Ravenna

 There has been the first wargame of the year, the snow having cleared and Storm Éowyn not having yet arrived. We are going to have a run of Italian Wars games as the one we played a couple of months ago convinced James that the rules needed to be tweaked to reflect current thinking. What does that mean? Well, a bit more classic Piquet, a lot more streamlined. Now you know.

The chosen battle was Ravenna, which I know we have played many times, but about which I can remember very little. I was the defenders, which I'm pretty sure made me the Spanish; should you know differently feel free to leave a comment. There was a certain amount of making it up as we went along. but the game flowed well and finished easily in one evening. Whilst there were a series of cavalry melees on the left flank, the key action was as shown above. A whole line of pike blocks charged a single tercio behind a barricade. The white dice you can see relate to a somewhat complicated mechanism for reflecting stubbornness. I never like to see a rule without using it, so I spent morale freely to maintain my position at the defences and repel all three pike blocks. Unfortunately I spent the whole lot, which meant I had lost. A more sensible strategy might have been to withdraw the battered tercio at some point and let the pike blocks face the fresh one in reserve. Next time.