I fancied a great Italian wars battle after starting an Italian wars Sforza command stand and reading Mr Freitags Fornova AARs so set up the battle of Agnadello 1509 between the French and Venetians, I used the Renaissance Battles 1494-1700 volume 1 by Peter Sides for this scenario, there's an A5 map and an order of battle and description of how it went. We set up as per the book although I missed out one of the Italian pike and crossbow blocks as I didn't have enough and didn't want to use landsknechts as that would be confusing and the Swiss infantry didn't get any light artillery. The Venetian force was mostly on a hill with the French opposite divided into two Swiss pike blocks on their left flank, two artillery pieces with a unit of Gascon crossbow behind and four units of elite Gendarmes on the right flank, opposite the Gendarmes were the Romagnal pike block, a unit of men at arms, two pieces of artillery and going up the hill a unit of militia pike and shot, two units of stradiots then two units of pike and crossbow and finally two units of men at arms on a 6' x 4' table.
There was a dry riverbed which counted as rough terrain in front of the Venetian guns. We flipped a coin and so I became the Venetian commander and Des Louis XII . We used pike and shot with Valour and Fortitude sequence, so shooting first and if you shoot you can't move and Valour and Fortitudes rather more relaxed approach to movement rather than pike and shots more rigid version we rolled for command ratings which went well for me, less so for Des. He shot his artillery at mine to little effect and failed to move his Gendarmes or Swiss, I moved my stradiots and men at arms off the hill into the rough ground, Des managed to move a unit of Swiss and I was able to shoot at unit of gendarmes with my artillery and cause a casualty.
The two units of stradiots threatened the artillery and Des was able to activate a unit of gendarmes to deal with that threat I charged his gendarmes with my two units of men at arms and found out the gulf in quality between the two! I managed a draw and the first slightly bruised unit fell back behind supporting unit, luckily in Des's next go he failed to activate , I was able to disorder the unit with shooting from crossbow men on the hill and with two men at arms units was just about able to destroy the isolated and crippled unit, meanwhile the first stradiot unit charged the first artillery piece in the flank and destroyed it. Des brought up his crossbow unit and shot at the second stradiot unit causing damage, they charged the crossbow men who somehow survived their break test.
It would have been nice if it finished then, unfortunately for Venice it didn't! Finally the Swiss pike block got into gear , charged up the hill, (we found out there were no benefits from defending a hill !) slammed into the unfortunate Italian pike block who did well against the elite Swiss in coming away with a draw, less good was failing their break test and evaporating! Des's shaken crossbow men shot the stradiots who had defeated them in hand to hand combat, forced a break test , which they failed Des finally got two units of gendarmes to move forward and then charged my two units of men at arms and his remaining unit of gendarmes who had been peppered with artillery charged as far as the dried up river. My last remaining unit of stradiots charged the artillery in the flank, lost and failed a break test, the men at arms lost one unit against the gendarmes I shot the other gendarmes unit at point blank range, somehow it survived and my remaining men at arms unit failed to activate to attack it and it was the end of the game! Enormous fun, great to get the figures back out on the table, the Swiss and French gendarmes are another class compared to the Italians, we got something like a historical result as well. I realise I need at least one more Italian/ French/ Scottish pike block, maybe another Romagnal pike block, in case I want to have Caesere Borgia versus Venice, so I've started on that and of course I still need a second unit of Jinets and some more mounted crossbow men....! Next up, Late Romans or Napoleonics or space marines or maybe that Italian wars command stand, not sure but lots of things are almost finished!
All the best
Iain
