Battleground 2024.
Through Rain and Snow and Gloom of Night ......
Well perhaps not gloom of night but plenty of the white stuff then rain . The first part of the trip to Battleground at the Middlesborough Sports Village on November 23rd was - shall we say - interesting. The whole journey under normal circumstance should have taken about an hour from my house. So 2 Hours 20 minutes later we finally get into the carpark. The weather had turned from snow to rain and sleet but we made it.
So now to the game.
Jim the Builder was in the chair and plumped for a 10mm Seven Years War game with his rather spiffing collection of little fellas- about 2000 or more on the table as it turned out. Prussians against Austrians and Russians. Models mostly Old Glory Grandscale 10 as you would expect. All painted by Jim.
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| Early in the game- Russian on their ridge looking at the Prussian masses adancing against them. |
Initially we had expecte four members of the Tantobie Warfare and Tactical Society to be present - but only 3 made it . A power cut in his area because of the snowfall meant Andrew the Tekkie had to bail at the last minute.
This meant that Shaun took the Prussians and I the allied forces. I slightly outnumbered the Prussians but they had superior artillery. As it happened I had an advantage of terrain thought that was not apparent at first perhaps.
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| The Austrians start their long march. |
I place the Russians on the ridge with their cavalry on their left then the Austrians continuing the line with the mass of Austrian cavalry on the left flank . My 'tactial plan' was to do a sort of reverse Leuthen- or was it a reverse Rossbach? sending the bulk of my cavalry aroud the lake and hopefully into the Prussian flank. The Prussian plan seemed to be to beat the artilleryless Russians off their ridge then fall on the out of position Austrians.
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| The Austrian cavalrygoing round the lake. |
Rules used were Warfare in the Age of Reason with a ferw local amendments to suit the smaller scale.
In the event it was a right ding-dong affair. The Russians took something of a pounding but gritted their teeth and hung on by the skin of same mixing my metaphor as I write ! All hung on them being able to hold out until the Austrian main assualt went in which because of the distance it had to cover- and some sterling resistance by one Prussian cavalry brigade took a mite longet than I'd hoped but in the end all went well (sort of) and the last untouched Prussian brigade was thinking darkly about how it had become the rearguard. The remaing Russians were in no fit state to pursue though the Austrian cavalry could have made life hard for the Prussians to get clear. However night had fallen- as in the show was closing- and it was time to pack up all those little fellas and get back home in the rain- which did take only a little over an hour.
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| Hard pounding The Russian in trouble hanging on- but only just. |
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| The Austrians finally mange to get to their objective / |
Battleground is afince local show and enjoyable and well run by Leon of Pendraken. I hope we will be doing another demo there next year. Mind you I hope the weather is better nd the cafe is a bit more efficient.
