Campaigning in Ukraine, 1660

I have been adding to the background information on the website about the Russo-Polish 13-year war, specifically the campaign in Ukraine of 1660. The only English language account I have found of this campaign is on Wikipedia, which seems to be a summary version of the Polish original. It is a fascinating campaign with lots of potential for gaming, so I decided to describe it in a bit more detail in English. The campaign produced, in order, a meeting of vanguards; a set-piece field battle (or nearly); a fighting retreat across a river crossing; a siege; several break-out attempts; an assault on a fortified hill; and the surrender into captivity of a whole army. With three field armies and limited geographical objectives, it makes for a manageable but interesting wargames campaign.

I hosted four games last year to refight the main engagements of the campaign,, using Warlord Games' Pike & Shotte rules and my 15mm figure collection. We expanded the P & S army lists to reflect all of the troop types involved but otherwise the rules worked very well. I plan to put the scenarios on the website, in a form that I hope can be adapted to different rules. But as this campaign and indeed this war is so little covered in the English language, I will include more of the background and explain how I put the material together, starting with sources. I will then describe the orders of battle and how these break down into wargame units. (Be warned now that while Polish Hussars do appear on the table, they are a very small part of the army by this stage in the century. Paint up your Pancerni and Tatar horsemen: you'll need lots of both).