Italian Wars Game

Curt had Byron in town from Winterpeg and we put all of our Italian Wars kit on the table for an all in tag team wrestling match.  In the end Curt's (mostly Swiss and Imperial) troops won out commanded by Stacey, Jay and Byron defeating my (mostly Italian) side with Sylvain and Jeremy on board.

We didn't use points, but the two sides were mostly even.  They had better close fighting foot (more pikes and more Swiss), we had the edge on cavalry and shooting.  In the end Stacey showed much more discipline and kept his battle line together while we opted for opportunistic charges by individual units.  So we end up fighting multiple enemy units with every one of ours.  Sigh, there are no mistakes just lessons.  However, some lessons need to be retaken several times.

Our battle line after set up.  The light gun was a star on our side.

The opponents side of the table.

Initial moves underway

Closing on the enemy.  Curt has his units on big sculptured bases, which don't always work well with hills - hence the big blue die to prop up his pikes.

The view on our right flank

I choose to lead our Swiss in an opportunistic charge on a unit caught out of position.  The red exclamation mark shows that the pikes were disordered by fire.

Sylvain brings his heavy cavalry up and gets counter charged - the opposing cavalry are here in the middle of our battle line.  The melee went very much our way - Sylvain swept away the Gendarmes and then carried on to rout the Genitors behind.

Here's the follow on charge - go Sylvain!

Melee from the other side.  We could have really used the second lot of Gendarmes but Sylvain had them position to prevent the house threatening our flank!

This melee took a few rounds, but didn't go our way in the end.

Things are swinging back against us now.

The Gendarmes routed off following shooting hits.

Two enemy foot charge our Italian sword and buckler men - not a good match!

The sad end of our charge by the pikemen.

Why We Game

Another absolutely stonking great Italian Wars feast for the eyes over at James Roach 's blog
http://olicanalad.blogspot.ca/2017/11/an-italian-wars-weekend-in-scotland.html

A massive game weekend featuring astounding tables and armies and some of my wargaming heroes. Nothing better...any I seriously covet that Ian Weekly model of Fort St Elmo!

Shout Out for Fast Delivery and Good Service

Further adventures with Canada Post and figure orders from the United (sic) Kingdom.  This fall I ordered a bunch of SYW figures in preparation for the upcoming Painting Challenge, two orders from Front Rank and two from Crusader (North Star).  I previously compliments North Star and their good service, so this time the plug goes to Front Rank.

It's a tale of two orders, one on September 5th the second on October 5th.  On October 24th the second parcel arrived, three weeks turn around which is good for UK-Canada mail, but the first was no where in sight.  Accordingly I contacted Front Rank and asked if they had any way of tracking it.  The next morning I got a note back saying that they had refilled the order and dispatched with tracking, no charge to me.  It arrived on November 2nd, a one week turn around.

So well done to the folks at Front Rank.