. Now for this scenario time we play as the swedes ( 
) 'and' as the saxons. Now saxons are present, but that's about it, you cant give them any orders and generally will refuse to do anything. Hopefully we will follow the historical battle and crush the imperial army!
The first thing that struck me is just how... open the battlefield was, so yet another battle all about careful positioning and precise flanking moves. Outside of the odd rough ground and only instance of terrain needed to be considered is on the left flanks... where the saxons are
. Oh well, hope they will be able to utilize as best as possible, foreshadowing is a technique that...This is my first time playing the battle so I didn't know what to expect and since we have a pretty good defensive setup so I just decided to hold my units and react to what the enemy does.
By round 3 all that they have done is send cavalry on both sides to meet our flanks, so accordingly I set up our right flank to protect the muskets with the zones of control. Alongside that a few Salvos to assist our defense as their infantry seems content on staying where it is and we have the artillery advantage with more guns and being able to target early tercios (which basically have a huge arrow saying shoot me).
Now for the left flank, covered by the saxons I will assist with a push behind the enemy cavalry while the saxons (hopefully) use the advantageous hill to damage and delay as much as possible until I can relief them.
The next turn is when the real fighting begins, as the first musket shooting and melee phase happens.
The muskets are providing covering fire as some horses attempt to outflank the enemy cavalry. little bit of poor positing here but I thing we still have the upper hand with all of our firepower. Especially when compared to:
The saxon front is a complete paper tiger, no setting up or strengthening their position. These raw pike and unit units are completely left out to dry as their cavalry just stands there doing f*** all! I don't even think we will be able to save anything with the maneuver we started but we should try.
Well I say that and literally one turn later and the entire flank is just gone. I don't know how else to say it, they just all left. Is the saxon king a imperial puppet????
I have just conceded that our left flank is going to be destroyed, with inconclusive fighting on the right side as well I fear a restart may be on the table to try and make sure we can win.
We have some pockets here and there but they will be routed and taking a look at our victory condition we can see that it will almost be impossible to come back from. We are at 29% whereas the Catholics are only at 3%! Even enough we don't lose now, we only need 11% while we need to push the Catholics an extra 12% just to make sure we don't lose and then need to overcome the 25% difference to win.
So for the second attempt we just leave the saxons, I'm sorry but they are a liability *not* an asset. We have to utilize the minimum of having 40% routed needed to lose, we have to hold out until we can stabilize our difference with the enemy as the saxons represent around 25% of our army. Therefore, I would rather have my left flank be secured behind some of our Swedish savlo infantry to a) reinforce the fighting on the right so that we can win it and then use that to slam against Catholic later tercios which can be rear charged. b) to help create better defenses on our left and center with a few of the additional salvos we have behind our checkerboard formation. I will also have our muskets move up a little to start firing on the enemy cavalry before they encounter ours and to potentially bait them into attacking and chasing into our lines.
Here we see the great migration, although I decided to leave the muskets. Using some nearby rough terrain they could prove to inflict some sizable causalities before they are needed back in formation.
Okay, maybe not the best idea but wasn't really any space for them anywhere else, I try and see if they could be in the corner of our defense line to help strength it and stop any pesky cavalry from sneaking in. It also caused the enemy artillery to focus on them for a turn which is a nice surprise. Also seems that the saxons managed to last quite a bit longer than the previous attempt which is nice as its turn 5 and they haven't all routed yet! Still not enough to make me regret my decision of retreating our left flank as they are taking heavy causalities.
We are also managing really well on the right flank, while the current fighting is a little indecisive we have managed to get a horse unit around they're lines to initiate a rear attack, and on turn 7 manage to single handily win the front by routing a enemy and charging into !2! more
causing all three to rout and one or two more to chain rout.
By turn 14 the real fight begins as the main infantry begin to exchange fire with one another, we won the right flank they won the left we have to push this asymmetry to our advantage to offset the 17% rout difference we have currently (our 37% vs Catholic 20%). I would say this is already a good difference as most of 'our' routs are the saxons (outside of an odd musket and horse unit
) and all the Catholic routs come from our hard earned fights (and lucky rolls). As stated before our goal will be to use our success on the right to flank their later tercios (which happen to be mostly on the right flank 
). Our center and left cares only about being defensive and making sure the line holds.
Here we can see that plan in motion, a single cavalry unit will take out the enemies cannons as they are left defenseless and a few others are set to fight against some rallied enemy units. Some infantry units will join in the flank and help crush the enemy.
This plan combined with the surprising effectiveness of the Salvo's charge attack and we have most of the later tercios routing in just one turn! However the corner of our front desperately needs more reinforcements and a relief force sooner rather than later. You can also see that I decided to attack a little at the very bottom of our line, this turns out to be a mistake.
The surprisingly swift victory we got on the right side and the enemies sustained damage on critical units holding our line turns the front into a mess and a few turns later we are have managed to push the rout difference to a manageable 11% but we are at 53%. And as can be seen at the bottom right, the three units of horses I used to try and 'flank' an enemy's horse, well, they just got pounced on and devastated. So we have to be careful and quick in hitting the Catholics big boys.
And by some miracle we get it! The routs were briefly higher and over 60% for the Catholics, but the game only checks the win conditions at the beginning of our turn and thus the Catholics managed to rout a few more of our units as well and we both got over 60%. I thought the battle would somehow end in a tie, given the context of this message but we are greeted to this screen afterwards:
So I'll take it! It did come right down to the wire but I feel the winner is clearly the Swedish, we were just beginning to rout their entire infantry with our shock tactics. This is where the ill fated attack a few turns ago with the horses comes into question as if I didn't do it I think we could have easily have the Catholics go over 60% without us having the same issue.
Either way, it was an incredibly fun scenario, I would say the best one so far as the asymmetry in losing the left and winning the right led to a lot of on the spot changes in attacks and plans with mistakes on both sides leading to this victory on a knifes edge. The biggest learning point I think would be just how effective the Salvos are with their charges! If backed up with some firepower beforehand it is almost a guaranteed fragment if not rout. See you next time where the enemy learns from their mistakes and we officially leave the early tercios in the dust.