Battle of Moncontour, October 1569

Back to the French Wars of Religion, for my last Shedquarters game before Christmas. Moncontour is that battle in Oman's "Art of War in the XVIth Century" which has the engraving but no proper map. This refight was based upon O'Brien de Clare's account in his excellent book, "One Faith, One Law, One King", which I have recommended before.

I've fiddled around with the troop numbers and layout slightly to get it on the table so it can be viewed reasonably well by my camera set up. The Huguenots are the red blocks, the Royalist Catholics are the blue. The darker green represents slightly higher ground, but I'm not convinced I've got this completely right. I tried to look at the ground on Google Maps, but there are no roads across the battlefield, so you can't get a street level view.

With temperatures at about -3 degrees, I went out early and put on the heaters to warm SHQ up a bit, before everyone got there. I'd repositioned one of the wi-fi nodes to get it above person height, and run several checks on the speed, to try and mitigate any problems I might have after the last fiasco.

Tim & Phil were in Shedquarters, pushing lead for Richard and Dave. Chris and I performed the same function for Jon and Will.

Here's the figures set up. We're using my "28mm" collection that I started building at university. Lots of heavy metal. For the rules we used my grid based version of Jon's grid based version of Basic Impetus. I regret to say that after my last game I noted that some changes were needed. I have done next to no work on them since. More unforgiveable is that I hadn't got straight in my head how I wanted the rules to play. This may have degraded the player experience a bit.

Both sides pushed forwards in the first turn. This is a view from behind the Huguenot right flank, commanded by Will. 

The Huguenot Gendarme cavalry is their real killing weapon, so they were pushed forwards to engage the enemy, whilst their infantry held the crest line.

An opening shot by the Huguenot artillery hits the Swiss pike in front of them.

Jon's cavalry wing is all lined up, ready to sweep all before them. Will is a bit more tentative. Phil is moving his Swiss up, probably as the centrepiece of his attack.

Richard is trying to close Jon down with his infantry, whilst the reiters on the Huguenot left exchange pistol shots.

Throwing caution to the winds, Jon charges.

His left most Gendarmes smash the facing Italians and pursue them down the table edge. His other unit plough into some French regular infantry, and are immediately halted.

In the Huguenot right centre, Will charges into Phil's reiters.

The first round of combat bundles Phil back, but he stabilises it all in the second round and the melee halts in the middle of the Catholic front line.

Jon breaks Richard's infantry, and pursues into the Catholic rear. I started having issues here with how manoeuvrable I wanted units to be. 

On the right, Phil & Will's reiters were pistoling each other. Will brought up his Enfants Perdu to provide supporting fire.

Having destroyed the reiters in the right centre, Will was counter charged, and driven back to the foot of the ridge line. Phil failed to pursue.

Phil charged again, and Will's men were driven back further.

Phil then brought up his other Gendarmes, to exploit the advantage. Will's unit is all but shot.

Richard pressed forwards against the Enfants Perdu defending the enclosure. The enclosure is an invention of mine to simulate what looks like a narrow defile on the ground. The reiters and Enfants Perdu inflict a bit of damage. I'm not sure I have the firing rules quite right.

Richard clears the enclosure by charging it with his Chevaux Legers.  

He destroys one unit of Enfants Perdu in short order...

...and then crashes through to hit the unit behind. Much to his chagrin they put up stout resistance, and repulse the cavalry.

A quick long range shot so you can get some perspective of what's going on. The game hangs in the balance, with Catholic cavalry poised to breakthrough in the centre.

Will's last unit of Gendarmes and Phil's reserve of the same charge each other.

Phil prevails, and the pride of the Huguenot army is certainly on the back foot now.

Phil charges Will's exhausted Gendarmes in the centre, breaking them and routing the Huguenot foot behind them. His other unit charges the Enfants Perdu, who prove to be a tougher target initially.

The Swiss slowly move forwards. It feels like this flank is building to a climax.

Jon swings his left flank Gendarmes round, and overruns Richard's artillery. The manor house/farm yard in the centre gave me some game issues, which I fudged really badly. Again, not enough pre-thought put into what I wanted.

The reiters out there on the left carry on their own private war.

Phil succeeded in destroying the Enfants Perdu, but was driven back by sustained fire from the Huguenot foot on the ridge line. Jon's landsknechts occupy the enclosure.

Phil's Swiss close on the ridge.

Will's last remaining Gendarmes are caught once more in the valley.

Jon's landsknechts storm out of the enclosure into the French infantry screaming "Hüt' Dich, Bau'r, ich komm!"*

On the other flank, the landsknechts storm down off the ridge into the Swiss, who they have at some disadvantage. It's all boiling up nicely.

And then the internet crashes in spectacular fashion. Total collapse. Red malfunction light on the mesh hubs and the main router. This is nothing at all to do with the Openreach engineer working outside the neighbour's house ("The Gigaclear cable is not in this junction box"). As it is getting a bit late, we close the game down. 

The game had its moments, and I may go out and try and work out a conclusion. My feeling is that the Catholics are in the stronger position, despite having lost more stuff. I suspect Jon might not agree, and if he can get his cavalry on his left to intervene in a decisive fashion things might turn their way. 

However it did not go smoothly. As I said at the beginning I hadn't done the requisite prep, and that came back to bite me. I'm not sure what I want to happen in certain places, nor exactly how I want the game to play out. The grid solves a load of problems, but then introduces others. Unlike Jon I'm not as confident with the core product as I should be, so I need to do a lot more work here. Still, it was good to get these guys out again, and I'm sure we'll see them again in the coming year.

*"Look out farm boy, I'm coming!", the battle cry of the landsknecht, and one of the more obscure bits of graffiti on the toilet wall of the Students Union at my alma mater in the Graves building, where the wargames club used to meet..