Steve & Don, Usk game 1

[donm]

Steve and I had travelled over to Usk in separate cars, so had no chance to go over our plan before the first game. I had prepared fully, having played Rapid Fire at the club the night before.

Game 1 Mike Baldwin with Medieval Castilian.

Earlier in the week Richard had sent a copy of all the army lists to be used this weekend. Unfortunately, I had not had a chance to look at them in any detail and so had no real idea what Mike could have in his army. It was too late now.

We won the initiative and choose ???Steppe terrain??™. This was our first mistake, I had not seen an email later in the week, changing our home terrain types. Mike was very good at this point and continued with our wrong choice.

The few pieces of terrain we had landed in the flank sectors. The only one of importance to us was a piece of broken ground on the back edge of the table preventing mounted troops from attacking our baggage.

Mike began deploying with 3 BGs of light foot on his right, next came 2 BGs of spearmen. Followed by some light horse and knights on his left and finally a large amount of knights in the centre. He had 5 BGs of superior heavy knights, I wish I had taken the time to look at the list.

We had begun by placing our mob next to our baggage and 2 BGs of armoured horse archers out on our left. Next came the 2 BGs of light horse and the other BG of armoured horse archers, which we placed in our centre. Behind this we placed the 3 BGs of armoured lancers in reserve. Last we placed the Dialami in the broken ground and the 2 BG of spearmen to their left. We decided to hold on our left while we tried to skirmish frontally with the knights and hope to get the lancers around his left flank.

Mike had first move and quickly withdrew his left flank light horse behind his centre of knights. On his right he advanced with his spears and light foot towards the broken ground. He moved one of his BGs of knights to support this attack.

In our first move our left flank remain still while the armoured horse archers chased after the retreating light horse. The lancers began their long out flanking move.

The next few moves saw Mike??™s right flank continuing to press forward towards the broken ground. We continued to move around Mike??™s left flank and had moved a BG of lancers to support our left flank, as a counter to Mike??™s BG of knights. In the centre I had moved my light horse forward to slow the spearmen. Mike had countered this with his light horse. But I had greater numbers and so Mike was forced to bring up his knights.

In our next move we managed to inflict enough shooting casualties to cause a ???Cohesion Test??™ (COH) on the BG of knights that Mike had brought forward to support his light horse. Mike failed the test and his formation was now ???Disrupted.??™ In Mike??™s next move he had to take a test to stop his knights charging the light horse. He failed and so had to charge. Our light horse shooting had goaled him into charging and they skirmished away to safety. The knights finished the move out on their own, in range of two of our units of armoured horse archers. Another good round of shooting and another failed COH test, saw the knights become ???Fragmented??™. In our next move one of our armoured horse archer BGs charged the knights in the flank and they broke before contact. Being fragmented the knights had to take a test for being charged. There was then a very confused situation with the knights routing around/through other troops. Our cavalry caught a unit of light foot in their pursuit and this routed also. A light horse BG that saw the routing troops had to take a COH test and failed. Our charge had forced a big hole in Mike??™s centre. Mike tried to come forward with his knights to restore his centre but these were now arrayed in a semi circle covering his left flank. Another BG of knights failed a CMT test and had to charge. Again this was caught in the flank and routed.

Over on Mike??™s right he had pushed forward and attacked our two BGs of spearmen, breaking one with one round of ???Impact??™ and one round of ???Melee??™. Yes ???1??™s are not good in these rules either. Our other unit stood for several rounds against BGs of knights and spearmen. With the help of the supporting BG of armoured lancers, they had managed to break the knights. Our Dialami had chased off the light foot and managed to catch them in the rear. When you evade in AoW you have to throw for a ???Variable Move??™ a ???1??™ taking two inches off your move and a ???6??™ adding two inches to your move. This is how the Dialami managed to catch the light foot.

Mike had now lost 6 BGs in total, each counting as two ???Attrition Points??™, giving a total of 12. Because this was equal to his original BG count his army broke. 32-0 to us.

Our tactic of shooting the knights and hoping they failed their CMTs to draw them out, worked well. We were surprised that our armoured horse archers were then good enough to break them.

We had had no great problems with the rules and had played over ten moves and got a result well within the time.

At lunchtime I sat down and looked at the army lists Richard had sent me. I knew that two of the other game winners from the morning were using Ghaznavids and so there was a good chance this is what we would face in the afternoon. An army list full of drilled armoured horse archers and loads and loads of elephants. Hopefully if we got our spearmen in the right place we would be OK.

Hopefully more soon.

Don M