Time to get my new Muscovites onto the tabletop and into action, with their opponents being the Zaphorogian Cossacks. Russians verses Ukrainians: who would have thought!

I played the Cossacks, daughter #1’s boyfriend, Kavan, played the Muscovites. The rules used were For King & Parliament with the Eastern Front adaptations taken from the Tales from a Wargaming Shed website.

This turned out to be a fast and furious battle with what seemed like an endless wave of Muscovite horse crashing onto the Cossack tabor and infantry.

Here a gallery of the set up so that you can see the two sides:

The battle opened with a brigade of Muscovite Reiters thundering forward on the Cossack right flank, held by a brigade of Moloitsy and Registered Cossacks. The cards were with Kavan, with a couple of consecutive “10’s” ensuring that he actually charged home on his first turn!

The rapid charge had, however, obviously exhausted his cavalrymen, as they bounced backwards from the Cossack infantry, losing one squadron in the process.

The Muscovites also advanced another brigade of Reiters on my left flank, but not as fast, so I sent my Tartar allies out to deal with them whilst I advanced the tabor forward and prepared to deploy.

I almost came a cropper at this point, as his Reiters were once again quick off the mark, and hit one of my tabor wagons before it had a chance to deploy. Fortunately, I managed to survive the charge, but there was definitely now a weak point in my line!

Even worse, my Tatar Nobles (the best troops I had) had obviously been bribed by the Muscovites, as they left the table, along with some of their horse archers, without achieving anything!

I was now in quite serious danger of being outflanked on the left!

Fortunately I had a reserve brigade of infantry that I could deploy to face this threat, and the battle became a series of Muscovite assault on a fortress of Cossack tabor. Again and again, the Reiters and elite National Cavalry charged home, and again and again the Cossack line held.

My artillery was overrun, two of the tabor wagons were overrun, my Registered Cossacks on the right were wavering, but still we held, and the relentless assaults were costing the Muscovites dearly.

Kavan also wasn’t helped by a run of bad cards, including what you can see in the last picture, above: an absolute dead-cert winning flank charge on the reserve unit holding my left flank foiled by a couple of Aces drawn in a row.

This gave me the chance to get the last remaining unit of Tatars in on his flank and, finally, the Muscovites had had enough and retreated. A very narrow escape for the Cossacks!

It had been a terrific game, with everything coming right down to the wire. I had lost half my army, but had just managed to hold on long enough to get the win. Roll on the next game!