Oriamendi East – A Shako Battle Report

Chris Harrod and I tried out my Oriamendi East Scenario with Shako II. It was great to get the Carlist War figures onto the table.

This was Chris’s first outing with Shako and my first outing with Shako II. On that basis it was a friendly match to get a feel for the rules. It took quite a few hours and we failed to finish the game, but it was fun.

Deployment

The Battle of Oriamendi was dominated by the hills in the north and this was as true for the eastern portion of the battlefield as anywhere. To simulate the hill we used the tried and true method of putting books etc under the base cloth.

Chris picked the Cristinos. This photo is taken from the northern, Cristino, table edge.

The white cords show the deployment areas although these photos were taken before we actually deployed the troops.

And a matching photo from the south. My initial troops were two small brigades around the town of Hernani.

Bear in mind this scenario was designed to play on my dining room so the table is only 50″ x 30″ (125cm x75cm).

Phase 1: Hurry Up and Wait

We both knew that I had off table troops so Chris spent his spare time redeploying his troops. This was no mean feat given the deployment restrictions and the Shako II rules for orders. He basically had to give his troops “Attack” orders which only lasted one turn, he then had two turns to redeploy into a defensive posture. And of course none of his units could advance beyond the head of the the their Attack Arrow. This was sufficiently challenging that we actually had to stop the game and restart from the beginning to get something that was at all useful to Chris.

With only two small brigades on table I was also happy to wait.

Phase 2: Carlist Reinforcements Arrive

On Turn 2 my off table reserves began to arrive. This was two brigades. With their arrive the entire army moved over to Attack orders and began the advance.

On Turn 4 my first flank march arrived. As you can see Chris was waiting for them up on the hill so the flank march didn’t really give me much of an advantage.


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Same shot with flash.

Phase 3: Contact

I was rather careless with my troops and sent them hurtling into the Cristino lines. What better way to learn the rules but to try something risky.

First to go in were the Carlist Lancers.

In column. Up hill. Into steady elite infantry in line. Scratch one unit of lancers. Clearly some preparation was necessary before the cavalry went in … I’ll remember that for next time.

We thought the mass of troops on the hill looked quite good so I couldn’t resist taking a profile shot of the Carlist charge.

OK, so the cavalry were that effective … how about elite infantry? I launched two elite units at Chris’s centre. This was a bit of a stand off. Hmmm, can’t say I’m getting the hang of this but I’m learning.

My elite Carlists have a Priest figure in the command stand – you can see the chap in black in the centre of the photo.

The Carlist right was also active. Chris engaged my flank marchers frontally and began to close in on both of their flanks as well.

More of same.

Chris was dicing with the odds a bit because I still had a flank march off table and when they arrived they could arrive behind his left flank … which they did.

About this time it was 1 am and we called it a night.

I took a couple of final shots from the top of the hill

Conclusions

The game was good fun and served its main purpose which was to acquaint us with the Shako II. We’ll try it again in anger some time.

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