The Road to Salute, and the Battle of Lutzen, 1632

[Friends of General Haig]

About 12 months ago, in a moment of optimism, a group of wargamers thought it would be nice to put on a demo game of Lutzen, 1632, at Salute.  Well, we made it.  The game was duly demonstrated on 6th April and London's Excel centre. 

The whole journey to Salute has been documented on a blog called the Via Regia, after the ancient route that runs through the town of Lutzen, and also bisects the battlefield.  I have just posted the entry describing the wargame refight here:

https://theviaregia.blogspot.com/2019/04/day-of-battle.html



The battle was closely fought, with hard fighting all along the battle line.  The course of the battle started in a similar way to the actual fight with Gustavus leading the attack on the Swedish right.  This attacked stalled, also just as in the real battle, and was countered by the arrival of Pappenheim, again as in the real battle. 



However, in the centre and on the Imperial right, Swedish left the battle went differently.  In the centre the Swedish attack was more cautious, partly due to poor command rolls.  When the Swedes did finally attack they were met with a determined defense and counter attack, although most of the Imperial cavalry had been removed from the centre and so this set-back for the Swedes did not turn in to the major reverse it did in the actual battle.



On the Imperial right the Swedes never broke through as they didn't use their foot to take the defended strong points and so help the Swedish horse engage the Imperial troops on a more equal footing. 

Perhaps the most important change was that Gustav Adolf II survived the day! How would the rest of the TYW played out with this change?  An interesting discussion for the pub 

More pictures and commentary on the blog.
 

[flags_of_war]

This was my fave game at Salute. The table looked gorgeous but i may have been a tad biased as you had displayed all of my flags so well

[Friends of General Haig]

Thanks, Iain!  Much appreciated.  It was great to meet you in person.  We are all big fans of your flags. They set the game off brilliantly.

[sepoy1857]

Looks brilliant. The flags are outstanding

[Friends of General Haig]

Thanks, Scott!   

[Ignatieff]

Cracking game (and awfully nice flags)

[Friends of General Haig]

Thanks, Ignatieff!

The flags are spiffy. Ordered more from FoW only this week. I’m an addict 

[Warboss Nick]

Great looking battle! Congratulations on pulling through with such a huge project and on such a level of paunting and modelling at that. Truely inspiring.

[Ignatieff]

What rules did you use?

[Friends of General Haig]

Thanks, @Warboss Nick, much appreciated 

Hi @Ignatieff, we used Warlord Games' Pike and Shotte.

I've done a personal review of the rules on my site here: https://theviaregia.blogspot.com/p/warlord-games-pike-and-shotte-rules.html

Also a run through of the various 17th century rules I own / have used, here:  https://theviaregia.blogspot.com/p/17th-century-wargames-rules.html

[aphillathehun]

Neat!

That's a really great looking game.  I love the period and good to see a big game that looks great.

[Friends of General Haig]

Thanks, @aphillathehun!  I completely agree that it is a really interesting period.  There are plenty of distractions as well as you look away from the main central European battles.