Two Saturdays ago I had arranged a teaching game in the morning with Julian, then an afternoon game vs Lee.
Julian is an old friend from MKWS, and local to BFH, so it made sense in these mad days to meet up, bemasked, in neutral territory. He had tired the rules in their Beta testing phase, demoed by Si Hall himself, but had not played against anyone since. Over Lockdown he had tried the rules solo after the compendium was released, but this was his first 'real game' for a long while.
He requested to use his Medieval English against me, and I was more than happy to oblige. It did involve some head scratching on my part for a suitable opponent (and kicking myself for selling my one suitable army before MeG appeared), I decided my Picts/Early Scots could morph into Medieval Scots for 1315- slightly lacking in armour, but they will do. Generals names... well... what did you expect...
The terrain, Julian sensibly avoided the mountains, and we ended up with dense coastal and Bruce defending. A coastline, with tall crops and fields against it, on the left a gentle hill, a wood and rocky ground, in the centre, not much at all!
Depolyment. The great thing about Medieval Scots is masses of cheap troops! 8 TuG of 8 Protected, Average Formed long spears. So, no shove (unless against loose foot) or other funkiness, and would never stand against Greek, but in the Medieval period that is a long wall of spears and a headache for mounted forces, love it. Guess what Julian had brought? Yup, and awful lot of knights! We've all seen Braveheart, (not a great film, but that scene is cool) as long as we have safe flanks, we will be okay. I put my knights (Hoblairs, not as good as his) 0n the hill, spread my line of spears, threw a few skirmishers out front, and had two units of Islemen to deal with is rough terrain bits.
It's at this point Julian pointed out he had not factored in that his back rank on his knights should be protected, not fully armoured (easy mistake to make when you first start off), which probably meant he was 1000 points short!
Julian put his bows out front, with his knights to follow on to find any holes. On his left he had Welsh bows and spears to deal with the difficult terrain. Beautiful army, really nicely painted.
That's nearly 800 figures on my side of the table! (8x8x8 spearsmen = 512, 30 Hoblairs, 72 skirmishers, 24 figures on the generals bases, 28 figures in my camp, and 120 Islanders = 786). Not bad really!
Julians lines. An impressive force. However, he only had three compitent generals, which would hamstring him on the cards later as most of his knights were in 4s.
Initial moves, and my Islemen surge forwards (being Tribal, they can't do much esle) to be met by Julian's Welsh archers turning to box them in. My spears adavanced en echelon, as I had no cards to move the bulk of my line.
Julien parks two units of archers at point blank to my line, while wheeling two units of lancer armed cavalry out to meet me. I move the bulk of my left hand command (or 'battle') up into his shooting range too and one unit expands ready to seal the flank.
Not the best cards, but it will do! Issue is the Islemen are tribal and need yellow to wheel into Julian's Welsh,so I will only contact with one unit, not two.
I make my intentions towards his archers abundently clear! I could only charge 4 tinms as that's all I had in range, 32 bases with charge and melee bonuses plays 12, not fair really.
Realising they have work to do, my skirmishers are also in archery range, would they inflict wounds or kills? Against that line, the answer was a few wounds and then duck back behind the spears to watch teh fight knowing they've done their job.
Melee phase, and two units of Julian's archer are steamrollered by my spears for minimal losses (4-0).
The general scene as Julian launches his knights on the charge, To the left my Hoblairs and spears face Welsh knights. In the centre the Royal household (superior knights) leads the charge, all in! Only the Islanders are not being charged by knights, if Julian had managed to find a flank or got any of my spears in the rear, we would be in deep trouble; otherwise, charging spears frontally is a really bad plan.
He also throws in his short spear armed foot, which at least come in on green vs green. He manages a few wound, I do a lot of kills on white vs yellow in my favour +2 for long spears!
Coming off the hill, my hoblairs hit better opponents, this was the risky one for me, but if I didn't the spears next door were in a whole heap of trouble.
The general situation as the battle rages, all my spears keep their long spear bonus, until Julian can get me down to a single rank, when his melee expert will go live. Hence the reason my spears are deployed in depth. My islanders made short work of his Welsh spears (6-0) and were working on his bows (2handed- cut and crush vs unprotected, yummy). To the left of them, my spears had made short work of two knight units (10-0) and the same was happening down the line. On the right his knight were also suffering vs my spears, but his Welsh kinghts were chewing lumps out of my Hoblairs. I suspect the final score would have been a 15-4 to me. A top game, and Julian is up for a rematch in two weeks time, a great guy and what a great army to play against. He has rewritten his list, picked up an extra foot unit, and most importantly an extra general!!
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