Maurice round two

Scrivslandians press the attack on the town

Today we had another crack at Maurice. This time Karsten and I would play the Duchy of Scrivslandia while Rich and Steve would be the evil Prussians again.

This time we would use 100AP armies with an additional 18AP allowed for National Characteristics.

Karsten and I picked:

Two Elite Cavalry
Three Trained Cavalry

Prussian deployments

One Irregular Cavalry
Two Elite Infantry
Five Trained Infantry
Two Conscript Infantry
Two Gun Batteries

For our National Advantages we picked Great Captain and Cadence.

Prussian Infantry

Steve and Rich picked:

Two Elite Cavalry
Two Trained Cavalry
Two Elite Infantry
Six Regular Infantry
Two Conscript Infantry
Three Gun Batteries

For their National Advantages they picked Lethal Volleys and Oblique Order, how very Prussian.

Initial Prussian dispositions

Next up we applied three random Notables each, Karsten and I picked up Robert de Casside, Cameron von Muller and Michael von Pfanensteil. The Prussians picked out Michael-Georges de Vicque along with 'O The Gout! The Gout!' and 'A Tempting Offer', the Prussian cads used this last card to tempt Michael von Pfanensteil away from us.

Next we drew a Battlefield card and we would be playing on 'The Plains'. As we had more cavalry and 'Great Captain' we easily won the scouting roll off and chose to attack, adding another Regular Infantry unit to our forces.

Scrivlandians make ready to attack

We then rolled for terrain, and between us there would be a very crowded twelve pieces of terrain on the table, with the objective being a town in the Prussian deployment zone.

Steve and Rich deployed the Prussians, the cavalry were held in a echelon reserve on their right flank, all the guns were on a hill in the centre supported by the majority of their infantry. A single unit of Trained Infantry held the town, and two units of Trained Infantry and a unit of Grenadiers made up their left flank.

We then deployed from left to right our two Elite Cavalry and two Trained Cavalry screened by the Irregular Cavalry, four battalions of infantry, two guns and then the remaining six infantry and finally our two Trained Cavalry on our right.

Prussian batteries ready to repel the Scrivslandians

Both sides would have and Army Moral of 17.

It was time for the game to kick off and it went terribly for the Scrivslandians. The initial advance was countered by desultory fire from the Prussian artillery but as we got closer the Prussian infantry moved to counter us and their clockwork volley fire soon started to tell.

Scrivslandians go onto the offensive

As they had advanced their infantry ahead of their starting positions a very useful tactic with the defending Prussians was to declare a volley phase in their turn and then retreat their infantry so it would be out of range in our turn, then we would have to advance into the volleys in their phase again. We soon were taking losses from our units and every D3 roll seemed to come up a three.

Very soon we were pressing the objective and had managed to knock out a couple of the Prussian units but we had lost six in return but due to some poor rolling on the Army Moral effect dice had very little in the way of Army Moral left.

Scrivslandian cavalry up close against Prussian Grenadiers

It was almost a relief when we lost another unit and took three from our Army Moral. A crushing Prussian win, they would amass four Epic Points to our one.

We did play rather differently this time, rather than concentrating all the action in a small area we were attacking across a broad front and I think this was our main undoing, but when two people are playing a force, it's difficult to say 'you sit there and look pretty with your part of the army, I'm going to have all the activations.'

We are still keen to keep going at this, and we hope to kick off one of the Succession Wars campaigns in the very near future.

All the figures are 40mm semi-flats cast up and painted by Steve.