HOLF Players' Guild Forum

(Registrar's note: The Russian team finished a distant fourth in the Great Northern War scenario. Russian WM Paul Hartley provides his perspective on the scenario, speaking on behalf of Bill Kummer (Monarch), Jonas Karlen, Vince Rospond, Paul Hartley, Joel Darrol, and David Massamore.)

Our Russian forces were located in three main areas of broadly Corps sized armies. In and around Novorod/Kholm (Jonas Corps), Lithuania between Dvinsk & Grodo (Joels Corps)and finally a Corps in the south/southeast around Moscow/Kharov/Poltava (Pauls Corps). As we were uncertain of Swedish strength we decided to push our cavalry units forward to the west whilst moving our spread forces to attempt a concentration.

Aside from the distance constraint we were concerned about the limited treasury available as we started with 11 Russian cities held by either the Swedes or Tartars.

We believed our force in Lithunaia would have the opportunity to engage the the enemy in that border region early in the game and hopefully lessen that presence as a concern. To this aim we had the Corps move to the southeast in the hope we could at least link up with my Corps moving from Poltava/Kharov and in the course of doing so engage enemy units and/or cpature cities along the way.

The enemy was reluctant to engage or pursue and Joel's Corps eventually moved back toward Riga after capturing Dvinsk, and captured that city with a light force around turn 10 of Spring campiagn. Joels main force moved to Riga as well around end of campign and sought to combat the enemy who had retaken Riga.

In the north we were attempting ro enage the main enemy army but they were reluctant to do so and moved further north, eventuallly into Nyen.

So at end of the summer we were in a position to force combat in both Riga and Nyen. My Corps from the south had eventually made its way across to the battle front and were in the vacinity of Kholm with the aim of linking with Joel's ad placing the enemy between.

At the start of the Summer campaign the battle at Riga saw our force badly mauled by much larger Swedish infantry units. The Sweded had landed reinforcement by TR's. Apart from the size they had the advantage of batteries attached to a large number of their units, we had very few units with batteries attached.

After this defeat we sought to only have minimal engagement against them unless we had significantly superior numbers.

In the north, having seen the result of the battle in Riga, we could ill afford to risk Jonas Corps agianst superior numbered opposition in Nyen Again the enemy had landed reinforcements. We withdrew from the battle there fortunately suffered minimal losses and headed south. We thought the best option was to try and split the enemy here as they pursued us and as we were still in good order, try to engage them on better terms. The opportunity for this action occurred around turn 6 of Summer to the west of Novgorod. It appeared we had good position and numbers but as it happens, real life intervened for our team and although our losses were not that great it was always then going to be difficult to force a major engagement.

We then decided to move around the map with our forces with the aim of being in position over the last two turns to overwhelm those captured cities held with relatively smal enemy garrisons. I think we may have captured a couple had turn 10 gone ahead.

At game end the Swedes had picked up an additional 2 cities and the sly Tartars 3. So not a lot of success for us Russians or even a lot of action. A lot of manoeuvring around.

PersonallyI liked the game and enjoyed playing with some guys whom I haven't before. Its a good means of keeping your hand in whilst awaiting for the next NWOL