Pike and shot battle Great Italian wars 51

 Had another Warlord Pike and Shot game using a scenario from One hour Wargaming. The setup was two objectives for Blue             ( John)  a wooded hill and a town with Red   ( me) defending.  John , as the French had six units , I  had four units as the Imperial force. John had a crap French pike block two elite Swiss  pike blocks , a unit of Gendarmes, a unit of crossbow men and an artillery piece even though artillery was almost useless in the previous game. I was more defensive, which was historically accurate! Two colunna of Spanish a block of landsknecht pike and an artillery piece to match John even though I had low expectations of it. John got the first go as the attacker, got a triple move with one of his Swiss units and moved it halfway across the table.

Unfortunately for John that Swiss unit stayed there getting shot by the cannon although being elite yhey were able to shrug off disorder the other Swiss pike block headed in the direction of the landsknechts in the town while the French pike block refused to move. The first Swiss pike block stayed where it was while the second Swiss pike block tried to assault the landsknechts but came up short , the landsknechts in turn charged the Swiss and after a heavy hitting round of combat managed to destroy the Swiss even though they ended up shaken, the landsknechts hung on for a couple of turns before the artillery forced them off the board which as they were shacken meant they were lost. In the meantime the units  of gendarmes and crossbow moved down the flank and the crossbow peppered the corunna although it responded in kind with it's shot. In an effort to get a closer shot at the Swiss with the artillery I managed to roll a blunder which resulted in me facing the opposition artillery the Swiss advanced to attack the Colunna, meanwhile the French pikemen advanced but only into shot range on the right flank, there wasn't many turns left as the Swiss broke the Spanish in the town the French cannon targeted the Spanish on the hill and finally the French pike block broke from being shot and no French could make it across to assault in time so an Imperial victory. 

Great fun , super close and could have gone either way, the gulf between the Swiss and the standard French pike was really shown up, nice to use my Italian wars collection again, hopefully it won't be quite so long before they're out again!

All the best

 Iain