Meg Dark Ages Scots vs Vikings

Last weekend I had the pleasure of playing MeG at Wolvercote Hall in Oxford, run by the amazing Alasdair Harley. The theme was Dark Ages AD500-1100, Western Europe.
It was a very last minute decision to go, so I grabbed whatever army I could cobble together, and I ended up with Early Medieval Scots, with Galwegian and Viking Allies.

The keen eyed amounst you will notice this is a suboptimal army, but it does have Vikings led by Stoick The Vast!

Which meant he could bring Hiccup and Toothless (a pretty fair description of my army tbh)!
Yes, two allies! And one was mediocre!
So was the army, so was the guy running it! By 3/4 of an hour into game 3 I conceded and came a solid last on 14 points in total. Breton cavalry were completely out playing me, I had a brain melt and let Lance play someone else for fun!

Anyway, game 1 was against my old sparing partner, Nigel Emsen.
He had brought an army of Vikings, tooled up with maximum Housecarls and lots of Bondir, plus two units of protected bows (a rare troop type).

Pre battle recon (all games were on preset terrain), saw Toothless out scout Ragnar! The Vikings were going to deploy first! Oh look, we ended up, Vikings and Scots, on the one desert table! We must have been fighting over the early morning deck chairs!

And they decided to dig in!

Bows, heavy foot, attitude and an invisible general!

It was going to be one of THOSE games! Nigel is a veteran cavalry commander. Having slow moving foot was scaring him, a little, maybe! He had boxed himself in. My light cavalry are off to the left btw...

While the noble and brave Scots deployed in depth! The right of the Scot's line, made up of Viking and an ambush marker.

The Scot's left. A wall of average shieldwall shortspear Scots!

I had wisely decided to put my Galwegians in ambush, knowing that they weren't actually that much use. (Unprotected average devastating chargers), and that with a mediocre instinctive general, things were bound to go badly. Oh look, they've decided to stay in ambush!

So, the rest of the army advanced, "As Barker intended"! Ambushers still not playing ball. Nigel committed a unit of Bondir and a unit of archers to the flank to scare my light horse, while a large chunk of his Viking sat still, or tried to raid the wine cellars of the village he deployed in ("What do you mean Arabs don't drink! Show me!")

My ambushers finally pulled the red they needed, and plunged across the gap between the woods in an attempt to add weight to my line.

The armies inch closer. My unit in front of the wood, on the left of my line, never had the cards to reform out of 'close', this would cost them, dearly!

You can almost sense the anticipation...

Contact right!

Eight vs 9, I couldn't lose, right? 

Nope! This lot stood hand-bagging each other for the next hour and a half! it early!

His two units tried to sneak up on the rear of my Galwegians, but were repeatedly shot at by the Scots Light horse (gotta love Cantabrian) His General 'Harvey the Invisible Rabbit' just couldn't get them motivated!

Damned zebras! These were an average set of cards for my army. Keira in the centre really had not got her head in the game, and she had the biggest command! My two small units of archers, in front of my main battleline, were having great fun shooting the elite of Nigel's army!

 Look, I'll prove it!


Honestly, this was a different turn!


Meanwhile, back to the game...

OW Nigel! His shooting hurt!

 
Any moment now!


Hits going in on the Huscarls from decidedly average skirmishers! I have bought new dice since this...


Dance! Dance! Dance the skirmisher dance my little archers!!


CHARGE! Not, as it turned out, a great idea as his whole army had integral archers (+1 vs charging enemies), but it looks good!


And the view from the other side!


And on the right, as lines close in the wood, Nigel  tries to go in on my rear, contacted and and missed! My Galwegians did the only honourable thing, turned round and nutted him!

A mess! Note the centre command has finally not got a zebra! The right gets interesting!

Australian camera work?

 My centre, having tied down superior cut and crush Viking, decided now would be the time to leg it! Many KaBs all round!

The losses mount up (Nigel kept his off table), and time was called. 8-6 to Nigel and his Vikings, after breaking two on my units to one of mine. Hanging back does not nescesitate high points in MeG. If  it had gone on much further we both had units in BIG trouble. Great game, well played Nigel :)

 Both within a hit of breaking! Sooooooo close!

Game 2, vs Bruce, not many pictures, but an 8-8 mess! 

Deployment 

Here we go!