Battle of Reichenberg 1757 : SYW

It has been a while since we played with our SYW collections, we have fought the majority of the larger Prussian vs Austrian battles so we are now exploring some of the smaller battles. The battle of Reinchenberg on the 21st April 1757 was part of the Third Silesian War. The battle involved a corps or so on each side, the Prussians commanded by Marshal Von Bevern and the Austrians were under Count Konigsegg.

The two armies were marching somewhat in parallel when the Austrian took up a defensive position close to the town of Reinchenberg, but when they came under serious pressure they chose to pull back giving the victory to Bevern who captured a significant amount of Austrian supplies.

A couple of useful map from the web

Martin had set up the battle, the Austrians holding the two emplacements on the higher ground. The objectives for the Prussians are to take the high ground and if possible cut the road and thus trapping the Austrian army.

The Prussian left wing prepares to assault the high ground

Both forces have their centre dominated by cavalry, the Prussians seek to block any Austrians crossing the river

On the Prussian left wing they are assaulting the earthworks on the high ground, the Prussians have split their cavalry who have then been able to turn the earthworks and support the assault

On their left the Prussians have a tougher job, fighting up hill into defensible earthworks !

The rest of the Prussian cavalry has been thrown back from the river, but luckily reserves have arrived to strengthen their centre

After a hard fight the Prussians have forced the earthworks on the left, but they don’t have enough strength to push down the hill to the villages on the road

The Prussian cavalry has regrouped in the centre and their reserve infantry brigade prepares to cross the river and drive the Austrian cavalry away

On the Prussian right, the earthworks have been taken but at significant cost and when the Austrian reserves arrive they can’t hold onto the objective

Prussian reserves crossing the river

They drive the Austrian cavalry gradually back towards the road

The position at the end of the battle the Prussians have snatched a victory having taken and held one earthwork and cut the road. The Austrians have retaken the second earthworks, with the Prussian right wing pulling back to a defensive position.

A great battle and it reminded us how much we enjoy these SYW battles and we are now searching out some more for the future 👍

Also managed a bit of painting this week completing some KGL Hussars for my British peninsular army

This gives me two units of Hussars for the British which is enough, I certainly don’t enjoy painting Hussars way too much lace and bits. These will have to do and are ok if you don’t look too closely.

That’s it for now thanks for checking in this week

Matt ❤️

Battleground Show and lots of other stuff from last week 😀

It has been a busy week, 1 funeral, 1 reunion and two games so this is a mixed bag to catch up on the blog. First up a plug for the Battleground Show which is next Saturday.

For several years I have put on a small participation game, this year I wanted to make use of the recently painted Uboat as part of my Operation Sealion campaign. A few final touches to the setup are needed this week.

But here is the basic layout, the Germans are looking to capture a number of objectives around the harbour, the game itself will be very simple. Anybody at the show or in the area come over and play or just say hello 👍

Last week saw a return to Middle Earth for a battle

As a ‘pick up’ game two equal forces charged onto the table

“They have a troll” !

Warg riders face off against Gondorian infantry who form into a shield wall

After several turns of combat the ‘evil’ forces of Sauron get the better of it and the dark rider charges into finish of the Gondor scouts.

….then dash it Eomer charges in from behind rolls some lucky dice and the evil shade is despatched to the underworld fun all the same 😀

I’ve been in London for a couple of days catching up with some friends..…I found time for some research into possible future projects at the British museum ?

By chance the trip also coincided with an temporary exhibition at the British library on the history of Fantasy literature sponsored as it happens by Wayland Games

A whole mixed bag of stuff and this is just a few snaps as I walked round, above an original by Alan Lee….hard not to be inspired by his artwork

A Warhammer battle found its way into the exhibition

A first addition of the Hobbit

Links back to classical literature, here the Iliad 

and a copy of Beowulf , lots of their stuff so if you are stuck in London with an hour to spend worth a look.

Following our last SYW battle Martin and I decided to see how a non-historical SYW campaign might work, i won’t go into the details here as we are still developing the mechanics but after developing a hex based map and a exchanging a number of moves two of our armies clashed

We then played out the battle this weekend

The battlefield turned out to be rolling hills with the four villages as objectives, the Prussians are advancing across the table looking to capture the bridge in the village in the distance.

Using Honours of war we rolled for a our generals abilities and a flurry of 6’s meant pretty much all of the Austrians and two of the Prussian brigades would be hot headed and dashing. Unfortunately for the Prussians this effected them badly. Having set up anchoring their left flank in the village they were forced to charge out towards the Austrians !

Lucky they have cavalry support, across the rest of the battlefield musket fire  rings out

The Austrians decided to advance 

They focus on the Prussian  centre where a worrying gap develops ?

At the other end of the battlefield the Prussians have at least made it to the objective, must now they must hold it

This they do for several turns, but support is slow in arriving

Austrian cavalry being pushed back

But at least the Prussians can hold their line of retreat. In the end the ‘dashing’ Prussians in the objective village on the river chose to charge out, suffering badly from their foolhardy assault their brigade collapsed, this gave the Prussians no option but to withdraw and the Austrians a minor victory. A very fun battle right up to the point the Prussians charged out of their stronghold ! We are tweeting the campaign rules but planning another battle soon.

Much discussion about lead piles recently lucky I’m not counting ! Martin dropped these unwanted figures off for me to sort and accommodate into my Napoleonic project. Mainly elite miniatures, so older sculpts but I am interested to see how they paint up. Out of this pile I have managed to salvage three infantry battalions, one being a small Polish Regiment and some British light cavalry although they need horses. Several other command figures etc. they was also a Foundry battalion of french although they really are too small to use in my collection, so I’ll need to move them on. If anybody collects Foundry Napoleonics let me know.

The bag weighed a lot !

My plastics volcano has also grown this week by the kind donation of some Epic Scottish pike blogs. These were the ‘free’ sprues which came with WI magazine kindly donanted to my force by David 

And some painting, running along side my British Napoleonics which just need basing I have also painted up another unit of Late Romans. Very simple scheme and some old shield transfers which don’t look too bad from a distance.

That’s it for now, I have some more prep work planned for this week before the Battleground Show and should have some British Guards to share when I have painted the bases on them.

Thanks for checking in 👍

Matt

A diversion to the Spanish Civil War ….

After our SYW battle from the weekend before we had another Saturday battle planned in. Martin has been building a Spanish Civil war collection in 10mm and we agreed to give this a run out in the dungeon. Unfortunately not a period I know much about and with my RCW collection it currently feels like a project ‘too far’ ? Anyway Martin developed a simple scenario to utilise all the available forces. Out of interest we would be using bolt action with some slight modifications to ranges, basically reducing hand held guns but keeping movement the same to give a fast paced battle.

Very roughly based on a real map but perhaps more like generic northern Spain, I took this photo the evening before you may notice it doesn’t have any buildings in the villages. These were supplied by Martin and you will see them in the following photos. The nationalists will be attacking from the south/left, the republicans defending and attempting to prevent a break through towards Bilbao. With the caveat that I don’t know much about the period the photos will have to describe the action.

My republican force, the International Brigade digs in to hold the river crossings.

Huge convoys of Nationalist infantry arrive in trucks.

Republicans are also holding the village of Vallesa

The international brigade are sent forward to block the valley road, antitank guns by the church open up but one is knocked out by accurate mortar fire

Another antitank gun by Vallesa is also knocked out by artillery firing across the valley from San Christoval, but not before it was able to knock out the leading nationalist tank.

A fierce fight in the narrow valley blocking the advance 

Some much needed Republican reserves arrive, in the middle distance our artillery opens up counter battery fire across the valley

Armed with Molotov cocktails my infantry manage to knock out one of the advancing tanks but they are then attacked from across the river

Nationalists advance across the open valley past the village a big danger they will overrun our position

Things are looking thin close to the bridge as well, infantry support is being rushed from the village to support the defence

Finally after several failed activation test the Republican tanks find their way to the battlefield bolstering my right and with the support of some cavalry the nationalist advance is thrown back hoorah !

But things are going badly by the bridges as the international brigade has been wiped out, the leading enemy tank is burning on the bridge hit by one of our BT6’s

With the second enemy tank now burning things briefly improve but there is too much enemy infantry to hold here

Stalemate in the centre, the nationalists face a tough fight if they want to cross the river and assault the village, at this point we drew things to a close with a draw, the republicans have clearly lost the left flank and the bridges, but thrown back the assault on their right. With the centre in stalemate a draw seemed a good result for the Republicans.

One point of note the Nationalist general had been fighting on the left, with his forces thrown back in confusion he was very lucky to escape with his life, one failed activation by the republican cavalry saved his skin as he hides behind the village.

A fun diversion into the SCW thanks Martin for pulling the collection together.

Thanks as always for checking in 👍