Maurice with the big toys

On Tuesday evening Steve bought a small part of his huge collection of 40mm semi-flats to the club and we had a rather excellent game of Maurice set in the Seven  Years War.

We picked 100pts per side with Steve choosing the Austrians while I had the Prussians and would be defending against their massed artillery, cavalry and serried ranks of infantry.

If I recall correctly, the forces were:

Austrians

• National Characteristics 'Artillery Acadamy' and 'Cavaliers'
• Two Elite cavalry, two Regular cavalry
• One Elite infantry,  five Regular infantry, three Levy infantry
• Four guns

initial Austrian dispositions

Prussians 

• National Characteristics 'Lethal Volleys' and 'Oblique Order'
• Two Regular cavalry, two Levy cavalry
• Three Elite infantry, four Regular infantry, one Levy infantry
• Three guns

The Prussians deployed

In the initial stages of the game my artillery performed far better than the Austrian ones depite both less numbers and no special abilities.

Austrian infantry advance in the centre

As the game developed my Grenadiers in the wood put up a hard fight but eventually succumbed to superior numbers.

A Prussian cavalry charge on the right was beaten off by the Austrian infantry, while the Austrian cavalry on the left fared much better until I played the 'That was not on the map' card, much to Steves dismay

It then came down to the infantry slog in the centre and the Prussians eventually held the upper hand until I ran out of Action Cards while Steve had good half-dozen on hand. I held on for quite a while but despite being in a better position at the start of this phase of the battle was eventually warn down by the Austrian volleys.

View from the Prussian right

More a problem of my inexperience with the rules rather than anything else, must hand on to more cards for late in the game.

Steve has done a much better report on his blog.