Never Mind the Matchlocks Imperialist v Swedish game 2

As predicted another game of Never Mind the Matchlocks took place quite quickly with Dave and I basically repeating the previous game:

Swedish Horse engage Imperialist Cossacks:

Surprisingly the Cossacks gain the upper hand but the dastardly Swedes have another Horse unit ready to join in the fight:

Disaster for the Imperialists as the Cossacks rout and the neighbouring Cuirassiers decide that they will rout with them in sympathy: 

The foot have not made much progress so far

With their left flank Horse routed the Imperial Foot need to do some redeploying:

More mounted action on the right flank:

The Imperial foot on the left neutralise the Swedish mounted:

Push of Pikes! 

Heavy fire all along the line:

As last time we finished at this point having played for around four hours. Again it appeared very difficult to actually break the foot units though, as we used the VP system this time, both armies were not that far off breaking. Next time we will probably play to a points total and introduce varying unit quality.

Never Mind the Matchlocks Imperialist v Swedish

Having tried and failed to get anyone interested in playing FoG-R again, being unwilling to rebase the armies for ADLG-R then been not that impressed by 'For King and Parliament' Dave and I thought we would try out the 'Never Mind the Matchlocks" variant of the popular "Never Mind the Billhooks" rules for the ECW/TYW. Dave took the Swedes while I had the Imperialists.

For an initial game we just lined up two similar armies with all the units 'average' to see how the rules played:

Swedish Horse crush their Imperialist opponents:

The Imperialist left advances:

Pike and Shot close while the Swedish cavalry rush forward in pursuit:

Fire is exchanged:

More infantry action:

Imperial Cuirassiers unsuccessfully charge Swedish foot:

At this point we called it a day with neither side having suffered serious losses. The foot units seemed very difficult to break while the mounted were quite fragile (One routed without taking any losses!). There were probably too many troops for the table size and the vanilla nature of ECW/TYW armies didn't help when we had two very similar armies but on the whole it was an interesting game and I'm sure we will give it another go.

Field of Glory Renaissance Cossacks

Another addition to my 28mm FoG-R armies, this time four bases of Cossack light horse. I was told they were Croats but I'm fairly convinced they are actually Cossacks! As the Imperial army can have either Cossacks or Croats it does not make much difference:

I was also told they were by 'The Assault Group' but couldn't find them in their list, they are certainly really nice figures though and in their style. Another view of the unit:

FoGR TYW Later German Imperialist v TYW Later German Protestant

The 28mm ECW/TYW army continued their run of games with an outing against Tim's army. We both went for Later TYW Germans, my version was more quantity over quality while Tim had invested in some superior infantry and attached battalion guns.

My Catholics attacked and the table ended up being fairly open. Both armies deployed in a similar way:

On the right cavalry are massed for action, the Catholics having support from some Dragoons and two infantry units while the Protestants only have a single superior infantry unit

The Catholics advance in depth:

On the left two lines of infantry face each other:

Will numbers or quality triumph? 

Both sides mounted eye each other warily:

On the left the Catholic infantry advance hoping to move their reserve infantry unit into a gap developing in the Protestant centre:

Shooting removes bases from both sides:

Close combat! The Protestant line charges:

On the right the fighting continues with the quality of the Protestant foot overcoming the numbers of the Catholics but not breaking them:

Finally the rather hesitant cavalry engage:

The result is inconclusive though:

On the left the Catholic infantry begin to break their Protestant equivalents:

The infantry fight on the right is finally ended when the reserve Catholic infantry charge the Protestants in the flank breaking them:

On the left despite being reduced to 50% strength and fragmented the Catholic infantry finish off their Protestant opponents:

Meanwhile a large cavalry melee has been fought out on the right with little result until one Protestant cavalry unit breaks finishing off the Protestant army:

Even at 650 points on a 6x4 table the units easily covered the table which is a bit of an issue. We also used the last lot of amendments to the rules making average units much tougher (they don't break on base losses so easily) which certainly affected the outcome as I had three infantry units which would have broken due to base losses but fought on successfully steadfastly refusing to rout or lose the last base!

FoGR TYW Later German Imperialist v ECW Royalist

The last game of 22 saw my first FoGR game for a considerable period with the under-used pike and shot army playing as Later TYW Imperialists against Bill's ECW Royalists. Not having played 28mm before we went for 650 points on an 8x4 table to give a bit more space.

Both sides deployed with the traditional infantry centre and mounted wings:

Initial manoeuvres with both sides closing: 

The left flank with the Imperialist artillery firing ineffectively!

On the right the Imperialist mounted await the advancing Cavaliers:

As the Cavaliers seem unwilling to advance further the Kurassiers turn to support their infantry. In the distance Dragoons battle it out in the field:

The Imperialist artillery finally manages to hit some Cavaliers:

As the infantry lines close an opportunity arrives for Imperialist horse to attack Royalist musket only armed men in the open:

The Dragoons hold on in the field while the infantry lines begin to exchange fire:

Mounted clash on the left! The Imperialists get the worst of it and lose a base:

Imperialist horse charge into the exposed musketeers:

The infantry fight intensifies:

Units charge home!

The battle rages on with neither side giving an inch:

The Royalist musketeers break and some of their infantry are fragmented:

The Dragoons have routed and the Imperialist right flank is wobbling:

At this point we called the game as it was getting late, the Imperialists probably had a slight advantage but the Royalists could easily have come back into it.

Great fun playing FoGR again, they are still one of my favourite sets of rules and I'm sure we would have got a result if we had not been so rusty and had to look a lot of stuff up which we had forgotten or were unsure about.

It was also a great looking game, increasingly I'm going back to preferring 25/28mm games and, with most of the army being plastic, they were not that heavy to carry! It has also inspired me to continue with the Swedish painting project as well.....