Friday, August 2, 2019

Another game of Tercios - Full of Inopportune Moments

We got together to try another game of Tercios, featuring two TYW armies in a small attacker/defender action.  The Mercenary mostly Scots against some TYW Imperials.

The opening setup shows the Scots preparing to move down from the heights to engage the Imperials.



An initial bad positioning of one of the two P&S units for the Imperials was rectified by their moving back into the walled fields near the center of the picture.  Fortunately on the second turn the Imperials won the initiative and were able to complete this movement without alarm...

The Scots placed all their cavalry on their left wing (foreground in the pictures) and hoped to drive the fewer units of Imperials foo and away from their two infantry units.


Here they come down the hill in turn 2.

The Imperial artillery was in fine form, shooting up the Scot infantry unit at the top of the picture and it was driven off the table eventually by combined fire of the infantry and artillery of the Imperial left flank.

The crux of the fight was the several advances by the Scot mounted arquibusiers against their Imperial counterparts.  The fight went back and forth, casualties went against the Scots on more than one occasion by a tie or a single loss so they had to bounce back, take some fire from the Imperial foot and Dragoons and then try to advance again.


Eventually the Scots had to pull back 2 or 3 of their mounted units to reform them (take off wear points) and with their attack stalled and their infantry facing one on one odds, the commander wisely pulled back to maneuver the Imperials out of their position by a clever flank movement overnight.....



We do enjoy the use of the unit order cards provided in the rules as you have to give some thought to when to activate each unit for best effect.  Even so sometimes the dice fall against you at inopportune moments and although you caused 6 hits the opponent promptly rolls off 5 of them making you the loser in a 1 to 2 loss situation.  C'est la vie...