Nothing Gained But Glory: Seven Battles of the Scanian War (GMT)

 Nothing Gained But Glory is part of the Musket and Pike Battles series from GMT. It covers seven battles fought between 1659 and 1678 with Sweden on one side and primarily Denmark and Brandenburg on the other, although other contingents do show their faces. Each battle has its own map and set of force counters. Set-up is easy because the counters are marked to show which battle they are part of, and the maps are pretty. Better yet, the battles are small, which means that games don't have to take a long time.

I decided to begin this year learning to play this game, so I have played through a couple of scenarios solo. The rules are not overly complicated, but there are quite a lot of moving parts, what with the possibility of preemption of initiative, reactions and interception, so the gameplay can require a bit of thought.

My first attempt was the Battle of Warksow, which took place on the island of Rügen in 1678. I managed to play this on the anniversary of the battle, which was nice. The battle involved the Swedes trying to cross a stream and drive off the Danish-Brandenburg army.

Set-up at the start of the Battle of Warksow

The Swedish army advanced to the stream, while its right wing attempted to loop around the enemy flank. The Danes redeployed their left flank to prevent this manoeuvre. Despite being disordered by the stream, the Swedish army made good headway and very quickly rolled up the enemy army for a decisive victory. It was fun, despite me getting the rules wrong a lot, so I moved on and set up Fehrbellin.

Set-up for the Battle of Fehrbellin

The Battle of Fehrbellin took place in June 1675 between Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia. This is a very different battle because so much of the Brandenburg army was cavalry, and because the Brandenburg artillery bombardment was particularly effective. The Brandenburg left flank turned out to be impossible to attack effectively, and the other flank was impassable marsh, so neither side could be flanked. I made mistakes with the Brandenburgers that led to their cavalry getting shot to bits by the Swedish infantry, and it might have been better to form up the main body of Brandenburger cavalry and let the Swedes come to me. I'm not sure about that. This time, I did manage to get most of the rules right though.

Both games were fun, but I am not sure I shall follow through on my plan to play all the battles, because the opportunities for interrupting your opponent's move are too many, and that spoils the solo gameplay for me. I was tempted to use something like the Mythic GM Emulator as a semi-AI, but I think it would slow the gameplay down too much for this to be an enjoyable solo experience. Clearly I need to get myself an opponent who is also willing to learn these rules. It's a good game and I would love to play it face to face rather than solo.