Maurice - Kolin 1757

This week at the Uni we played Gary's scenario of the Battle of Kolin 1757, using the excellent Maurice rules by Sam Mustafa.

The Prussians were composed of 10/12mm Pendraken miniatures from Gary's impressive collection, bolstered by my single battalion...

The Austrian's were from Peter's equally impressive collection, which he came in specially to drop off, since he had (a more) social engagement to attend...

Kolin is billed as Frederick's first defeat, and indeed, developed from the eponymous scenario in Maurice, our battle started with the Austrians being well aware of Frederick's rather obvious attempt at a flank march along the Kaiser Strasse from their vantage point up on the Krzeczor hill...

That left us the Prussians with no choice but to rely upon our 'deadly volleys' attribute to fight out way through superior numbers to the objective.

Daniel here in the light blue shirt had the centre sector, and together with Caesar in the grey shirt as Frederick, they would unsubtly take the direct route to the objective.

I was out on our left flank, and my orders were to bombard the town of Krzeczor and then back up the main advance, feeding in from the left.

The Austrians had obviously thought up a far more cunning plan - knowing Alan we knew it would involve cavalry flanking moves, but as events showed the entire Austrian team became cavaliers for the evening! Anyhow, we concluded that the KISS principle applied so rather unsubtly deployed everything in the centre opposite the objective...

The key aspect of Maurice is that, volleying aside, as a commander you can rarely activate more than one command per turn. So you really have to keep focussed on the objective.

The other necessary skill is knowing when to deploy from march column into line - something that Daniel, in his first game, got bang on!

I, on the other hand, completely ballsed it up! However, as Alan, my opposite number, was preoccupied with his cavalry, I got away with it - and pending action higher up on the plateau, there wasn't a great deal for the infantry to do until the Grim Reaper thinned out the throng a little...

My artillery, on the other hand, had had a busy time of it, and with 2 successive 'Well laid guns' cards my bombardment of Krzeczor had gone rather well.

Which allowed my infantry to pretty much stroll in and take possession....

By now Alan was getting tremendously excited about his flanking cavalry move, and, blessed with a timely 'Coordinated' event card, I felt it would be too rude to continue ignoring him, so I moved my cavalry up greet his horse. After all, the artillery had done its job and my infantry really weren't going anywhere soon...



Meanwhile, back in the centre the Austrians were clearly plotting some cheez - all that time fighting against the Ottomans had made them devious...

And sure enough, just as Daniel's manly Prussian infantry was going to overwhelm the Austrian massed batteries in a bluff, no nonsense fashion you'd expect from God fearing Lutherans...

Those sneaky Austrians played the 'That's not on the map' card to introduce a swamp right in our brave boy's path...

Followed up with another cavalry charge from John in the centre and Bryan on the left, this time wholly unexpected, and accompanied by much sucking of teeth - cavalry charging infantry in the Seven Years War - shurely not!

But they were, and they did, and whilst the lead regiments didn't survive, they did do a lot of damage to the boys in Prussian blue - in fact our Army Morale was beginning to look precarious! And to be fair to Alan, his cavalry adventure wasn't a complete sideshow...

Since his 4 Cavalry Regiments bested my 3, and cut down some gunners to boot, all adding to the toll! However, for once Alan didn't have a monopoly of 'Stirrups In' cards, so I still had some horse left at the end of the clash. Not that it was much use up where the action was - I could barely find space to unleash my infantry's 'deadly volleys'!

There followed several more moves characterised by the Prussian Infantry on the plateau attempting to make good use of their firepower against the superior numbers of Austrians, but with a much smaller army morale rating than the Kaiserliks, it would be a race to see if we could inch our way to the objective before our morale broke...

Photo courtesy of Kaptain Kobold's Maria Theresa press agency

Which it eventually did...Congratulations to the Austrian team for a very active defence using unconventional tactics at exactly the right time and place to keep plugging the gaps between us and the objective. The very fine run nature of the ending shows what a well balanced scenario it was - thanks Gary!

Alan, aka Kaptain Kobold, has posted a teaser to his forthcoming Kolin production here:
The Stronghold Rebuilt - Kolin-preview - I've already pinched the main photo, above, but I recommend investigating the eventual full length feature.

Talking about blogs, if you want to know more about the real Kolin, then do check out this awesome site:Obscure battles - Kolin-1757