A couple of days after, Roger and I convened again over his games/dining room table for another try out.
The Mapuche had been tweaked, and were back up to Roger's happy place of 18 units; and as this was his final trial before Britcon. I decided, looking at the armies he could field, and put out something really painful for him to fight against.
So I decided to borrow Roger's Edward IV expedition to France. This is a list and army Nik G painted a while back, used very successfully (and it doesn't even have horse archers) and had sold to Roger before building his latest version of the same list using different figures.
It features two skilled powerbow units, three experienced powerbows, all with front rank of protected melee experts, two eights of billmen, a six of combat shy poor handgunners, a six of heavily armoured 2 handed cut and crush foot with melee experts and a unit of dismountable knights, plus a unit of 8 mercenary pikes. All pretty tasty.
My deployment, in an effort to cause as many issues for Roger as possible, was the two skilled bows on the mountain on the right, pikes, bills, men at arms and knights in the middle, while handgunners, archers and bills secured the left. It's difficult to secure a flank when your army is 11 TUGs, when your opponent has 18!
Great looking army Nik/Roger! Lots of heavy foot, just my thing! (Nik told me I was using the wrong generals, they weren't labelled).
Roger springs his ambushes on the left (two out of three anyway). There's an awful lot of stuff lurking on the right. On the left, my handgunners swung out to cover the left, while on the right of centre the mounted knights moved across to assist.
Great cards! Not going far with those then...
I actually pulled many of my troops back! Not sure what Roger was trying to spell,, so far we have J...
Powerbow start thrumming, arrows are flying, and Rach is rolling dice for me, which is utterly lethal, hence the fluffy wolf.
Unprotected warriors from Roger's ambush advance into a hail of powerbow and handgun shots in rocky ground (better cards too).
The Mapuche come to play...
Long spears vs bills, could be a lot of fun.
While my pikes go and pick on Mapuche warriors. There are about six of his units in shot here, vs my three. This is gonna hurt!
In the middle right, my knights had previously dismounted (not much point being on horseback when your opponent has long spears). Next to them, my billmen join them. Far beyond them, my skilled archers on the mountain realise that being skilled vs unprotected Mapuche is rather fun (yellow dice, yes please). They only needed a white card this turn anyway!
Two kills and a wound from shooting on the left, blame Rach, she reolled the dice!
Long spear, vs English bills, evens is green vs green dice, but with Rach rolling dice, the Mapuche suffered two kills and a wound to my not much.
On the left, unporotected spears approaching powerbows were starting to suffer hits. I expanded my bills and that skull rolled by Rachel finished off the spears. (2-0)
Wolfie takes a lot of interest! The victorious bills crash into a supporting unit of warriors that took a wound (Rach rolled the dice, EVERYONE in range took a wound). To their right, Roger stops 0.0000000000000000000001mm away from my bows, to their right my pikes have lost a base on the charge to closing fire but put two kills into the spears facing them. To their right, Richard of Gloucester eyes up two units of Mapuche archers.
Why didn't I rotate this one? Four green dice, needing only a skull or two wounds to finish them off, while Roger charges the archers in the flank.
Handgunners have a go first... Nope. Oops...
Roger's charge was... pants! And I got a wound too!
But then so was my shooting, which has still not killed that unit.
Back in the centre, with Rach and wolfie assisting, the pikes fought on, due to an odd allignment issue, my pikes were expanded (which they cannot do). To their left and behind, the bows were tearing lumps out of the warriors who had charged them (the closing fire helped, a lot).
On the left, my archers lose a base, but shed of of the attacking Mapuche in return. The other archers and the spears clash above them, and the bills are hacking through the Mapuche warriors beyone (even though they shouldn't be really).
You might notice some unconventional wound markers from this point, I only had 6 with me, and so was improvising. If you see a bottle top, a 10mm Austrian or a Swedish pikemen, that's a wound.
Where was I?
Oh yeah, the centre. Richard of Gloucester charges the bows, and lose a base (on black dice, it's just embarressing). To their right, the bills are suffering against Roger's decent spears. In the centre the fights continue.
To the far right, my two units of skilled powerbows have plenty of targets, after shooting some spears, but Roger was sneaking past their flank. My dismounted knights and bills were suffering badly here.
Back to the right, Roger piles into my archers, lose a base and a half each, but inflict the same on one unit.
Roger got a good flank charge on my heavily armed and armoured men-at-arms, also melee experts, so rolling red and white each time, and against 12 unprotected bows, I lost! (4-2) What is it about naff archers?? I also lost one of the bill units. (4-4)
Oh, and just to pleae Nik, Richard of Gloucester copped it too! Oh well. Next!
My handgunners (erm.. Roger's hangunners, which used to be Nik's handgunners) finally work out how to shoot unprotected archers and break the warriors (6-4).
On the right, not to be outdone, my archers break one of the attacking warriors (8-4).
In the centre, the wounded (yes, it was a beery night, no they aren't sponsoring me, but yes, I am open to offers) archers break one of Roger's spears (10-4)
Unit retires, bounces off the back of my pike and evaporate. Oh look, a proper hit marker.
Six pikes, seven warriors left, tis all close.
Oh, those warriors. Off they go.(12-4, but Roger breaks on 9, which would score need 18 points, but the maximum you can score in MeG is 15.)
To the right, my dismounted knights, despite (theoretically) being the best troops on table, leg it! The skilled bows are busy fighting on the right. (12-6)
Lots
of Roger's movement trays sitting empty here! One of his spears wanders
off right, while he charges my pikes flank both his reserve spears AND with his victorious bows. He
keeps doing this to me! Meanwhile, my archers get involved with the original unit that was in contact, breaking them too. (14-6)
The archer unit that was flanked shows it's metal (it was wearing some, and skewering Mapuche with the rest) and breaks it's opponent. (16-6)
The final Mapuche unit falls, handing Edward the victory, rather unexpectedly. (18-6, but actually 15-6 as that's how the scoring works).
This is what a table looks like after a five hour game, only interrupted by a delicious four course meal, many beers and the interveining hand of my daughter and her fluffy toy wolf.
There really is not much left on table after all that.
Oh, those surrounded pikes, still fighting at the end, break the bows that killed Richard (think we lost count here-6).
Just to rub salt in the wound, my skilled powerbow shoots away a damaged unit (We really lost count-6)
Hell of a great game, one of the best I've played for ages and a right giggle all the way through for both of us. Roger's cards and dice were worful, but played in the right spirit, even with Rach rolling dice we knew it was a laugh and a test of Roger's forces.
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