Black Powder at Kleine-Klumpendorf

We finally got a chance to try Black Powder with the Tricorne era last night. Keith came over with his small forces of SYW Swedes and Russians. I set out a larger force of Prussians and thinking that when Barry arrived he'd reinforce Keith with some brigades of his Reichsarmee. Fortunately we gave Walter my embryonic Austrian force since the Reichsarmee never showed.

Keith's Russians deploy:

Keith's Swedes deploy:

Prussians cross the Klumpenbruch:

The Prussian center. The cavalry reserve got a blunder roll early on and left the table. I forgot to roll for their return until the end of the game.

Dan goes looking for trouble with my Freikorps out on the Prussian right wing. They did pretty well considering most of them had the 'unreliable' rule. One battalion charged a Russian battery and would have won the fight except we gave the Russian musketeers the 'steadfast' rule allowing them to pass their first break test! Curses. The double blues didn't have the stamina to go two rounds with the Russians. But the other two battalions got tucked into a village and held off the Austrians. The Bosniaks didn't do so well against the Russian hussars but they held the flank for most of the game at least.

Russian jeagers screen the advance, blocking the fire from my massed 12 pounder positional battery. Somehow using skirmishers to stop the fire from heavy guns seems a bit cheesey but I can't find anything in the rules stating that skirmishers can't stop artillery fire. Otherwise the Russian march columns coming up behind would've made juicy targets! As it was the damned jaegers out shot my guns. I had the Leib-Garde in support, I should have sent them forward to roust out the jaegers and clear the field of fire. Or prolong into cannister range!

More Russians advancing in the center. (No one has limbers, so the Russian guns are reversed to show they are limbered.)

The Prussian positional battery with Frederick behind.

The Prussian center advances.

The Prussian left deploys to meet some Cossacks, who got beaten up pretty badly, but they did keep this brigade from turning the allied right, so they earned their pay.

Swedes come up on the Russian right:

The main battle lines come to grips looking from the Prussian left/allied right towards the village of Kleine-Klumpendorf in the background where Dan's Freikorps are fighting desperately against Walter's Austrians.


Casualties start to accumulate on the Russian grenadiers.



Russian dragoons get two moves and swing out into position to charge. Better win the initiative roll next turn!

Nope! Having the 'Form Square' rule would have come in handy right about now. This is going to hurt.
The Swedish grenadiers also charged from the front (you can barely notice them in front of my musketeers). Surprisingly both Prussian battalions survived (damn good break test roll really) and only had to recoil one move.

But by this time I had Russian hussars circling around Klumpendorf on my right, where Dan was pretty shot up and what he had left was pinned down in the town. Mike over on the left was ready to advance again, but it was too little too late really. I blundered with the Red Hussars who decided to charge forward into a Russian battery, rather than deploy to cover the crumbling right flank. So while the Red Hussars kept the Russians distracted it was time to withdraw before things became a rout.

All in all, not bad. All the previous discussion about troop ratings and staff etc. (on the Black Powder yahoo group, this blog and some emails) pretty much went for nought as we got some troops on the table and just got stuck in. I'd forgotten that some of my gaming friends really know sod-all about the era, so having predone rosters so everyone can see what they've got is the way to go. But it was nice to try a few more of the special rules and see what surprising changes occur from increasing or decreasing the stamina by one!

The armies are 15mm, mostly Old Glory with some Essex mixed in.