A closer look at the SYW Russian army...

Of all the armies available to the Make Ready! player my weapon of choice is the Seven Year War Russians.

Now don't tell Keith this but I think the Russians are a power house in the system. (every time I beat him he re-writes the rules so the Russians get weaker ... so mums the word, right?)

So what makes a good army in Make Ready! ? A few things do ... manuverability, solid troop types and healthy command sizes. So just where do the Russians fit in here?

Okay ... so they aren't maneuverable ... at least on the surface with 3 Irregular non-dice sharing generals. They can't move around like those blasted Prussians can. If you are going to play a Russian list you have to compensate for maneuverability with a good starting deployment.

What about solid troop types and command sizes? Here again it's give and take. The common foot soldier - Irr Msk(O) - is not a maneuverable troop BUT he is one tough Russian. He is also very cheap at 6AP, so you get a lot of them. Place them on the board so they don't have to do anything more then move straight forward at the enemy and I promise you that you will break what ever command is facing it. Watch those flanks ... they don't turn to face very well since it cost an extra PIP to do anything except go straight ahead their full movement. Mind you bad things do happen. Fear the horse ... those Irregular troops are quick-killed across the line so a little strategy is required when facing horse. I typically deploy 2 or even 3 ranks deep which gives you a lot of punch when faced with troops but when horse appear make sure you save a PIP to split the front rank from the 2nd rank to get out of the death zone. This also makes for a nice catchers mitt if and when any horse break through.

Let have a look at a successful Russian deployment Vs. the SYW Allied army:


Here we are in the flooded Dutch land ... a water way on the right with a small town and a number of marshes. The dutch are defending and have deployed back in line. They have regular troop types so the army is smaller and they have two dice sharing generals and one non-dice sharing general so they should be a bit better equipped to push an attack between the two dice sharing generals. The big problem with the Allies deployment is the central swamp. They have deployed a large number of troops behind it. Heavy troops cannot move through a swamp in any other formation then a column and at reduced speeds. Everything behind the swamp is basically out of the action and as he tries to get it into the action it will congest onto the other commands ... a big PIP issue to sort out.

The Russians have set-up with 2 commands with allot of horse on the left of the swamp. These commands are facing basically only 1 of the allied commands. This is a huge advantage being able to bring to bear the combined fire power of 2 onto 1 command. On the right of the swamp is my big Irr Msk(O) block and howitzers with a couple of light troops in the swamp. The Allied command to it's front is much smaller but it got allot of tough (S) troop types in it on the flank. A bit of howitzer fun should soften these tough guys out before they hit.

So lets see what happened:

As you can see the Russians took advantage of the far left flank with a mass horse charge.
The last horse at the bottom of the photo had just destroyed a Jagger stand and the question arose ... "where does the horse go"? Horse once they win a combat in Make Ready! are impetuous. They will move forward only 1 base depth if they are in a position to supply support but if they are not they have to charge through their full movement distance towards enemy if it is immediately to it's front. That Jagger is not to it's immediate front so it charges forward and stops at the swamp.
So the Allied flank command is doomed to be rolled up. Even if the horse charge went bad for Russia they have enough foot elements in the command to lose all the horse without breaking the command.

Back on the right:

Those pesky Allied Reg Msk(S) troops on the flank really started to worry me as the Allied general used those shared dice to push them hard up the flank. The Russian PIPs were good so I was able to spend allot of PIPs to get my muskets fanned out to stop his flanking maneuver and turn my howitzers to say hi. Gradings don't count for cannon fire and once he pushed into canister range this command crumbled when the big musket block hit his troops.

Once again minimal losses for the Russians 6 to 8 stands between 3 command. It's warm potatoes and Vodka for the boys tonight!