Wednesday 28 July 2021

Seven Years' War with Stephen

Steve loves a project. He loves to paint big armies and he loves to do it fast. I am a constant disappointment to him as in the time it takes him to paint an entire army I have usually managed about 17 models and then butterflied off to something else.

Not long ago he was hankering after something to paint - I made some of my usual suggestions (6mm Hitites, 54mm Burgundian Ordonanace) but this time one of them stuck. Seven Year's War - bit of lace, tricornes, horsey men, guns, colourful uniforms. I think I may have vaguely suggested I might paint a unit or two of French. For whatever reason it resonated with Steve and he went ahead and made several large orders with Front Rank.

And so on Saturday we were ready to play. I had painted nothing.

We used some homebrew rules because there wasn't anything available that looked like it would do - so why not?

I took command of the Prussians led by the renowned Johan-Tomas Schwanschtucker. Kenton took control of the Austrians commanded by Wilhelm von Stüchy

Austrians assemble


The field of war


Boom, boom, boom!


Johan-Tomas takes the salute


Austrian cavalry



Von Stüchy gazes about

Too war, Austria!




Boom, boom, boom!


The cavalry clash on the right flank


Austrians reach the hedge line


..and begin to exchange fire with Prussian grenadiers.



Meanwhile on the road the Prussians drive back the Austrian grenadiers!







Russians join their Austrian allies.


The Prussian cavalry attempt a rather rash charge



On the road the firefight continues.




The Prussian lights catch the Austrian guns


But the Grenadiers rally and turn to help the cannon.



It has not gone well for either side at the hedge.



At last the road is clear, the guns are gone and there are just a few grenadiers left to deal with.



This takes some time...



The Russians make a belated push toward the Prussian centre


But the death of the Grenadiers mean Von Stüchy concedes the field.



That played well and looked splendid.
Thanks for doing all the hard work, Steve!
The rules were simple but worked. A few tweaks and I can see us just using them for more Horse and Musket games.

3 comments:

  1. Good looking game and figures….a suggestion would be Honours of war which although we have only used them once seemed to work quite well👍

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  2. If you'd like to check out our home-brew SYW set, drop me a line with your email on LAF - I'm the dreaded FierceKitty. Alternately join "Bangkok Gamers" on FB.

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  3. Great looking game, we did quite a lot of 7YW using Maurice and they worked very well

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