Some views of the battle, the top shows the right flank of the Ottoman line and the bottom shows the Cossack left facing it.

Turn 3

Cossacks
The Tartar nobles on their breakthrough charge the Ottoman general and his body guard whilst the Muscovite allies finally do something and charge the light cavalry to their front (two units of heavies on the Cossack right flank but obviously the Tsar had instructed them to observe and apart from killing two Tartars 24 Muscovite heavies did nothing except make up numbers). Three Cossack guns on the left fire, the first overshoots any target, the second shoots the head of another gunner (misfire roll of 5) and the third with its first shot blows up (I hate guns). Musket fire all along the line is ineffective but the combats all go the Cossacks way. The Ottoman Tartars in the village are beaten and finally destroyed but the Cossack allies get carried away and pursue into a rather large Janissary regiment (whops), the Ottoman general and his bodyguard are broken as are the Tartars protecting their flank (the whole Ottoman left flank has collapsed. The regimented Cossacks unit to the right of the village beats and destroys the Azab unit to its front but they pursue to far and have a Ottoman cavalry unit on its flank. The death of the general means the whole army has to test but most units pass the test but the Cossacks have the upper hand.

Ottomans
This turns sees everthing go from bad to worse for the Ottomans, the isolated Cossack unit is charged by an Ottoman foot and cavalry unit but manage to beat them off and they are caught in the pursuit which triggers several failed leadership tests. The only Ottoman victory for the game is the destruction of the Tartar unit which pursued into the Janissary unit.

Overview: The game only lasted three turns but because there was only the two of use and very large armies it took about 4 1/2 hours from start to finish (1/2 hour for a nice lunch of course). We took our time and apart from his accurate artillery fire Robert's dice were against him when it really counted. The turning point of the battle is when I killed his general (didn't even know it was there), many many times in the last 2 years I have killed Bob's general even when he had a higher WS then my general. He should have learnt by now keep his general away from any danger and this is especially so with WECW which doesn't superpowered characters (thank god), this is one of my main complaints against WAB. Look at the stats for a Saxon or Norman king and you could be mistaken in thinking that you are playing WFB. Anyway great game and we are hopefully going to start a 4,000 point aside campaign soon using the modified El Cid campaign rules, you can find them at the bottom of this Blog (5-6 players I hope). We had a great campaign using the El Cid campaign rules nearly 2 years and enjoyed them tremendously.