Race to the Fords Pt 1.

At last winter has eased up enough for me to get a small Gathering of Hosts game on the table. Looking at the leftover scenery I decided to go for a raiding party of Men of the West trying to slip past the Midlish border lords.

The Men of the West,  nicely organized by the dice, make a dash for the fords.

I've been thinking about how many or how few troop types I want to deal with and come to the conclusion that I want fewer and as proposed last year I have begun to rewrite the rules specifically for what I am doing in this campaign. With that in mind the forces used were:

Raiding Party:
General: The Witch Morgana, Mistress of the Mist. She is accompanied by a sole Heroic Bodyguard and is not a unit. She does not fight in battle if attached to a unit but the Dragon's Breath mist that she can summon will provide cover for the unit against shooting and in melee.
3 units of light cavalry lancers
6 units of unarmoured light infantry including some archers and swordsmen. I diced for each unit to see which edge square they began on.

The Midlish border village contained a unit of billmen and a unit of light infantry archers.

There were 2 converging Midlish columns rushing to cut off and punish the raiders but both ended up coming on the same road.

The Black Company: Subgeneral unit of knights, unit of lancers and unit of crossbowmen.

The Earl of Cowcross: General with unit of knights, unit of lancers and 2 units of light infantry archers.

More to come in a day or so along with a link to the rules as played.

The battle of Two (small) Armies

I did manage to squeeze in the remainder of the battle yesterday before trundling off to watch the final Hobbit, which I thoroughly enjoyed despite myself. Kudos to all involved!

But back to the game.

When laying out the troops I put on my Turanian hat and thought: "not sure yet what they're going to do but my Hillmen and Slingers are the only troops  any good on that steep hill so I'll put them there, my infantry to hold the road and see there are any openings for my cavalry on my right where its open".

Then I crossed the river and put on my Great Helm, thinking "the infantry is too slow to do anything but hey diddle diddle but there has to be something beyond a frontal charge. He won't expect, knights to try going over the mountain but I'll send archers over and the cavalry around it. A job for the Black Company. The rest of the archers and cavalry will just guard the open left flank though I don't really expect an attack".

The Turanians won initiative about 8 out of 10 turns starting at the start. They chose to let the attackers go first and then on the next turn grabbed a double move to put the enemy in harm's way (see picture in last post). Luckily the combat dice were less biased  and the first attack was shrugged off with losses on both sides.  It was evident though that the revised play sequence needed some better wording on when a unit can hit a flank and how/when they can react. I ended up using the "does this look right" rule alot.

After repulsing the initial Turanian attack, the Earl plunged across the river on the left and center which led to a lengthy melee with losses on both sides, including first the Turanian commander, Sala Mandar, and then the Earl. For reasons which escape me, rather than supporting the Turanian spears holding the ford, the elephants decided to advance across the river and try to distract the archers threatening the spear unit that had climbed the hill rather than be shot at anymore. In the center a unit of archers was steadfastly holding the bank. 

With both armies leaderless, things began to bog down but the Black Company finally managed to cross the ford only to be confronted by Turanian garrison cataphracts (the figures are just too old, battered, plain and dowdy looking to be nobles.) backed by hillmen taking cover in a patch of woods on the flank. It looked like a trap so the Black Company lowered lances and charged.

In the center things sputtered to a halt with Midland spears being recoiled by the archers while the Turanian spears were driven back from the bank. The spears attacking the steep hill were routed by the archers who then turned their bows on the elephant. The cavalry melee in the middle of the river stalled. With flanks open all over the place, casualties heavy and no one in charge, it was hard to see how it would all end.

Casualties were heavy but the Midlish spearmen hung in there and the archers eventually took care of their counterparts and the elephants breaking the enemy's morale. Honours of the day go to the Black Company whose knights and cavalry turned the flank while the crossbowmen not only shot up the enemy infantry but in the end drew swords and closed in on the flank of the elephants (ok they probably shot them point blank).

So that was it, the last game of 2014, and it left me eager to play another. But first some more figures to paint and gaps in OB's to fill.

Happy 2015 to all!

Preparing a Return Visit

Last winter the Great King of Kings sent his Turanian horsemen over the border into the midlands. The foray was repulsed but honour demanded a reply. Normally this should be the duty of the Warden of the East but the Warden is aged and the King has once again called upon the Earl of Cowcross.

The Warden of the West March marches East.

Prince Sala Mandur, Satrap of the Borderlands keeps a watchful eye on his neighbors though and is not easily caught unawares. A summons has gone out and the local nobles and garrison troops have gathered along the Great Road where it crosses the Little Phoam River.

Turanian infantry and Elephants.

I mentioned in passing in an  earlier blog post that I wanted to strip the rules down to just the troops and tactics used in this pseudo-campaign. I haven't quite got there yet but as I laid the troops out this afternoon I began to think seriously about and so the process has begun. 

Here is the battle laid out ready to begin. The river is a minor obstacle, hills with 2 contours are broken terrain. The little trees are purely ornamental, the bigger ones are woods. I need to work on some woods bases.

The defenders consist of 12 units: 2 of heavily armoured knights (cataphracts), 1 of armoured lance and bow cavalry, 3 light cavalry, 1 elephants, 2 spearmen, 2 archers/slingers light infantry (mercenary mountain tribesmen).

The attackers, oddly enough, also have 12 units, 2 heavily armoured knights, 2 armoured lancers, 4  lightly armoured archers (not sure yet what that means, the rules really only recognize 3 armour levels...) 4 armoured spearmen.

Two turns have been played, on the 2nd the Turanian general managed to pull a surprise counter attack on his opponent....and this in a solo game!
The game will continue tomorrow.

The Northern Federation

Good Ol Santa, suitably bribed, came through with a last box of Garrisons. A few Midlish Hobilars, some peasant levies, reinforcements  for the Great King: cataphracts, clibinari and peasants, and some Hyrkanian horse archers.

The last of their kind.

There was the usual quiet chorus of burbling "yes....yes yes" until I hit the Hyrkanians and thought "Damn, I knew I should have ordered dozens!"

Of course I hadn't because I don't really want a whole army of Huns-by-any-other-name. I wanted some horse archers to flush out the Federation or Alliance of "Barbarians" in the north.

A variety of old Valdurians surrounding one of the new horse archers.

I haven't got the details sorted but the Federation exists to provide a home for a battered mix of Celtic/Saxon/Fantasy figures, primarily early Valdurians from my college days. I had started to think of a Gothic sort of army but then remembered my old Rohirrim horse archers that I had de-armoured. I'm also minding that I have Prince August molds for "barbarian" infantry as well as a few left over Valdurian Celts.

 So there we have the basis of the next player in the campaign. An army of Noble Heavy Cavalry backed by levies of warrior farmers,  horse archers and a handful of Valdurian tribesmen, driven into the mountains generations ago by waves of invaders.

The Tunstall Tower Archers

I was going to wait till I had leisure to take some decent pictures during daylight hours but while I've been able to sneak a few moments to paint early in the morning or late at night,  leisure is a fleeting thing these days and I'm impatient so here we are.

Sir Daniel inspects the new recruits.

 Last week I added 7 or 8 new Westlands spearmen to bring me up to 2 double units. This week, upon returning from a visit to family,  I decided to paint up the Midlish Garrison  archers I got last year. The original idea was for them to be yeoman answering the call but the armour and tidy uniform look just screamed livery and this is mythical history so uniforms it was.

In one of my favorite books as a kid, the bad guy's troops wore his livery colours, Murrey and Blue. In college, I had a rather rich looking Minifig nobleman who has been wandering around for decades now with a trumpeter, drummer and 2 torchbearers  (there was a priest  but he appears to have gone off to some monastery). His entourage ended up in said Murrey and Blue even though the nobleman was a good guy who retired from exploring dungeons to play chess against his sword, I just liked the name and the colours.

So now he has a company of archers with billmen and lances on the way and a border tower to hold. Its becoming clear that professional garrisons hired by Lords, appointed by the King,  play an important role in the defence of the realm.

The newly augmented spears. Mostly Garrison but the officer with the big shield is a Partha Elf who has been waiting for nearly 40 years for some paint and a role to play.