"1/72 Poltava, 1709" Topic

Another Hot Lead game, this time Mike's 1/72 plastics fighting the battle of Poltava from the Great Northern War.

link

Impressive looking game

Did the Swedes pull off a victory?

In the afternoon game the Swedes did, essentially on the last turn, it was a near run thing.

Those look nicer than I have usually seen in 1/72. Nice.

The plastic figures in this game from the same convention are also well-painted.
link

(P.S. And sorry for the errant link to the 19th Century board.)

Wow! I had to restrain myself from ordering 10 boxes of Zvezda after seeing this!

The only way to end temptation is to give into it, skinkmasterreturns.

And Mike the GM has written this at the HAT forum:

This scenario was the second half of Poltava, after the Swedes had dealt with the line of redoubts.

We did take liberties with the deployment. We had too few units of infantry on both sides and the Swedes were not out-numbered enough, hence they won both games. The Swedish Cavalry had earlier routed the Russian cavalry and were off harrying them. The Swedish advance had long outstripped its own artillery, Charles being too impatient to let it catch up. The Russians emerged from their fortified camp (which is what we've depicted in our game) leaving their field pieces behind. They likely had their regimental guns with them but we were playing at a scale of 1:100 with each unit being a regiment so the four 3pdrs that theoretically be slightly ahead of the two battalions in line would occupy too much table space. We've presumed them to be included in the firing capability of the units, which, in the rules we were using, was quite strong and long ranged.

Some day I'd like to do the full battle of Poltova, on a T-shaped table, the first half involving storming (or potentially by-passing) the line of redoubts and the second half the main field battle as we depicted it. Had Roos' division of Swedish Infantry not been sidetracked by the redoubts and then some Russian dragoons in the woods between Poltava and the Russian camp Charles may have actually succeeded in his battle plan and Poltava could have been another Narva. Like Gettysburg for the Confederacy, Poltava was the high tide mark of the Swedish Empire.

those are really nice, the whole kit in HO plastics?

Yes, I think they are all 1/72 plastic, Clays Russians, even the generals without any 20mm metal at all.