Slitherine

For Round 4, we stay in Scandinavia, popping over the Baltic to see if the downtrodden Swedish peasants can do better than their Danish brothers.

Game - Swedish peasants 1542 v Swedish 1523-1559 (from Extra Nations v3)
Large armies, wide, agricultural terrain, open battle

Match-ups

Kiwiwarlord v doyley50 (w)
ratprince v Gort7078 (w)
gdod v GentlemanRanker )w)
warrior230 v snooky51 (w)
smjohnso77 v PeterthePainter (w)
Markleslie v Snugglebunnies (w)
Lascar v Awesum4 (w)

Nobles, please launch the games. Let's try to finish by 12th May please.

Kiwiwarlord (Swedish peasants 1542) v Doyley50 (Swedish 1523-1559)
Game set up,pwd 1234.

The union busting Snugglebunnies has banned the word and set up the game.

The FREEDOM FIGHTERS have accepted!

Have these nobles not learnt their lesson? Challenge accepted Nick.

How's the rebellion going fellow peasants? Mine seems to be held up by Swedes in the woods and ole King Cole sitting on his hill. Hopefully we can shift them with some well aimed pointy sticks! My artist is hurriedly sketching the scene as we speak.

I can't tell you about most of your comrades but those I came across did not fare well.

PeterthePainter (Nobility) beat SMJohnso77 (Peasants) 14 -43

Having rather stumbled upon the idea of marching forward to attack the peasants in the previous round, I decided to stick with it in this one. The question was would just three Landsknecht Keils be enough to take the initiative from a horde of peasants?

At the start of the eighth turn I felt the answer was no. I was 18-12 ahead, but on the right my massed arquebusiers and light troops where facing a large assortment of peasant spearmen, peasant missilemen, peasant arquebusiers and levies in such numbers that I felt they would be overwhelmed. In the centre right the three Landsknecht Keils with support from Noble Late Gendarmes and crossbowmen had routed two enemy pike blocks but they were outnumbered and it seemed doubtful they could rout enough of the enemy pikes before my right was annihilated. On the left where my four batteries of artillery were screened by lights and Late Gendarmes the opposing forces were not yet in close combat but eventually surely numbers would also tell there. However, I had reckoned without my arquebusiers shooting ability and the poor quality of the enemy forces, three enemy units broke under fire in the turn, enemy cohesion fell and a squadron of Late Gendarmes ran rampage through the disordered enemy. There was no turn 9.

Well played to SMJohnso77 it was a great game, if somewhat shorter than we both expected!

Hi
Sorry for the delay we finally finished our game in round three with a win to me 55% vs 60%

Hi
Sorry for the delay we finally finished our game in round three with a win to me 55% vs 60%

Phew! We got away with it again (just),

GentlemanRanker’s well-fed nobility defeated GDod’s starving peasantry by 52 : 60.

The pious nobles were blessed with a large hill, dotted with rough ground and woods, fronted by an ample forest. Landsknechts and massed arquebusiers formed up in a tight defensive position on the hill, while more arquebusiers and crossbowmen poured enthusiastically, but as it turned out unwisely, into the forest. GDod maximised on peasant pikemen, taking only two of the five possible units of Landsnechts, and the usual extensive complements of medium supports. He took no cavalry; they must have eaten all the horses by that point.

The problem with the forest deployment quickly became apparent, the noble troops were packed in so tightly they could not manoeuvre or evade; engaged by the peasants from the front, then easily flanked, they squandered their most flexible troops – the light arquebusiers - trapped in the front rank. The best that could be said of that debacle is that it took the whole game to kill them all, and clear the forest.

The peasant pikemen split into two wings, the main group advancing directly up the hill to engage the noble’s Landsknechts, with a strong enveloping force moving left, around the forest, aimed at the nobles rear. A force of noble gendarmes and crossbowmen attempted to slow this flanking force down, but this was hampered by the fact that the mounted knights would get a fit of the vapours and run for home whenever a bunch of peasants so much as leapt up behind them and shouted “Boo”. On the other wing GDod sacrificed a handful of spearmen and peasant missilemen to keep the rest of the noble cavalry from intervening in the main battle, and achieving something more useful. A trade-off I am sure he was only too happy to have made.

The main force of peasant pikemen arrived on the hill and charged everything in sight. The noble artillery on top of the hill was mostly masked by the troops below, and the noble’s firepower did little to stop this onslaught; things were beginning to look bleak for the nobles, and the peasants were twenty points ahead, when the Landsknecht quality began to tell, multiple peasant pike units disrupted, then fragmented, then a sudden cascading cohesion loss. While this evened that score, the nobles were not out of danger yet, with numerous units of peasant medium troops swarming around, there ensued a clumsy ballet of manoeuvre trying to prevent the pursuing Landsknect’s stylish slashed-pantaloon clad derrieres from being rear charged. Several units of arquebusiers and crossbowmen had to be sacrificed in this endeavour.

In the end the game came down to rallies, or to be more precise, the lack thereof. The peasant flanking force just was a couple of turns from arriving, and totally crushing the now sparse and scattered noble forces, but to do so they needed at least one rally from broken to stay in the game. This did not happen. Sorry Gavin – robbed again!

The Swedes of gort7078 defeated the Swedish peasants of the ratprince 54-63! It was a very fierce and close battle! After three straight defeats it was good to win a game!

Well done Don, you may be on a roll... don't forget to pick up our FOGM game sometime.

Great Lords of Svealand the peasant rabble of the upstart yeoman warrior230 have been routed 60-45. His mass of pikes were formidable but were worn down by the fast and accurate shots of our most noble and certainly not commoner crossbowmen

Round 4 Result

KiwiWarlord's 42'952 Swedish Peasants (33%) Defeat Doyley50's 19,648 Swedish Aristocrats (58%)

There were many sharpened sticks broken and some cunning ambushes by the Aristocratic OverLords but weight of numbers counted in the end. Close game and well played by Alan.

Awesum4 has ensured the continuance of the God-given system of things by defeating Lascar's peasant rebellion by 45% to 20%.
We sited our guns on a hill to our rear with our massed shooters arrayed in front of them with our pike on both ends of the line. Our light foot and light horse skirmished with his right wing units aided by the artillery while our horse went in wide arcs around both flanks.
Lascar refused to advance into the wall of shooting and we slowly weakened his right wing before attacking it with mounted and a single pike as he broke we advanced the shooters.
Our right wing cavalry moved right around his army destroying a few peasant units on the way then moved to attack his rear.
eventually the accumulated loses were too much and his army broke.

SnuggleBunnies (shiny rich dudes) defeats markleslie (grubby vegetable eaters) 64-39

GG, a tough battle with only 3 units of pike available, but massed arquebus fire eventually cracked enough units to drag us across the finish line.

That was a decisive round with the Swedish peasants decisevely, in fact completely, crushed.

So we move to to the next round.

ahuyton wrote: ↑Tue May 10, 2022 4:28 pm That was a decisive round with the Swedish peasants decisevely, in fact completely, crushed.

Not quite Alan, the Swedish Kiwi Peasants are installing a socialist leadership in Swedish Kiwiland

KiwiWarlord wrote: ↑Tue May 10, 2022 9:07 pm

ahuyton wrote: ↑Tue May 10, 2022 4:28 pm That was a decisive round with the Swedish peasants decisevely, in fact completely, crushed.

Not quite Alan, the Swedish Kiwi Peasants are installing a socialist leadership in Swedish Kiwiland
Kiwi Peasant.jpg

Sorry, Brian, for this oversight, well done for beating the trend.