15mm SYW Battle of Kolin

Tuesday saw another game at the club, this time the army of old Fritz was pitted against the Austrians. This game was hosted by Ian and there was eventually four of us playing. Ian and John (Prussians), myself and Neil (Austrians). The battle of Kolin was fought on the 18th June 1757, historically the Prussians narrowly lost this one after a series of blunders. I dont know enough about this period of history to comment further, except to say that Ian and John did a bit better! We recreated only a part of the battle, the main bit was off-table to our right. In both cases, the Austrians were supposed to capture a road to prevent the Prussians sending in further reinforcements to the main battle and the Prussians were suposed to capture a hill preventing the Austrians from doing the same.

Apart from Ian who was rolling some good dice we had some laughably miserable die rolls, we tried to blame young Alex who came to see what all the noise was about. The rules were developed by the Tyneside wargames club and are free to download from their website.Anyway, here are a few pictures when I remembered to take any. Again, not much of a battle report.

The rules had command pips (1D4) for each general, my general on the left flank was "average-incompetent" which for those who know me is probably a good estimate. However, these were chosen by chance for each commander with the Prussians having better odds for obtaining good commanders. It meant that poor commanders  were -1 for command roles, average  meant no modifier and good commanders had +1. There were markers for orders for each unit, and to change an order meant using up a command pip. 

 Yours truly ponders a difficult move.

They all look so beautiful at the beginning.






The Prussians debate strategy.

 Austrian right flank holding onto objective(Neil)

 Austrian Cuirassiers and Dragoons charge.

Prussian cavalry more or less wipe out their Austrian counterparts and then proceed onto the infantry.