish infantry gave them a significant advantage in combat against Simon's pike and shot causing them to win tied combats and inflict an extra damage point in melee which partly resulted in the implosion of the Austrian foot to occur so quickly in our game (together with my better dice rolls I think). They are however very vulnerable to cavalry as they have no pikes but Simon didn't manage to get any cavalry into the Polish infantry.

I also thought the Austrian artillery was quite ineffective, as you start so close together in ADLG-R they don't get many shots off before the lines close and you either have to risk them being run down or cover them with other troops. I'm not sure if Simon has included the FoG-R concept of supporting the guns as I didn't read the rules before we played!

All in all good fun and I'd be happy to play again occasionally.