A Saturday afternoons WSS gaming

We had a cracking game last weekend using volley and Baynot rules to fight a straight foward meeting engagement WSS battle which saw me take command of the English army against my dad who commanded the French and allies. Our armies on deployment pretty much mirrored each other with my right flank in particular set to have a massive cavalry engagement.

The front line French infantry ready to march into musket range to engage the English 

My left flank was the weakest part of my deployment so I tasked the brigade to hold along a hill line and allow the French and Bavarians to advance onto my position as I was outnumbered 2-1 in brigades. My Dragoons in support had a thankless task of trying to repell 4 regiments of Bavarian Currasiers!

With my left flank stationary my centre brigade with 2 regiments of guards moved into the centre of the battlefield in a race to the high ground with the French infanty, both our brigades reached the hill at the same time although the French got the jump of having the first turn so they deployed on the ridge first to ensure that the fire fight was going to be settled at short range

After a couple of moves keeping out of charge range from the Bavarian Currasiers the inevitable charge came and against the odds the Dragoons withstood the charge. Indeed the Dragoons gave a great account of themselves throughout the remainder of the battle as they managed to repel and indeed counter charge against the Currasiers. At the games end the Dragoons brigade finally became broken but the Bavarian Currasiers had by this stage suffered the same fate.

The cavarly engagement on the right flank was not a sucess for my English heavy cavalry who as they have a history of doing so in our games fluffed there charge big style against the French Dragoons. The Austrian currasiers also suffered mixed fortunes, making very heavy work of dispatching the French Dragoons becoming somewhat of a disordered mess for their efforts.

The fire fighting was very heavy in the centre and I got the upper hand after a couple of damaging rounds of shooting, however importantly for my dads French their morale stood the test and they remained in the fight, this kept the centre of the French from falling as they pushed home their superior numbers on my left flank where my holding brigade was starting to feel the pressure.   

The battlefield shows how our lines have closed to engagement across the entire length of the table

The French Dragoons just wouldn't go away and somewhat shockingly for me the English heavy cavalry became spent from fighting, although the French Dragoons had suffered the same fate, my dad had a full fresh brigade of 6 regiments of cavalry already advancing onto my disordered remains of cavalry with only really a couple of regiments of Austrain cavalry to oppose the advance.

The English left flank staring to feel the pressure as the guard unit is broken holding the farm area suffering to many casualties from the combined French musketry fire, crucially due to the French morale holding in the centre my dad doesn't have reenforce his centre and could press home with his large attack on my left.

My English finally break the French centre but the chance had gone to influence the battle, the French brigade holding firm despite suffering casualties had bide enough time for the French to inflict severe casualties onto the English centre in return and blunted the attack.

My British heavy cavarly brigade was lost by this stage although the Austrain Currasiers (well two regiments, the other two ran away when charged!) had launched a brave last stand charge against the reserve heavy French cavalry and managed some sucess and delayed the French advance. The action on this side of the battle had seen a swirling cavarly engagement throughout the whole game time..

Finally my left flank collapsed as the Bavarians pushed home with the final attack, the weight of numbers had finally told and my morale throws at this stage of the game, well  not going to pass comment on them!!!! 

The final scene of the battle, all them nice lines of infantry and cavalry long gone into a chaotic disordered pockets of fighting

Well my dad claimed the victory with his Fench which might possibly be his first fighting myself in this period as recently I have held the upper hand. It was a excellent game which was pretty even until the closing stages. The rules played great, very fast and enabled us to spend more time moving figures and rolling dice than checking rules, this was despite myself been alittle rusty for the first couple of turns, but I won't use this as an excuse for my loss ha ha 😄