Thirty Years War Campaign

[PeterThePainter]

I have recently been playing through the historical battles of the Thirty Years War finding them quite a challenge and learning a lot (I hope!). Whilst looking through the forum I discovered this post from 2015:

The Thirty Years' War in Five Games, a 2-Player Challenge
The five phases of the Thirty Year's War make an interesting framework for a two-player match of Pike & Shot. One player takes the Pro-Imperial side, and the other the Anti-Imperial side in a match consisting of five games. Each player starts with 500 match points which are reduced at the end of each game based on the percentage of the army routed (as per the Mission Info text at the end of the battle and not the Final Losses screen). For example if the Pro-Imperial player wins the first game with 21% of the army routing, and the anti-Imperial player loses the first game with 48% of the army routing then the Pro-Imperial player would have 479 match points (500 - 21) and the Anti-Imperial player would have 452 match points (500 - 48) left. The player with the highest match point score at the end of the match is the winner.

The five games in the match are as follows:

The Bohemian Phase 1618 - 1620
Count of Bucquoy vs. Heinrich Matthias von Thurn circa 1618
Pro-Imperial: German Catholic 1618
Anti-Imperial: Bohemian Revolt 1618 - 1619

The Palatinate Phase 1621 - 1624
Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba vs. Ernst von Mansfield circa 1622
Pro-Imperial: Spanish 1621 - 1634
Anti-Imperial: German Protestant 1618 - 1631

The Danish Phase 1625 - 1629
Albrecht von Wallenstein vs. King Christian IV of Denmark circa 1628
Pro-Imperial: Imperial 1619 - 1632
Anti-Imperial: Danish 1625 - 1629

The Swedish Phase 1630 - 1635
Count of Tilly vs. King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden circa 1632
Pro-Imperial: Catholic League 1619 - 1632
Anti-Imperial: Swedish 1630 - 1634

The French Phase 1636 - 1648
Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria vs. Prince de Condé circa 1648
Pro-Imperial: Spanish 1635 - 1648
Anti-Imperial: French 1643 - 1648

Does anybody fancy committing to five games to play through the campaign. I have no preference for sides and would be prepared to each phase as both sides (Brian in NZ has just lost interest). Let me know if you are interested here or by PM.
Peter
Happy 2024 to the P & S community.

[w_michael]

Hi Peter,

I would love to play this as well when we start up the Hopton & Waller campaign. I have time to do both.

Will

[PeterThePainter]

I have just completed the campaign which ended in a 312 -299 victory for the Imperials, they won 3 battles to the Protestants 2. So the five battles at a leisurely pace over 3 months. We opted for large armies on the basis that these were representative of set piece battles of the appropriate period. Each battle giving new insights into the period and armies.

Thank you to W_Michael for the whole idea and my opponent Awesum4 (Imperial commander). Five interesting battles with the result in doubt to the end. I can thoroughly recommend this Campaign to anyone interested in the game.

PS the smaller Hopton and Waller campaign is great too and with smaller forces tends to proceed at a faster pace.

[w_michael]

Thanks Peter. I'm sure that there are other 2-player campaigns to be defined and enjoyed.