Terci-oh No!

Last weekend saw Rocky run another game of Tercios with his modifications.

This was another engagement between the Spanish and French in the Netherlands. 

The Spanish were largely deployed in a depression with a stream running through it, and were commanded by Kelly and Scott. The French had a more open deployment between a town and a hill, commanded by myself and Rocky. 

The last time I played, the French largely stood back and waited for the Spanish to advance into their small arms range. For this game, I played more aggressively and stepped off with my infantry battalions. 

I sent most of my cavalry on a flanking maneuver around the town that dominated the open flank, while I had my artillery concentrated on the hill. 

The Spanish sent their caballeros and musketeers to cover the advance of their tercios. 

The French battalions were split into two groups; one on the left that halted to engage with oncoming Spanish cavalry and infantry, and another on the right that continued to advance.

However, the right-wing group of battalions was thrown back by the Spanish tercios, and worryingly the large unit of Weimer German mercenaries was routed!

Over in the separate engagement, while my musketeers had scattered the Spanish skirmishers occupying the town, the routed infantry was replaced by a full tercio. Which discouraged my own skirmishers from advancing.

You can see my cavalry turning to potentially engage with the tercio, but I decided against it. Even charging into the infantry's flank likely wouldn't give my saber-armed cavalry a decent change of winning. 

My reserve cavalry units, having bided their time on the left flank, charged out and routed a Spanish tercio, while general infantry scrum continued on. 

The French cavalry continued to maneuver on the far flank. The Spanish had diverted another tercio, supported by caballeros, to counter the French cavalry. 

The Spanish had a very lucky turn where they won the initiative and managed to remove a number of disorder markers from their infantry units. Had the French gone first, it was likely that their combined firepower would have shattered the Spanish infantry, as Disorder markers in Tercios decreases a unit's ability to save against hits. 

Unfortunately, my cavalry attack floundered in the face of the Spanish opposition. We've noticed that French saber-cavalry struggles to deal with Spanish caballeros in combat, even when the French cavalry managed to charge in unhindered by wear or disorder. 

The infantry battle was also quickly bogging down as both sides tried to get their wearied units to follow orders. 

Facing some disastrous combat results, the remaining French cavalry began to retreat, covered by musketeer fire. 

Two more Spanish units left the table, even as French units continued to take hits. 

Over on the other flank, the remaining French cavalry was hurriedly redeploying to fill gaps. However, the game came to a close as French fire routed more Spanish tercios. The French could declare themselves victors of a hard-fought battle. 

The discussion that followed the game largely centered on a couple of aspects of the rules that the group believes needs fixing. First, the ability of units to fire through 3" gaps between other units. This allows for the French to really hammer the melee-focused tercios before the Spanish are able to close. This has been changed to not allowing fire if there is a friendly unit directly to a unit's front, which means gaps need to be wider. 

Second, saber-wielding cavalry (i.e., French cavalry) was regularly being outperformed by the Spanish caballeros. They've now received a bump in their to-hit score against cavalry to even the odds.

We also discussed deployment methods and other period tactics.  

As always, a great game run by Rocky, and hopefully we'll see Tercios hit the table again soon.