Castille's Last Stand

So the game drew to its inevitable conclusion only worse. A pretty abject performance from the Imperialists and their commander concluded with the left flank annihilated, the French across the river in the centre and the right flank standing proud and undaunted; the last being essentially due to the fact that they had seen no real action.

Well that was crap

It was, it goes without saying, a thoroughly enjoyable game. I stood very little chance from the beginning due to being a D8 army up against a D12, but other than that luck was reasonably even. My big mistake was to spurn the chance to charge my cavalry into the back of a Swiss pike block. I figured that my Landsknechts would win from the front and so swung the cavalry on to the flank of a unit of Gerndarmes. Not only did the Landsknechts not win the melee (as in they lost) but the Italian cavalry were rebuffed by the Gendarmes and then attacked in the rear and destroyed by a miraculously rallied unit of Swiss halberdiers. For one brief tantalising moment - specifically when I won on Peter's only Lull card and turned a March card - it seemed that all might yet come good; but it wasn't to be. And the rest of the game was pretty much summed up by my two Spanish colunnelas (my best troops as James reminded me on several occasions) marching heroically forward into the teeth of the French guns and then, somewhat less heroically, running away again.