Peter’s Austrians deployed on their right with their strong command cavalry holding the flank. 

The cavalry would suffer early in the battle from artillery fire from the massed Prussian batteries.

Graham’s Russians deployed on the left of the Allied line. Their reserve infantry were deployed in columns, ready to react to the Prussian deployment.

The Prussians deployed facing the Austrians.

The distribution of initiative in the session was pretty even. The allies got most at the start, then it balanced up.

The Russians, out on their own, spent much of the early initiative to redeploy onto the Prussian right flank; this threw any hope of a planned early Prussian attack against the Austrians off balance. On the other flank the Austrians demonstrated with their infantry and launched their cavalry into the attack.

The Prussians dispatched infantry and cavalry to slow the Russian advance.

The Prussian cavalry with infantry support duly slow up the Russian attack and temporarily throw its advance elements into confusion. 

By the end of turn two several allied units had been repelled. 

This shot shows the position of the Russians at the end of the first session. 

The Austrians have had one success. Their cavalry has managed to summit the hill first and is now fighting down hill. 

The Prussian infantry, in the wood are seriously threatened by a flank attack. This will be touch and go – will I turn a manoeuvre card before Peter turns a move in difficult terrain card.

This shot shows the Austrians facing the windmill and the Russians, still in columns, massing for their attack.

Note the Prussian Guard infantry holding the windmill. In most games this unit gets clobbered but this time it did sterling work. It has stormed the hill, thrown the Grenzers out of the windmill (both units were routed early on) and is now peppering the Austrian line infantry at the stream.

The Russian position at the end of the first session. Again, the Prussians desperately need an elusive manoeuvre card.

A shot of the extreme left flank of the Russian line. Barely visible, coming up the road behind the wood, the Prussians are trying to bring up a battery to face the Russians.

On the whole, the first session went decidedly in favour of the Prussians and the Allies are facing ever more difficult major morale checks*. However, the Prussian line is threatened on both flanks and I feel decidedly uneasy about my position – next week it’s going to be nip and tuck.

*In my amended rules for the SYW we play the effect of major morale in a very different way to that in the official master rules. For one thing, each side has two major morale cards and our rule runs as follows:

• The army pays 1 morale chip.
• The army adds one Dress the Lines card to its sequence deck. 
• The army must individually check the morale of each of its command groups.

Note that we do not add Dress the Line cards for the loss of units.