Games on April 19th

Wow! My house was really active last night as we had three Make Ready! games going on simultaneously. On table one, Gary Gilesovsky with his SYW Russians gave Joe Maynard's ACW Union army its initiation.

On table two I took my ACW Union troops against Mark's (seemingly) unstoppable SYW Prussians. My army is not completely painted yet, so if you see blank bases on the table, they were stand-ins for guys who are still on my painting table. I also haven't flocked the stands up or made them look nice. Future posts should be prettier and then I'll have the confidence to do some close-ups, too!

The game started with the Union deploying across the table and then asking the question: "Where are the Prussians?". Mark opted to keep his options open and deployed only one division on table. as shown below:

The felt in the bottom left is a town with an open field beside it. The field has a stone wall, behind which the Prussians are coweri- - uh, deploying.

Not knowing where the Prussian might be marching off table, I decided on a blitz to crush the one division that I could see. Troops raced across the board, bringing their guns with them. Mark's jager companies tried to organize a fighting retreat, but were eventually overwhelmed by the Union light infantry and cut down. As my heavy infantry on the far flank moved toward the town, the Prussians trained their guns on them at which point the Union light infantry (placed center table) raced in and started firing on the guns' flanks as shown below:

Fritz's mounted division came on on his own table edge, center table and the Union light infantry (having left all the heavies back on the starting block) became a bit concerned. Thankfully, they had hauled their guns up with them and soon, the light infantry had faded back out of harms way and five batteries were trained on Frederick's horse! Ouch....

Meanwhile, another Prussian infantry division arrived on the Union's left flank. Thankfully, I had deployed some mounted infantry on the left flank, who fanned out and covered most of the flank. Also, the dice were exceedingly good to me and a brigade of mounted troopers hiding in the woods on my left were able to race out and fill in the gaps, dismount and completely seal off the area. I thought the best chance of victory was to smash this flank march before it could take root, so the heavy infantry who had been advancing on the town left faced and went to lend their support. They left Berdan's sharpshooters to delay the Prussian advance, who were overwhelmed by musket fire and fled, blocking the redeployment. Meanwhile, heavy fire from the light infantry in the center had forced the Prussian infantry back from their guns which were then shot up quite nicely, stormed and captured, all shown below:

The loss of their rifle companies, both their gun batteries and accumulated infantry losses from cannon fire was enough to break the will of the Prussian center command. And with their mounted charge on the Prussian left in tatters and countless horsemen dead, the whole army decided it was time to withdraw from the field. Union losses were minimal, 3 elements destroyed. 9-0 Union victory.

Meanwhile, on table three Josh's Austrians (left) and Emen's Allied army (right) fought a back and forth struggle that centered mostly on a hill on the Allied left flank.

Apparently, the Austrian heavy cavalry charged uphill against some Dutch infantry with a jager company on its far flank. Even up hill, a mounted vs jager fight usually turns out pretty badly for the jagers, but these guys proved the old adage: "It's better to be lucky than good" and consistently threw back one charge after another.

The Austrians did manage to break through the Dutch heavy infantry eventually, so this wing was in imminent danger of collapse at end game (as was the Austrian's center!) A nail biter with an indecisive ending....

Thanks to everyone for participating!

Keith