War of the Spanish Succession Game

Th French took to the field again last Monday to face the English who also had some dutch support. Advance guard action with only 24 battalions on the tabletop and about thirty squadrons of horse.
The French pinned their left flank on a hedged farm a little south of the ford across the river and massed most of their horse on the right.

The English were more evenly spaced and balanced across their front.

The French immediately launched their horse against the smaller number of enemy horse on the right. Several long and exhausting melees later saw the massed French carabiniers pursue the Dutch from the tabletop, whilst the two French horse regiments were chased off by the Dutch elite.

On the French left the Swiss advanced to keep pace with the lone French regiment tasked with preventing the enemy using the ford by lining the hedgerows along the rod.

Unfortunately they were less than successful in this endeavour as a regiment of English dragoons rode past them unscathed. They then dismounted and caused some discomfort to the French by firing into them across the river.
This in turn allowed the English lines to advance and engage the Swiss on equal numbers. After a long and hotly contested firefight the honours were even.. Half of the first English line retired whilst the other half pushed the Swiss back onto their reserves.
Unfortunately the same could not be same for the German regiments leading the French advance on the right.

Advancing to meet the Dutch regiments facing them the Germans were soon engaged in a firefight that turned in favour of the Dutch quite quickly. The only saving grace was that if the German musketry was less than effective their resolve to stay in the front line was high. Only when they were reduced to half their effective strength were the Germans forced from the field.

By this time the enemy horse had managed to rally themselves on the extreme right flank of the French and the second English line steadied and reformed to tackle the French. Looking across the field the French commander realised that he did not have the numbers to force the enemy from the field and whilst the farmhouse was under his command little else was.

My thanks to Mark for what are always good games.

We tried the casualty markers for the first time and whilst a little fiddly to keep moving them around I thought they worked well and certainly looked very neat behind the battalions. I've made sixty of these now and that seemed to be far more than needed for a game of this size.

The table was only ten feet in length and we used approximately half of the figures we intend to display at Triples in five weeks time. The actual table there will be twenty feet long and with over 2,500 figures on it (if it can support the weight!). Figures used for the night were a mix of Stratagem (Marks English), Front Rank (Dutch and some of the French), Old Glory (all the French horse and some of the Swiss), Reiver (German infantry) and Wargames Factory (Swiss).