Slow Mo Piquet Game 2: preparations

Here are some setup notes for a second attempt at Piquet SYW with the Grünewald flats. 

1. House rules unchanged from the first game version (plus learnings) here

2. Playing field with very special Ankerstein town wall (see this post)

Battle field with Ankerstein town wall. Wunsch Frei troops visible in the small woods bottom right. Empire will enter from the right.

3. Scenario: Empire vanguard is pursuing retreating Prussians and trying to forge ahead, bypassing the town as fast as possible. They are not aware that a Prussian rearguard was in the town for one night and will run into them as they march by the town.
Prussians need to slow down or stop the Empire troops, Empire need to exit as many units as possible on the short table end by the town.

4. OOB

Prussian garrison

Pickets in the woods outside of town:

• 10 - 8 - 6 II/Wunsch Frei Infantry
• 2 bases of Wunsch Jägers (I'll have to come up with a simple house rule that turns these guys into s simple speed bump without full unit capabilities)

guard unit on duty (start game in the town gate, start moving when enemy is within 20" or first shots are fired):

• 10 - 8 - 6 I/Salmuth

rest of the garrison (start inside town, roll a d6= 5 or 6 to wake up and show up at the gate as soon as the Salmuth guard start moving)

• 12 - 8 - 8 Willemey Grenadiere - elite
• 12 - 8 - 8 Burgsdorf Grenadiere - elite
• 10 - 8 - 6 II/Hoffmann
• ×  - 6 - 6 Malachovsky Hussars
• ×  - 8 - 6 Plettenberg Dragoons
• average rear guard staff (rolled D20 = 10, +3 from army list)

Empire vanguard

advance guard

• 10 - 8 - 6 combined Grenadiers (mostly Kurmainz) - new unit, elite
• × - 8 - 6 Ansbach Dragoons - new unit

main body of vanguard

• 10 - 8 - 6 II/Kurpfalz Garde zu Fuß (1st rate inf stats, but treat as elite for reload)
• 10 - 6 - 6 IR Kurmainz (4 bataillons) (2nd rate inf)
• 10 - 6 - 6 I/Hohenlohe (2nd rate inf)
• × - 10 - 6 Hohenzollern Cuirassiers
• average staff (no large base yet) (rolled D20 = 18, -3 from army list)

5. Army Characterization Cards

Prussia: 7 units +2 elites divided by 3 just about makes the minimum of 3 cards

They draw (from the 34 card deck) 6, Movement Effect Infantry, Movement Effect Artillery. They remove the useless latter card for  Movement Effect Cavalry, discard that for a 10 for a total of

• 16 morale chips
• one extra Inf Move in Open card
• 4 opportunity pips (independent of cards drawn)

Reichsarmee: 9 units + 1 elite, divided by 4 is below the minimum of 3 cards.

They draw 10, Infantry Combat Effect, Cavalry Movement Effect for

• 10 morale chips
• one extra Musket Reload Card
• one extra Cavalry Move card
• 2 opportunity pips

I won't bother replacing the Artillery cards with Dress Lines, it doesn't matter whether I skip or replace them.

Anker: GK NF 14 city wall by Falk Gundel

I'll try to combine two modelling hobbies of mine by using an Ankerstein building as a backdrop for a miniatures tabletop game. 

When I made plans for projects with GK-NF 16, and a kind of "last hurrah" round of GK-NF 14 projects, I saw the Falk Gundel "city fortification" model from this CVA archive entry I immediately thought this might be a great backdrop for a tabletop miniatures game. 

It was great fun to build, and looks fantastic. 

As always, you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

Vire from inside town. On the right you can see I used some stones from 16A to show a bit of city wall.

This was the most fun part to build - nice timber framing over the large city gate, and a small stairs leading up from the building on the right to the walkway over the small gate.

The whole ensemble with a renaissance facade building on the right, a small tower and the city gates in the middle and a large tower in the background. 

View from the outside

The covered walkway above the city gates

I built this fortification in a corner of my gaming table, as a backdrop for my next game of Piquet.

Empty gaming table awaiting the deployment of troops. Actually, one Prussian bataillon of the Wunsch Frei regiment and its Jäger company are already deployed in the woods in the bottom right corner.

By the way, combining Anker and flats is not a new idea, of course. See for example this old magazine with a picture on page 2. Nice.