Spain 2; Switzerland Nil

Yup, that's the final score of the Spanish leg of my Swiss army's tour of Spain. After losing to the Crown of Aragon army last week, they managed to lose pretty badly to the Santa Hermandad Nueva Castilians this week.

The battle was pretty close until the last few turns when my dice decided to completely betray me. We'd both had a couple of units broken (and had later managed to rally one each back to disrupted). But as I said, my dice turned against me, forcing one pike block (of 12 bases) on my right flank to charge some skirmishers, rolling very long for the charge distance which meant that Gordon was able to gang up on it with an 8-base pike unit charging it frontally and two other heavy foot units which charged in on the two flanks.

My initial deployment and plan were pretty good. The trouble was that I didn't stick to the plan, so my deployment was no longer right.

Anyway, here are pics with some explanations.

The terrain before any troops are deployed. Along Gordon's rear edge are 4 areas of brush, with two steep hills in front of them. The black circle marks an area of impassable terrain - it was in a good position for me to use as an anchor for my pikes - if Gordon hadn't been able to move it in from the side edge it would have been even better for me.

At the start of turn 2 - see my plan? I probably shouldn't have moved the main pike block forward from their starting point, just wheeled the right flank one and kept a nice defensive line. However....

....I cast caution to the winds and decided that offence was the best defence

This 8 of pikes failed their CMT not to charge the light foot (at that point in the game a rare event), but rolled very long for their charge move whilst the skirmishers rolled short and got caught in the rear. Light foot vs Swiss pikemen?

Somehow the left hand light foot survived the impact, but did go fragmented.. Unlike their comrades who managed to double-drop and break. The skirmishers on the right of the pic were in range to have to test for seeing the break and promptly dropped 1 level.

Gordon's light horse close to completing their flanking movements. Javelin armed Jinetes on my left flank, mounted crossbowmen on my right. 

My centre 12-base pikes have wheeled and dropped a base width to try to get through the gap between the impassable terrain and steep hill to support the 8 base unit which is desperately trying not to charge the two units of heavy foot in front of it. No sense being outnumbered....

Well, that didn't quite go to plan. The pikes failed their test not to charge and ploughed headlong into one of the heavy foot units in front of it.

the other heavy foot unit was then in a position to flank charge them. Ouch - I managed to double-drop in the impact phase and break. With one of my light foot units right behind them. Oh, and a corner of the 12-base pike unit coming up to support them. Did I mention that Gordon managed to kill the general who was fighting in their front rank? No? Well, he did.

The rout move took both the skirmishers and pikes to disrupted, the skirmishers were caught in the rear by the pursuing heavy foot and also broke. However, the heavy foot's pursuit of my skirmishers caused them to crash into the 12 base pikes. They lost that impact, then the melee and broke. 

My pursuit took the pikes into the other heavy foot unit. Bring it on!

The last turn. 3 turns back, my right flank pikes had failed their test not to charge Gordon's bowmen and then rolled very long for their charge move, leaving them in a very nasty position - Gordon was able to bring forward his pikes ready for a frontal charge and two groups of heavy foot into flank charge positions. The charges went in at this point, along with a flank charge by his medium foot crossbowmen on my other 12-base pikes over on the left and his mounted crossbowmen against my light foot over on my right flank.  The light foot didn't roll high enough for their evade moves and one got caught in the rear.

Disrupted from the 2 flank charges, facing in 3 directions, heavily outnumbered, no rear support. Gulp! 

Broken in melee phase, their comrades don't like that and disrupt (I definitely mentioned the sucky dice I suffered in the last couple of turns). The broken unit then routed through the disrupted unit, dropping it to fragmented. The mounted crossbowmen then pursued into their rear dropping them instantly to broken.

Having survived the impact (although dropped to fragmented) these pikes didn't survive the melee phase and broke.

Things don't look too good for my camp.... 

Meanwhile, on my left flank things didn't look quite so disastrous. My pikes may have been disrupted by the flank charging medium foot, but they've got another pike block coming up rapidly in support. Well, as rapidly as pikemen can move up in support that is.

Would things have gone better if I had been using my won Swiss rather than a borrowed army? Who knows. Probably not. I will get round to completing my Swiss at some point.

I haven't done any more painting or prep work, but have primed the figures I prepped earlier in the week. Tomorrow I'll be heading saarrff ofva rivver (usually followed by "You've gotta be joking!") to Crystal Palace for SELWG. I'll probably be picking up some bits from Timescape and Magister Millitum. Oh, and that Evil Man Jon Tuffley has released some new figures - heavy weapons and jet-bikes for the UNSC, a Kettenkrad-like half-track for the NAC, spider drones with rotary autocannons and the first full packs of figures for the official Tomorrow's War range. There are pics of them over on Dropship Horizon.