The Siege of Vienna 1683 continues

There has been a period were there has been a lot of gaming and not so much reporting. It is time to update this blog and report what has been going on.

The work on the Muskhem Mayhem Rules continues

We keep on working our own Musket Mayhem rules and in this context the “Siege of Vienna project” continues. I bought some ruined walls at Salute this year. The main idea was to create the walls of Vienna…sort of. During the siege the walls were indeed more or less torn down and much of the fighting took place among the rubble.

Creating a true siege game is difficult. I we have yet to try to stage one. What we have done is creating few scenarios that feature sections of the ruined wall.

When there is a wall or some kind of fortification involved then game balance becomes an issue. In our first game we just ran a straight forward game with two forces of equal size. In order not to give the “defender” a major advantage both sides deployed on roughly equal distance from the wall. The idea is to create a situation in which the attacking side has already breeched the wall and the defender rushes to stem the tide. The Austrians usually played the defenders.

We played that kind of set up a few times. Usually it ended in a draw or a slight success for the defender. In our last game we opted for a situation in which the defender started with a smaller force and later on would receive reinforcements The reinforcements could also, given a bad die, be canceled. The final game was of course the most balanced scenario. The reinforcements did not show up and the Turks almost won the day. The Austrians were saved by the bell.

The board without the minis. This is supposed to be the outer defence works of Vienna.

The Defending austrians are moving in

The left flank of the Austrian defence

Enemy at the gates! The Turks are comming!!

The defenders are rshing towards the breeched wall.

The Turks are supported by hoards of horse archers

The Austrian hero and defender General Von und Zu Kessel, together with his pet pig.

The defender needs to reach the  gates before the Turks starts to move in...

The Turks is almost inside...

The Fighting has started along the wall...

The heavy artillery has been deployed...

Turkish skirmishers are probing the Walls...

A breach in the wall has been located by the Turks...

The Austrians tries to stem the tide....the 10 turns of this scenario is almost over. The left flank of the Austrian line would hold for long...if not for the comming twilight and the setting Sun.

What can we expect next?

We will keep on tweaking the rules as well as the “Storming the Wall” scenario. There we be reports on test using the rules in other periods as well. We have tried them on an ACW-scenario, and we will have to report more about that later on.