Pike and Shot: Battle of Coutras

The Battle of Coutras, fought on 20 October 1587, was a major engagement in the eighth and final war of the French Religious Wars between an army under Henry of Navarre (the future King Henry IV of France) and a royal army led by Anne, Duke of Joyeuse. Henry of Navarre was victorious. -Wikipedia


So I'm scrolling through my 'edit posts' the other day and ran across a draft, gasp! This thing got buried and only now has it resurfaced, embarrassingly enough it was a playtest for a Fall-In! game that has long since come and gone.


Using the Pike and Shot variant of Might of Arms we lined up our 15mm forces on a whopping ten foot table and duked it out. It is usually in games such as this where I don't go into it with any sort of preference of which side I play on or what-not.

Okay, I lied. This time around I did have a small request; I wanted to play some cannons!

The game pivoted on what all of the cavalry on both sides were doing




I have to admit, it is kind of hard to accurately report on a game a couple of months after it took place. For my part, I inched my foot troops forward, not wishing to fully engage but also avoiding a charge, my focus was on the cannons. Once I found my range with them, I unleashed volley after volley into the enemy foot, whittling them away.

We did call the game early because the middle of the table was the most decisive as Henry of Navarre's cavalry began to get rolled up. Had we continued, my unscathed foot would have been able to tear apart the remnants of targets my cannon batteries kept pounding. I would've secured my end of the table, but I can't stress enough how it was the cavalry, both heavy and light, that became the real factors in the game.

This game traveled on to Fall-In! with tweaks and changes derived from this playtest and all accounts told it was a success. Until next time!