Final thoughts about the Battle of Pavia.

This post is to give my final thoughts about the Battle of Pavia, before I move on to my next projects. At some point the game may be put on the table again, but that will not be for at least a few years.

Terrain

Throughout the project I have blogged on my progress. Many of these have covered the design and building of the terrain. Due partly to the size, and partly because I wanted the big reveal at Historicon, I did not post pictures of the entire table laid out. Here are some photos of the terrain. The large table was 12 feet by 12 feet with a central access area replacing the lower portions of the Vernavolo stream. The back table with the city of Pavia, the Five Chapels and the pontoon bridge was 12 feet by 4 feet. With the intermediate walkway the total footprint was 20 feet by 12 feet.

As it was not possible to layout everything in advance of the convention, I was not totally sure how it would all look and fit. Overall I was very happy with how it came together at the show. Surrounding the table were seven images of the Pavia tapestries which can be seen in the photo above. These images were to show people some of the inspiration for the project.

The one thing that I really thought captured the battle of Pavia was having the walls surrounding the entire park. These walls really set the scene. I was really pleased with the appearance that they gave. However, it will be a long time before I am able to forget the hours spent cutting these walls from foam.

While the city of Pavia was the backdrop to the game, the Castello Mirabello was the center piece. The building was scratch built from foam.

The city of Pavia provided the backdrop to the game. At home the city looked massive. On the final table it did not look quite as big but was still impressive.

The above two images are the area that represents the Five Chapels. Again these buildings looked massive at home, but they did not overwhelm the table.

What follows are some other photos of some of the terrain details.

Convention game versus club game

A number of sacrifices were made to allow the game to be played as a convention game rather than a club game. These were made to allow 20 people unfamiliar with the rules to complete a game in four hours. If I were doing the game as a weekend club game I would make a number of changes.

The main compromise was that all of the imperial forces were in the park at the start of Turn 1. This was to allow each player to get into the fight quickly. For the same reason I also deployed the troops of the Duke D’Alencon a lot closer to Mirabello than I would have liked. Ideally they would have been closer to Pavia. The French Gendarmes were also able to move on Turn 1. In the actual battle they took time to get their armor on and mount up.

The upside was that everyone was fighting quickly. The downside was that unlike the actual battle troops were not slowly fed into the fight. I would have preferred that the arquebusiers under the Marquis del Vasto had more time to reach Mirabello before they had to deal with the French Gendarmes.

Slowing everything down would have given more time for the light cavalry battle to take place before the larger Spanish and French units arrived.

Also slowing the game down by limiting the speed that the Imperial forces could file through the wall would have given more time for the French Gendarme battle against the Spanish knights to play out before the landsknechts came into play. There were a lot of heavy cavalry and we really needed more time for this battle to play out.

However, given the limitations I would say that the vast majority of the players had a good time.

Things that went right.

I have seen many after action reports of other people playing the battle of Pavia. The project has been an obsession of mine so I have followed almost anything to do with gaming Pavia. The vast majority of the these have had French victories and declare that it is almost impossible for the Spanish to win on the table top.

After running the game five times at Historicon, I have to respectfully disagree. The Imperial forces won four of the battles and the other one was a draw.

If both forces were facing off in an open field with good ground, the superior numbers and superior quality of the French Gendarmes would make it almost impossible for the Spanish to win. However, that was not the case at Pavia. The terrain confined the movement of the Gendarmes and the February weather made the ground muddy. As the battle went on this mud became worse. Putting rules in that reflected the mud, giving reduced movement and reduced ability for the Gendarmes to defend themselves as they fought on the same ground, really influenced the result. Gendarmes slowly diminished from elite troops to very average troops and the Imperial arquebusiers were easily able to finish them off.

By accounting for both the terrain constraints and the mud, we were able to replicate the actual battle very well.

Also remembering that the Swiss at Pavia, were not the same quality of Swiss at Marignano and Bicocca was important. Giving them realistic stats certainly helped the game be successful.

Photos.

I have done a video after action report that can be viewed here.

This video gives an overview of the history and how the battle developed on the table. For this reason I will not give an after action report here. Instead I will post a number of photos for your viewing pleasure. The images are in no particular order as they come from across the five games that we played.

Conclusions

This project has been my main project for the last two years. Running the game five times at Historicon was great fun but completely exhausting. I was honored to be awarded Best of Show at the convention.
It is time to pack up the Italian Wars and move on to other projects. Although the Italian Wars will come back out in a few years time – possibly the Battle of Marignano. For now though, these are my final thoughts about the Battle of Pavia.

For now I am moving onto the 1813 Battles of Grossbeeren and Dennewitz. I will also be looking at modern drone and electronic warfare in the Ukraine.