My Metal Meneken: 1515 - The Battle at Exhaustingo

Friday 18 December 2020

1515 - The Battle at Exhaustingo

Renaissance again!! ... aaand Welcome to another bash at the green chimney!

This time we had a little Imperial camp with lots of guns that was unfortunate enough to be attacked by a French force consisting of the infamous swiss pike blocks and the feared French Gendarmes d'Ordonnance. All in Pike &Shotte incl. some house rules. Bart choose the French as he loved to play cavalry charges and the minimal set up left no room for subtleties! The Imperial had more guns but weaker pike blocks less small units and lack in cavalry in quality and quantity. The Swiss and the gendarmes were better quality and had more and even had light guns ... not enough for Bart‘s taste ... well, as the Stones were singing somehow along these lines: ... you can‘t always have, what you want. Commands were all at 8, the CinC were 9.

So in line with their reputation the Swiss charges forward in a rush ... but the the gendarmes seemed to have some reservations ... hmm, interesting! I moved my regular landsknechts pike blocks to the flanks behind my weak cavalry for good old gendarmes trap. (One house rule: we gave the gendarmes the galloper rule (albeit 9")... that if they sweep away my light horse they would have to follow and crash into my pikes! Downside of this plan was, Bart knew that too well (from previous games), haha!

The Gendarmes finally got the jist and charged, the Swiss finally got in, the battle ground was the ditch and the German guns - a lot of arquebusiers perished! The Cavalry clashed - chaos reigned - the re-ordered and clashed again! A Swiss block got hacked to pieces, German Men-at-Arms got ridden into the sand by French gendarmes ... the gendarme trap set, sprung and didn‘t deliver as the gendarmes were fighting extra ordinary and the pikes response was poor!

After hours of battle and an equal amount of units lost on the field (French 8 vs Imperials 9), the attack was repulsed at a high cost. Both gendarmes needed rest, the Swiss and French blocks needed to retreat urgently, but only had few light horse units to screen them. The Imperial horse was in no better shape, all the guns were destroyed, too few Shotte left, the pikes were in no better state than their adversaries ...

Would they "pursue" the retreating foe in a "frantic" pike block chase??? Maybe that would be an idea for another scenario ... but both sides seem to have lost their appetite for destruction for this day and we both agreed on a raw draw - the fields of Exhaustingo were drenched in enough blood!

It was an tremenduosly thrilling battle, with all the toeing and froeing you would expect from such an renaissance tohuwabohu! We both agreed to rinse and repeat, as the rules worked a treat, and more and more, we seem to let lose the inner "Napoleonic-line warefare" complex, we all have in our minds, and descend into a more checkered renaissance model.

Stone, paper, scissors never seemed so appealing! ;)