We played our first game in the BF&S campaign that is being run by William. My first game was Sweden attacking PLC in Wenden (east). Since the Sweden is attacking with a Task Force, the PLC needs to defend twice with its Skirmish Force and Sweden gets to deploy a Skirmish force for the first battle and a skirmish force for the second battle. (Not sure yet how he produces this second Skirmish force)
1. Army Preparation. I had a Skirmish Force of 38 points and Jeff had a Skirmish force of 35 points. So I became the Red Player and Jeff became the blue player.
2. Table Preparation. Strangely there is very little rules on table preparation. The rules mention that players prepare the terrain together. For a skirmish level you choose 4 to 6 terrain elements. We chose two hills and two small woods and took turns placing one of each.
3. Choosing Scenario. Red player (me) indicates scenario to discard. I discarded lash of Vanguards. The Blue player (Jeff) the chooses a scenario. He chose Key Positions.
3.1. Stratagems and Random Effects. This is the difference in Force points. So Jeff had 3 to play with. He chose Favorable terms, which means red player places both objective markers on the blue side half of the table. Since the cost of this Stratagem was 3, he had none left over for Random Effects.
3.2 Objective Markers. This is just a definition of Objective Markers and Key Terrains and how to control them. Larger force within 4 inches of objective marker. If the objective marker is completely within Area Terrain or Structure it becomes key terrain and you have to control the key terrain not just be 4 inches from it.
4. Reconnaissance Test. I had two die rolls and Jeff and one. Jeff won the die roll, so he gets to choose two effects and I get to choose one. Jeff chose Force March and Advance Deployment and I chose Successful Skirmishing. Each item on the list can be selected only once.
5. Army Deployment. Starting with red player take turns deploying Army elements.
This was the start state of our forces. Jeff is the top of the battle field. From left to right he had a small Mercenary Reiters, another small Mercenary Reiters, a small Dragon, and a Musketers Squadron. He also chose to bring a Major. My force is in the bottom of the image and from left to right is a Wallachian Cavalry, Cossack Style Cavalry, Pancerni with Spears small element (I gave them shields and Veteran) and another Cossack Style Cavalry (Medium)
Before the first turn. Jeff moved his Mercenary Reiters up one full move (Forced March) and his Musketers Squadron. (Advanced Deployment)
6. Playing the Battle. The game consists of 5 rounds.
We rolled for initiative. Jeff won the initiative and activated his commander to give and gave a rally to take off the hits that I had given. (Smart move)
I attacked with my Wallachian Cavalry on my left flank. (Note to self this was not a smart move as the Wallachian Cavalry has Skill 5 versus 6 for the Mercenary Reiters and 2 Armour versus 4. The first attack roll I had 7 die rolls versus 10. Somehow this battle ended a tie. Jeff decided to withdraw his two middle units out of charge range and I had a melee attack counter so I had move forward 7 inches.
As you can see from the image below, two units remain in combat on the left. I had excellent riders, so I could have chosen to disengage. (Need to remember this in the future)
End phase we check Army morale. No change.
The second round I won the initiative. So I attacked with my Pancerni with Spears. This caused the Mercenary Reiters to break. The other Cossack style Cavalry attacked the Dragoons. Jeff turned his Musketeer Squadron and fired in the back of the Cavalry. We forgot to hit his own unit with the misses, but I think we forgot to reroll his misses also. (As it was a Direct range attack) The left flank was won by the other Mercenary Reiters and caused my Wallachian Cavalry to withdraw.
End Phase, Jeff goes down 1 Army moral as I control 2 of the 3 objectives and also 1 Army moral as he lost one silver unit. His Army moral is now 3.
The third round saw the destruction of the Dragoons and the Musketeer Squadron. End phase Jeff lost another Army moral for not holding the objectives and 2 for losing units. This reduces his Army moral to 0. His force now breaks.
Overall the big difference was in the rolls. I successfully saved all my moral saves and rolled very high on the hits.
According to the rules from William if you lose 75% of your elements minus officers, your force is destroyed. So in the case Jeff's entire skirmish force is destroyed. Need to find out what he can use to attack with the next skirmish force.
