Great Italian wars 22 To the strongest

We had a go at an Italian wars battle using the draft Italian wars additions that Simon Miller has for his To the strongest rules.
I grided up my board,6"squares are the recommended size for 28mm figures (nice mix of imperial and metric there, okay 150mm squares then!)on a 6'0" X 4'0" board.
Unfortunately my units were too big to fit in that size,for this game we made them 12"square but I figure on making my grid 8"square in future,we were just seeing how the game worked and have a bit of fun this time out!
We set up with on the French side two units of gendarmes, two deep units of Swiss pike, one unit of poor French pike,two artillery pieces and two generals.
On the Imperial side we had two deep landsknecht pike units , two artillery pieces,Spanish knights a colunna and two generals.
There was a river that could be crossed as rough terrain except at the bridges and some woods dotted around,there was also a camp for both sides.
With the boxes being so big we were into the action immediately with Des's landsknecht block going over the bridge and into a tussle with a Swiss block,where they remained for most of the game tying up two swiss and on French pike block for most of the game,I like the activation process, you need to turn a 2 or better to go,simple but to continue using the unit you need to beat your previous card, it means you almost always get at least one go but if you're card is high you won't get many gos, it's a nice elegant system.
The French artillery shot at the colunna,which as an extra deep unit that can't be flanked with added close combat ability and a shot  seems a touch too strong to my mind but probably need a few games to find out. The French gendarmes on the left got across the bridge. The Imperial artillery took out a unit of gendarmes the French artillery took out the Spanish knights,I like the limited ammunition and the fact that the artillery can work but is temperamental and has limited ammunition. The second gendarme unit took out both artillery pieces and then the landsknecht pike block on the other side the colunna which had been trading shots with the French artillery eventually decided to cross the river wheel and assault the artillery piece,at the last possible moment the artillery came good and took out the Spanish.with only the last landsknecht pike block still holding up three other units we called it a day,it was a great fun game that I felt gave a pretty good period feel.

We didn't go in for heroes and I'm sure we got plenty wrong as it was our first go, leading the gendarmes was my prize for winning the rennaisance challenge with Curt in AHC 7 ,I'm prepping a prize for Sidney Roundwood who won the last one, more scenery coming along ( not really up to scratch in this report but getting there, the river banks and roads have at last been flocked!) Im mostly prepping figures at the moment but one thing I realised after looking at this report is that I needed more flags, order sent to Pete's flags, great service just arrived I'll be showing units off with their new flags soon!

All the best Iain