My army was roughly
2 FC, 2 TC
6 * 4 Knights
1 * 4 Gross Varlets
2 * 8 Undrilled crossbow
2 * 6 Drilled crossbow
1 * 4 Poor Longbow
1 * 4 Light crossbow
2 * 6 Mob
Alan had
1 FC, 3 TC
3 * 4 DBE Knights
1 * 6 Mounted crossbow
1 * 8 Hungarians
2 * 8 Average spear
1 * 8 Poor spear
1 * 6 Average crossbow
1 * 6 Handgunners
1 * 8 Light archers
1 * 2 Light guns
2 * 6 Mob
I invaded arable land (note 1) and Alan decided to go for two slopes, a field and a vineyard in addition to the compulsary terrain. I opted for four 12" diameter open areas. The compulsary vinyard went on Alans basline just to his left of centre, the field went on my left flank just my side of the centreline and the road went from Alans centre out to my right flank. I then placed the open areas and the first three ended one on Alans baseline, one on my baseline and one pretty much in the centre creating a large open space in the middle of the field (note 2). The other open area vanished as did one of the slopes. All the other terrain ended up on my side of the battlefiled in the right corner, mainly because there wasn't a lot of other places it could go.
We had both arranged our orders of march to put the bulk of our good troops at the back. I wond the scouting despite Alan having a plus 1. Alan deployed from my left: The Hungarians, some average spear, all his knights with the artillery behind their centre, the poor spear and the crossbow. This took his line to the edge of the vineyard which was occupied by the handgunners and light archers and then on my right there were some more average spear behind the mouted crossbow. I deployed from left to right some undrilled crossbow, the gross varlets (in one rank), 4 battlegroups of knights, then on a slope drilled crossbow, longbow, more drilled crossbow and in the other vineyard which was on my right my light crossbow. I had a small reserve of undrilled crossbow behind the gross varlets and two battle groups of knights behind the centre of my knight line, my mobs were either side of my camp and played no part in the battle.
The first two bounds were very straightforwards, I advanced and so did Alan. My right flank of crossbow and archers was slightly refused and my left flank crossbow failed a CMT so were also effectively refused (note 3). Alan advanced alond the line but his Hungarians advanced a little further and made the first agressive move of the game by shooting at my gross varlets (note 4)
I advanced to charge reach of Alan's line and the Hungarians dropped back slightly (note 5). At this point I tried to move one of my reserve units of knights to my right but they refued to listen to their attached FC and advanced anyway. My crossbows got to extreme range on the Hungarians and rolled their mighty two dice, two hits! ahh, no effect, it is a unit of 8
The archery of the Hungarians was equally ineffective. Alan's crossbow had a pop at the knights on the right hand end of my line and had no effect. Alan then dropped back the Hungarians and another round of crossbow fire had no effect. Unless I wanted to roll a CMT I was going to be charging and to be honest I couldn't see a reason not to so my line crashed into Alans (note 6). My right hand battlegroup of knights lead by a TC disrupted the crossbowmen facing them and the extra element beat the end file of the poor spearmen, unfortunatey the poor spearmen then battered my next unit of knights causing them to take a casualty and become disrupted. The combined combats meant that the spear had taken as many casualties as they inflicted therefore they didn't need a cohesion test (note7).
Further along the line Alan had two elements of knights with generals with one unit of Kn without a general in between them then the Sp. The knights without a general were disrupted and took a casualty but the unit of knights that beat them was in turn beaten by the other two units of German knights so that too fell back disrupted and with a loss. My end unit of knights hit the spears hard but the spears got lucky and inflicted enough casualties on the varlets (who are almost as good as the knights in a charge) to tie the overall combat.
In the melee round my right flank knights inflicted another casualty and cohesion loss on the crossbows but were unable to beat the poor spearmen so the knights were forced to fall back which was not a bad thing overall. The only other unit of knights still engaged aftre the impact phase was the one fighting the other spear, again the spear tied the combat but my knights beat Alan's unit of knights (good die rolls there) and inflicted a casualty and disrupted them as my knights were fighting steady foot they fell back (note
Alan couldn't do much other than dress his ranks and wait for a chance to rally. He had two disrupted units of knights and a wavering unit of crossbow. Not much happened in Alan's turn but in the next interbound phase both my units recovered from disruption while Alan's failed.
I now charged the poor spearmen again (note 9) and hit the steady unit of knights while one of my knight units (now reduced to 2 elements) threw itself at the disrupted wedges of knights in front of it. Yet again the poor spearmen bounced my knights with another loss and the German knights held but the disrupted knights took another loss and were pushed back now wavering. My left flank crossbow then advanced and took a good shot on the Hungarians who took three casualties which triggered a cohesion check, double 1 oh dear... another wavering German unit. In the melee phase I pushed back the steady unit of German knights and disrupted them but failed to inflict a loss and the wavering wedged knights plus the overlap from the disrupted knights to their flank pushed back my steady knights and caused them to become disrupted (note 10) (note 11).
My knights variously fall back from the spears again and Alan shuffles generals so he now has generals with all three units of knights. The Hungarians pull back (note 12) and there are now two blocks of spears just standing there going "come on if you think you are hard enough".
In the melee phase of Alans bound the full strengh wavering unit of knights again loses to my knights (I had less dice so this was a touch odd) and fails the resulting cohesion test so breaks. The resulting cohesion tests have no further effect on the poor troops in the vicinity or anthing else for that matter.
My disrupted battle group of knights that has lost to the wavering knights now gets it's revenge, the knights have now advanced so they have no overlap support and I win the combat and Alan takes another casualty reducing him to 1 element (do'h he was average so should have broken when he went down to 2 elements anyway) which auto breaks him. The only remaining unbroken unit of knights rolls a 2 on it's cohesion tes and breaks as well.
There are now three broken units of knights in Alan's centre and three of his four generals are with these broken units. His Hungarians and crossbowmen are wavering but the spearmen are standing there still looking hard (even the D class one!).
At this point with the French looking well in control we called it a day as I needed to sort things out for Derby. The game took longer than I thought it did but it didn't seem to be taking a long time which is a good sign.
Issues arrising from first playtest
Note 1 - The terrain chart for arable lists F as compulsary and in the rules F is forrest not fields. Also the terrain rules refer to two compulsary pieces but in arable there are three.
Note 2 - We couldn't find out how to place roads, I suspect it isn't there. We were also unsure how a road affected the placement of other terrain. Why can terrain be placed over a road but not touching it? It seems odd for a road to go through a vineyard but not to be allowed to go next to it.
Note 3 - I didn't realise that you can run mounted and foot in the same battleline which sould have made things much easier for my crossbow
Note 4 - As my varlets were in single rank we came to the conclusion that there were no POA's involved in this.
Note 5 - We weren't sure if the Hungarians would drop back from my Kn even though my Kn were not advancing directly towards them (they were advancing past the end of their line)
Note 6 - Upto this point the game had been going pretty quickly but things were about to slow down. Because my line was made up of five units each with a frontage of 4 and Alans was 4,2,2,2,4,3 there were a lot of complex combats along the line. We actually ended up rolling for 10 separate combats on the first round.
Note 7 - We weren't sure what to do with the unit of knights that had beaten the crossbow and stood against the spears. In the end we figured that the elements that had fought the crossbow could follow up as they would still be in contact with the element fighting the spears.
Note 8 - Alan had two units of knights that had been beaten and were not in combat, I also had a unit of knights and the gross varlets in the same situation. As far as we could tell the falling back rule (second bullet point) applies to both sides so all four units fell back leaving something of a hole in Alan's line.
Note 9 - ASCII alert (well text diagram, it looks OK on my screen)
....11222
AA..BBB
....CCCC.
1 & 2 are Alan's troops
A is a battlegroup in corner to corner with 1
B charges in
can C squeeze in to the small hole to get into combat or does it just stand there and sulk?
Note 10 - This combat was a touch odd, Alan seemed to benefit big time from rounding factors. I had two knights, one in combat and one as an overlap. Alan had a wavering DBE with a disrupted DBE as an overlap. As I read it I get 2 dice for the element in combat and 1 for the overlap. Alan gets 3 for the one in combat less 1 per 2 equals 2 dice and 2 dice for the overlap less 1 per 3 or nothing for being disrupted. So although I was steady and Alan's troops were in poo he got more dice than me
Note 11 - Alan's wavering knights pushed me back, do they follow up? As far as we can tell they do.
Note 12 - How do you represent a wavering unit facing to the rear?
A few sundry questions:
Can you shoot at elements from a unit in melee that are not themselves actually involved in combat?
Do generals take up space? If you have a full element for a general and you put it behind a battle group does that mean another battle group can't go imediatley behind it?
Taking losses, when you have a battlegroup in a single rank do you take losses from the end that is engage or the end that isn't engaged? If both ends are engaged then do you take it from the end that took the most casualties? If the element that dies is the only one fighting a particular opponent and that opponent loses what happens?
It seemed a little odd when a unit of poor spearmen just stands there while three battlegroups of knights with generals leg it on one side of them and a battlegroup of crossbow is wavering on the other flank.
