My Play-Through of the Thirty Years War (3): Battle of Wimpen

[krasmus]

And now we start with the big boy scenarios. I did manage to win this before I decided that I wanted to make these AARs and thought "how hard can it really be to win again?". Oh sweet summer child. Before we get into the specifics, this is the third scenario for the Thirty Years War, the Battle of Wimpen. The Historical winners, like last time, were the Catholics. However, unlike last time we have no hill and no real ability to try and defend ourselves from close combat with the veteran tercios. To make sure we do have a fighting chance, we have some pretty extensive fortifications and there is an invisible buff to the fire power of our detached muskets as long as they are in "cover". I am not sure if this means fortifications, or general cover that you can also get from forests and the marshes or if this buff is removed if the unit moves from its starting location? Not clear but either way, the musket's performance is enhanced to give us a fighting chance, and trust me for this scenario you need all the help you can get.

With the points given to me I buy:

• Medium Guns - 1

• Later Tercios - 3

• Detached Musket - 1

• Kurassiers - 1

This leaves only 6 points unused! I believe the infantry is needed, its the only way to try to square up to the enemies veteran early tercios. I could have exchanged the kurassier for 1 more unit but there isn't really any more good places for the muskets to shoot from. Moreover, I could exchanged the points from the later tercios for more cavalry, but 1) the map is not really designed for setting up a flank. It is possible! The first few times I played this scenerio I tried sending my cavalry around the forest of the left side but it takes way to long and leads into point no. 2) the enemy have way too much cavalry. Even if you choose all of cavalry, you will still be crushed by them. 3) The early tercios can still charge the horses and deal a lot of damage to them. The only point in having the kurassier is for going against the Catholic units that make it through our line or for a sneaky charge to rout a unit. The arkebussiers will play a role similar to last scenario of drawing enemy fire and distract the behemoths that are these veteran tercios.

Once we load in I come up with this outline, we have a front line (in blue) given to us by the fortifications, forest and swamps in which the muskets will hold. Now in a normal scenario I would have placed our tercios on the fortifications but since these muskets get a bonus and can deal a lot of damage this will do. There is also an event that explodes a random part of the fortifications and destroys the unit on it. I had to experience this event the hard way... The yellow lines are where the arkebussiers will be and the red is where some of the tercios will stand ready. The rest will be in reserve by the cannons ready to commit where-ever if necessary.

After a few turns of the blasting the enemies they approach us, getting ready to engage in melee combat. We manage to fragment a veteran tercio and disrupt a later tercio on the left side, and these muskets do indeed deal an insane amounts of damage, they typically deal 40-50 and can do up to 70!

While we do rout a few units, the enemy is undeterred and charge into our fortification Generally the assaults have been indecisive and have led to equal losses, which is bad for us as the the early tercios can take a lot while our muskets and our later tercios can't. They also finally move up their cavalry, I believe this happens in the game because apparently when the battle actually happened the Catholics were afraid another protestant army would show up. After a few rounds of melee the enemy manages to snow ball routs it and the cookie crumbles for us . But I will not stop until I see that this is scenarios has been defeated! After a few more tries and no real success, I have to go back to the drawing board and think about how to position my units most effectively.

I think back to the previous battle, there we had the arkebussiers right in the face of the enemy, perhaps we could do that again? Their cavalry wont be active for a few turns anyways so lets try it. So when selecting units at the beginning of the scenario:

• Exchange the kurassier for a arkebussier

This trade is cheaper, and yes as a cavalry unit the kurassier is worse, but when facing a tercio the guns do come in handy in being able to shoot 20ish each turn and will be more valuable in confusing the Catholics while they are in range of our muskets.

They manage to cause the chaos I need to disrupt most of the left flank and deal heavy causalities to some of the tercios on the right. We even get a really lucky rout off on the rightmost Catholic tercio! Although they will most likely rally (as they have a tendency to do) it gets it away from our line for the next few crucial turns.

This feels so good to see.

It is now turn 8 and so far 16% of our troops and 22% of the Catholics have routed. While this doesn't seem that impressive, I believe it is the best result I have had so far. Usually I can get 15% before our causalities start to rise way higher from the veteran tercios being in close combat and all their cavalry begin cycle charging. Honestly it can feel like a zerg rush sometimes. And what is great about this 22% is that its all infantry so far! With most of the remaining Catholic infantry having taken some losses from the muskets so hopefully it wont be too much longer before we can get them to auto-break. This is not helped by one of our later tercio's having left go of all discipline to chase a routed Catholic later tercio right into the middle of all the enemies infantry line. Now, the silver lining in this is that those units will try and shoot/melee this unit, giving us the opportunity to soften them up and get ready for the Catholic cavalry.

These tercio units just WONT drop in morale, it feels so difficult. One of these units could be down 800 out of 2000 men and wont change to fragmented or even disrupted. Little by little though it seems that we have gotten the upper hand here in this battle. Even though 21% of our units have routed, we keep the relative percentage the same (from 8% to 7%) so the Catholics have had 28% of their units routed. As stated this is a god send because the units represented here are mostly their infantry which is where the majority their firepower is contained. Also, that one tercio unit we routed at the beginning did manage to rally, so while it hasn't routed and does not contribute to this percentage it is effectively out of the battle.

At turn 13 we are so close to winning , we need just 1%!!!! I can taste the sweet, sweet victory! We also got the barrel explosion event and luckily didn't take the later tercio and it was just a musket unit that died, which funnily enough this death counts for the rout percentage calculation. So that event stopped me from winning this turn .

But... we do manage to win the next turn by charging down some fragmented cavalry and having the Catholic later tercio fall back from melee and focusing fire on it. But, I am not done. I will NOT rest until I have satisfied my bloodlust .

Basically I just destroy their left flank and gun down as many as possible on the right until I would say Im good. Very clearly I will win and be able to get rid of the rest of the Catholics. With that I can finally say farewell to the Battle of Wimpen. I would say it pushed me to be a bit more experimental with cavalry, how they can be used and how to position them. Even though it was only 4 units of arkebussiers, they are what allowed me to win. And all the firepower from the artillery and muskets of course.

Thanks for reading! Next battle will the one that I need to win to make my homeland proud . See you then.