1566 Disaster at the Not-So-Neisse

15mm Polish Renaissance (Barts collection), by Fire&Sword, and Peter and me thought, well jolly gosh, lets choose the Polish Hussars, they always win !!! (that is empirically tested, all our games against them, we lost) - so Bart and Alisdair choose the Swedes, and thus they got prompt more units and points - duh! It was Bart who did the scenario and allocation of troops.

Then Peter decided we would have two heavy cavalry brigades instead of one or two lights ones, which was a major mistake, as we would loose the reconnaissance phase, which we just knew afterwards - so therefore, I will just refer to him as Pjotr from now on. Pjotr was our CinC by the way so nevermind ... I knew I would be happy, if he only would just manage to lead the troops towards the enemy ...

Maybe Bart was afraid me and Pjotr would win. So we got a scenario where the Poles need to kill off a Swedish advance guard to prevent them to secure two river fords. Besides outnumbering us, they had bigger units and were typically better organised - i.e. they got +2 combat resolution per every fight as we found out later on. So they must be very demoralised psychologically to begin with.

Embolded by so much tension, I put my regiment on attack and charged with my winged hussars over the first ford. Their wings must be good for something, but besides my average dicing, somehow they were a bit light on their breasts. They lost and got killed in the end. I remembered Bart cavalry tactics and thought well, I don't have the orange dice, but maybe if I kept on charging ... Pjotre in the meantime just let the Swedes over the ford and started to go fishing at the river with the rest of the Polish army, in the end some of his command made it over the river though.

Gallantly at the end, I even charged with my Cossacks (which I was told were the worst units, but they fought better than the hussars),  but to no avail another victory for Alisdair, I'm sure he is not aware of how exactly he ended up doing that, but Bart surely knows. As I'm pretty sure he was the only one knowing amongst us three pretty clueless about the finesse of the rules. Nevertheless I know I had immense fun! Next time I will choose the Swedes, as they do seem to be the winning team. ;)

My winged hussars charge!

and loose somehow

while the other Swedes fly over the river - where is Pjotre!

... half drunk reorganising his command  (his beer is on the left!)

Pjotres High command

my Hussars still in the game fighting!

still not winning either

The Pancerni got a fright to go over the river (water!) 

Meanwhile the Swedes got a shot at fishing poles

then my hussars got charged ... and died!

to the astonished pancerni

Still my Cossacks were waiting

while my other cossacks had even rounded the enemy and were next to the CinC!

Then the pancerni clashed in a charge, but they lost their pistols or something

meanwhile my cossacks got charged and simply held the line - tada!

While the rest of my troops charged and got charged and still lost their fights

but didn#t went off table in the last turn

well meanwhile Pjotres units were at the river ... fishing probably ...