A Swedish Leuthen: Kliszów (1702), Great Northern War

Hooray! I have reduced the list of battles I'd never heard of by one.

The Great Northern War is a conflict I have never dabbled in before. I knew it was basically Sweden plays Russia, but that's about it. However, I understand it is a particular passion of the great Pete Berry at Baccus. Consequently the Baccus catalogue is well endowed with 6mm figures for it. I believe this range has recently been updated or expanded. Anyway, it got some of my buddies excited enough to build GNW armies. You can see Matt's beautiful new Russians and Poles on his Pushing Tin blog. Meanwhile, Crispin has painted up a very smart Swedish army to oppose them.

Matt is also a prolific scenario designer. He has posted no fewer than eight GNW scenarios in the BBB groups.io files. (NB - you do have to join the group if you want to see these, but it costs nothing and is easy to leave.)

Crispin and Matt therefore laid on the battle of Kliszów for us at the Oxford club. This was early in the war. Having repelled the Russians in the first campaign, Charles XII of Sweden turned south against Saxony and Poland. After Charles captured Warsaw, Augustus II of Saxony mustered an army to confront him in a defensive position at Kliszów. Despite being outnumbered two to one, the Swedes attacked and defeated the allies. They had to shift left to avoid marshy ground, fend off Saxon and Polish attacks on both wings, then smash the Saxon centre-right.

For our game, I commanded the Swedish infantry in the centre, with Ben taking our left wing and Crispin the right. We were facing Dave, Matt, Mark and Luke.

The allies had to deploy first, after which we Swedes were allowed free deployment in the northern half of the table (so long as we kept our cavalry on their designated wings).Being so heavily outnumbered, yet having to attack, it was imperative that we made an effort to come up with a good plan. Attacking across marshy streams into the teeth of enemy guns didn't seem a great option so, without realising it, we did what Charles did historically and went left, aiming to "do a Leuthen". The allies' deployment helped us, as they'd carelessly left their right flank open to be hit. That was Ben's mission, to brush away the enemy cavalry so that my infantry could then march against the enemy infantry's right. Importantly, we didn't go all in on the left, but kept Crispin's cavalry on our extreme right to pin enemy forces there.

Nine annotated photos tell the story, followed by reflections arising.

The battlefield, looking south. Blue patches are marshy ground. Objectives are denoted by white counters: the Kulaki Heights (the high ground marked by a rough yellow chalk ellipse containing the main Saxon line); the village of Kliszów, on the Heights upper right; and the village of Kije, top centre/left. We needed to take one for a draw and two to win. The Heights belong to whoever has most unspent units on them at game end.

There's a lot of cavalry. All the allied units on the flat ground top left are cavalry, as are the two at the other end of their line. The Swedes have three cavalry units on the left wing and two on the right.

Although the Swedes are seriously outnumbered (and have virtually no artillery), they have an important edge in quality. Their troops are almost all Aggressive Veterans, while the Saxon infantry is unremarkable and most of the allied cavalry decidedly inferior. Furthermore, the Swedes get four Generals to the allies' one and all the allies are Passive, which will make it hard for them to react to the Swedish left hook.

Allied cavalry massed in front of Kije. Front left of pic, everyone's favourite - Polish winged hussars. That blue marshy area by the village would prove the undoing of the horse deployed in front of it. Baccus 6mm figures from Matt's collection. Smart unit labels also by Matt.

And a solid Saxon infantry line with a lot of guns on the Kulaki heights. By going left, we managed to avoid most of their fire for the first half of the battle.

Echeloned Swedish infantry from Crispin's newly painted army, poised to attack the seam between the enemy cavalry and infantry. Note the pikes. In this period the Swedish army was less reliant than others on firepower, preferring to use 'Gå på' tactics - roughly, "Get stuck in!".

A monarch's-eye view on Turn 1 as our advance begins. Charles XII commands in person (bottom right). Top left and top right: most of the enemy cavalry have prudently evaded back away from us. Single mounted figures indicate Disrupted units: in the enemy's case, from evading; in ours, from changing direction instead of just marching our lines straight forwards. (Per Matt's GNW rule mods, available from the groups.io files.)

The winged hussars evidently don't believe in evading, preferring to charge Swedish pike. They got their wings clipped.

A couple of turns in and the action is hotting up. I didn't want to tangle with the Saxon infantry until our cavalry had swept away the enemy right, but Mark had other ideas. Bottom right: my righthand infantry unit was pinned down suffering casualties from artillery fire, leaving my upper right unit unsupported. Mark chose that moment to charge out of Kokot (top right), which could have turned out badly for us and rolled up our infantry line, or at least stalled it. Fortunately, a lethal defensive volley stopped Mark's charge. A 'pivotal moment', perhaps?

Next turn, my supporting unit finally arrived in position to beef up my line (centre right). Ben combined with the rest of our infantry to drive the enemy right's horse from the field. The mass of cavalry floundering in the marsh here was unable to extricate itself in an organised fashion and was smashed. The Wallach irregulars fled. (I had to say it: "Never mind the Wallachs".)

Once we'd swept away the enemy right, our infantry dressed their ranks and advanced onto the heights. Mark attempted one more desperate charge to drive us off, but to no avail. More inexorable 'Gå på' cleared the Saxons out of Kokot, while our horse smashed into the Saxon rear, after which it became a mopping-up operation.

What the photos above don't show is the excellent job done by Crispin as General Rehnskiöld with his mere two cavalry regiments - just 6 bases. These effectively distracted four large enemy units (two cavalry and two infantry) with more than three times their strength (20 bases) for virtually the whole battle. If just one of these had been able to join in against the right flank of our infantry attack, it could have been a different story.

Reflections:

Linear warfare can be fun! In our previous C18 games I have struggled at times, partly because of not being used to the much more constrained manoeuvre, but also because that factor has limited the tactical options and the number of decisions in the game. No such problems this time. On the contrary: manoeuvre limitations were an important factor in our initial plan (both in lining up our forces to head in the right direction from the start, and in capitalising on the defenders facing the wrong way and having trouble reorienting). The situation allowed - indeed, required - both sides to manoeuvre, so there was plenty to do. The result was a distinctly 18th-century feel, quite different from our usual C19 battles, and a downright exhilarating game.

I love it when a plan comes together. On a bustling club night, I'm often too distracted by the social and the occasion to give full attention to either devising a plan or executing it. That's OK - I long ago grew out of caring too much about winning. Still, it was pleasing this time to do a proper appreciation, make a sound plan, and see it through to fruition. As Mark so generously put it, "great to see a well-crafted plan so flawlessly executed". I suppose there are worse people to copy than Frederick the Great.

The dice even out! After his atrocious run of snake-eyes in our previous Kumanovo game, it was good to see Ben's luck change this time.

"Gå På = Ker-Pow!" (To quote Crispin.) Quality vs quantity and shock vs firepower made for a nice asymmetric match-up. We were all left with a definite impression of ferocious Swedes as Vikings in tricornes. These armies have character.

The terrain shapes the battle. Matt's scenario allows both sides relatively free deployment, but we both ended up unwittingly mimicking the historical set-up and, indeed, broadly following the course of the actual battle. This certainly wasn't intentional on my part - I'd only scanned the history and actually misunderstood where Charles had attacked (I thought he'd culminated by charging straight up the middle, and I didn't see how that could possibly work, hence went for what I thought was a different plan).

Replayability. Our Saxo-Polish foes are now sadder but wiser and would certainly deploy differently next time. That different deployment would no doubt necessitate a different Swedish plan in response. We will surely call on Crispin to roll out his Kliszów battlemat again. It will be fascinating to see how the rematch goes.

Kumanovo (1912) - the calm, then the storm

We progressed to scenario #3 of "Bloody Big Balkan Battles!": Kumanovo. Scenarios 1 & 2 saw the Greeks attack northwards towards Thessaloniki and the Bulgarians attack southwards at Kirkkilise. For #3, the Serbs get in on the act, driving south into Macedonia.

Historically, the Serbian enveloping attack with three corps was pre-empted by an Ottoman attack with a smaller force trying to envelop the Serbian centre before it could join up. It didn't work: the Serbs held, then concentrated and counterattacked next day, and the outnumbered Ottomans were defeated.

The scenario tries to capture this in a 12-turn game divided into two halves by a Night Interval. Both sides start with most of their forces lightly dug-in. The victor has to hold the town of Kumanovo itself plus 3 of the 5 other objective villages. The Turks start in possession of K+3, i.e., enough to win. Thus, they have no real need to advance against dug-in MGs and repeating rifles and superior Serbian artillery, especially when the players had recently experienced how deadly modern weapons are in the first two scenarios. Consequently, in our game, both sides sat tight for the first 6 turns (bar some minor Turkish probes against the Serb right flank), exchanging artillery fire from their earthworks. This didn't bode well for it to be an exciting game.

Then on Turn 7 it all kicked off big-time.

The Serbs had to attack or lose, so once their reinforcements were on the table, they emerged from their trenches. Here we see three big 9,000-man Serb brigades advancing across the plain against Kumanovo (foreground), whose be-fezzed garrison is being pounded by a row of Serb batteries on the opposite hillside (top centre). To the right of the guns, a blue counter marks the Serb-held objective village of Cetirci, of which more later, facing the entrenched Turkish centre (top right of pic). Out of shot top right, three Serb divisions advance to try and take two objective villages on the Turkish right wing.

How did it go? On the Turkish left, dire Serbian dice nullified their massed batteries' attempts to pummel Kumanovo. The Turkish defenders had no such problems and their own batteries and supporting infantry inflicted heavy losses on repeated Serb assault that were ultimately unsuccessful.

On the Turkish right, things went better for the Serbs, who eventually scrubbed away virtually all the Turks in front of them. However, they ran out of time and could not quite reach the now undefended objectives.

In the centre, the Turks actually attacked, trying to take Cetirci. The pic below shows their first assault. The defending Serb brigade was already spent, disrupted and low on ammo from the preliminary exchange of fire. Despite this, they held on, repelling the Turkish assault with heavy losses!

Figures are Irregular Miniatures 6mm (and some Heroics & Ros in the background). Serbs painted by Irregular Miniatures (a service they no longer offer, unfortunately). Turks in the foreground by Dave W; those at the back by me.

But it couldn't last. A fresh Turkish unit followed up and swept the Serbs out of Cetirci. The Turks were then able to press on and roll up the Serb gun line above Kumanovo.

The end result of this most sanguinary struggle was a clear win for the Turks, holding one objective more than they needed for victory.

Reflections:

Don't tamper with the scenario (i). As written, the Serbs deploy first and can be anywhere up to the mid-point of the table (24" in); the Turks can then deploy anywhere in the other half, at least 6" from any Serbs; Turks get to fire first on Turn 1. I felt this could result in the Serbs being "set up" and too easily ambushed by cunning Turkish deployment, so I made the Serbs deploy only up to 12" in instead.

In doing so, maybe I caused the 6-turn calm before the storm. Of course, the Serb players could have taken a cautious option and deployed at a safe distance from potential Turkish ambush. But the incentive to deploy further forward is that it would put them closer to the objectives they need to take. (Then again, it might have made it to easy for them to scour Kumanovo with fire without leaving their rifle pits.) Still, we should probably play it again as written and see if the first few turns are a bit livelier as a result.

Don't tamper with the scenario (ii). The scenario provides a Scenario Option under which an additional Turkish division arrives overnight (one that conceivably could have made it historically but didn't). Looking at the scenario beforehand, I felt the Turks would need that help (plus we had seven players, so more troops was better in terms of people having enough to do), so I decreed that we'd use the Option. Those reinforcements enabled the Turks to counterattack in the centre and may have contributed to holding Kumanovo as well.

Luck plays a part. Ben's dice were comically bad, several sets of snake-eyes at critical junctures, including (I think) once after saying "I can't roll snake-eyes again". This despite swapping dice with other players a couple of times, and they are all the same type from the same bucket anyway. Credit to Ben for keeping his morale high and soldiering on to the end regardless. A couple of different dice rolls could easily have changed the course of the game and produced a different result.

Welcome, Jeremy. We had a visitor from Hong Kong, Jeremy, who we gave command of the Serbian left. We also attached Mark S to his staff as technical advisor, as Jeremy hadn't played BBB much before. We hope to welcome him back as and when his travels bring him back to Oxford.