French Wars of Religion

Clash of Styles: Pikes vs. Arquebus

It's been quite some time since we tried an early French Wars of Religion game. While we don't have massive forces for this period, there is enough for a good sized 4 player game. For those unfamiliar with the period, this is a clash of very different forces; the Catholics with pike units and heavily armored cavalry, while the Huguenots have masses of small, arquebus armed units. This was also an era where the Swiss were on the decline and the Spanish were getting better, plus the German units were now pretty average. The game went about as expected, which is to say it was pretty chaotic! The smaller arquebus units darting in an out of the Catholic pike units, causing a lot of damage, but running away from any threat! There were some interesting cavalry battles between the heavily armored gendarmes and the German reiters on one of the flanks. When all was said and done, the Catholics had eked out a victory, but had suffered quite a lot of casualties, mainly from the arquebus units. A pretty wild affair that we will need to revisit sometime in the future, hopefully with some more units painted up.

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