Nobody gets justice

 "Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck." - Orson Welles

So, wargaming has taken place. Peter and I played a Seven Years War scenario developed by James, which can be seen on his blog. I drew the Prussians and had to hold two hills and/or capture the road exit on the Russian side of the table. I was keen not to over-think my initial deployments, resulting in a massive under-think, with my units spread rather thinly on the hills and rather too many of them in the central village. The theory there was that they could be switched to either hill as appropriate. I chose the option for extra forces which included the most infantry. Having drawn an additional musket reload card my logic was that I would be more likely to be able to fire when I wanted, plus of course it gave me units with which to hold the ground. I never really had any intention of trying to capture the road exit.

Peter massed the Russians on either flank and attacked through the terrain. On my left I had a small initial success when my Hussars routed the leading unit of infantry in the woods, but they pursued and were destroyed, and that turned out to be the only melee that I won in the entire game. On my right the Russian cavalry quickly crossed the stream and marsh and eventually outflanked and destroyed my cavalry. There was a moment where I had the opportunity to advance my infantry from that hill and, bringing my extra fire power into play, shoot down his cavalry. But I didn't. Nor did I move my infantry in the village to either flank at any sort of early opportunity. In fact I left it until they could only manoeuvre  across the face of his guns or backstep slowly.

So, my set-up was dreadful, my play was appalling, I lost all the melees and on every morale challenge that I issued I rolled a one. How then, I hear you ask, did I win? Luck, comes the answer. I simply won all the initiative, especially on the second night. The Russian progress was slow and made them vulnerable to my artillery, and I drew the necessary combination of cards to speedily retire my best unit (some superior Grenadiers) from one field in front of the village when they came under artillery fire and then miraculously advance them forward on the other side of the road at exactly the right time. We both failed Major Morale twice (a cumulative probability of somewhat less than 0.1% given how few units we had lost) and Peter ran out of morale chips the second time it happened to him while I had only one left myself.

It was a good scenario - although the turn limit was far too small and we abandoned it almost immediately - and deserves replaying sometime, preferably with someone who knows what they are doing in command of each side. Hopefully more photos will appear on James' blog sometime.