Slitherine

Test Game: Scots Irish versus Picts, 15 mm, 800 pts.

I took the Irish with

Warriors, average MF unprot light spear sword: 3 x 10 base, 1 x 8 base, 3 x 6 base.
Chariots, superior Lch light spear: 2 x 6 base
Javelinmen, average LF unprot javelin light spear 3 x 6 base
Slingers, average LF Unprot sling 1 x 4 base
Attecotti, superior MF Impact foot sword 1 x 10 base
FC, 3 x TC

Lance Flint took the picts with (from memory)
Attecotti superior MF Impact foot sword 1 x 10 (12?) base
Spearmen average unprot def spear 3 x 8 base
Archers average LF Unprot bow 4 x 8 base
Light horse, Average LH, unprot, javelin light spear 3 x 4 base, 1 x 6 base
Chariots superior Lch light spear: 1 x 4 base
Saxons superior HF protected impact foot sword 1 x 6 base
Saxons average HF protected impact foot sword 1 x 6 base
FC, 3 x TC including the saxon ally.

He won initiative and placed a village, an impassable and open field. I took an OF plus large and small vinyard, both removed. I ended up with all the terrain, village on one flank and impassable on the other. This stopped his LH from outflanking me, but narrowed my frontage enough that I thought it worth doing a flank march with one chariot BG. I ambushed a 6 base warrior BG in the village.

Skirmish battle:

I moved my skirmishers forward, but soon worked out they were on to a loser and pulled them back again. With warriors close behind my javelinmen I was confident enough to try charging his bowmen with one javelinmen BG. I hit two archer BG so was out-diced in the melee, but stuck around long enough for my attecotti to charge in and rout one of the archer BGs. My javelinmen routed at the same time and with hindsight I think the other archer BG should have pursued into contact with my warriors. This didn't happen and the archers pulled back if I remember correctly.

On the other flank near the village, the archers shot up my warriors, but to little effect as I had rear support and a general and he needed 4 hits out of 5 shots to do 1HP3B on my 10-base front line BGs.

Main lines clash:

I had a chariot reserve that had gone into column and passed through a narrow gap to chase off some LH. The superior saxons hit the chariots, but this prevented them from contacting my warriors. The average saxons plus a general hit my warriors, but were double overlapped so I had 10 dice versus 6 in the melee. After several rounds there were a couple of bases killed but no loss of cohesion. After a few more rounds the Saxons broke.

SLightly later the Pictish Attecotti hit more of my warriors and soon broke them. They pursued into the rear supports, who had been burst through due to my blocking the anticipated rout move with some LF on their way to a flank.

My chariots had problems expanding from their column due to lack of space. They managed to disrupt their opponents, but in due course got broken.

My attecotti pursued into some spearmen. The spearmen consistently lost the combat and passed the CT. Eventually they autobroke, allowing me to pursue into his rear support.

I also charged a 10-base warrior BG into 8 spearmen, I lost this fight in a couple of turns.

Final result:

WE stopped after 4 and a half hours. At this point I had 6 BG broken and one fragged and he had 4 BG of skirmishers shooting at a 6 base warrior BG so I would have lost quite quickly. He had 3 BG broken and 1 fragged that would probably have broken next melee phase.

There was nothing that seemed contrary to the expected historical results.

Rule issues:

I was using 5.01, Lance 6.01.

Quite a lot of time was spent looking things up, as the finer points of situations are often difficult to find. Usually it was easier to find things in 5.01. Some things we never found so relied on memory. We never found the setup and deployment rules in 6.01.

Initiative rolls: should you declare the reasons for your modifier? We assumed not. As an aside, we thought that LF should count toward initiative in some types of terrain (e.g. mountainous).

2nd moves: We had one incident where a general moved to a certain position, then several BG moved to form a BL with the general, then the BL did a second move. I think this was illegal because one BG must stop when another moves, but Lance felt that was not clear.

We discussed hypothetically a general using some of his move to join a BL and then moving with the BL for the rest of his move distance.

I note in the CM Table it states "second green advance". Does this imply that both the 1st and 2nd moves have to be a green advance?

Rear support: We had some skirmishers in front of the main line, but facing back towards it. The rules don't allow rear support in this case, but we thought that perhaps they should.

Charges: I charged with two BGs on convergent paths so after the target evaded my BGs collided. We couldn't see anything in the rules telling us what to do in this case. I moved one and wheeled the other so it missed.

Stepping forward:

Allowed provided that

All stepped forward bases contact enemy to their front.
All stepped forward bases remain in at least corner to corner contact with their BG

I had a situation like this: (X, Y are enemy, A, B are my bases, all bases 20 mm deep) REading the rule as written, no stepping forward is possible. My front rank A could reach X but would lose contact with the other A's. (if Y was only one rank, one A element could step forward. This would be embarrassing if it was spearmen.)

Lance thought the intention of the rule was to allow rear ranks to step forward too. This would allow one column of A to step forward, resulting in He also thought it was not the intention to leave stepped forward bases isolated and overlapped so the two unengaged files of A would step forward too. This is how we played it, resulting in After Y routed, we had:
from which position my two set back A's could not move into combat as this would not be an expansion or contraction (the only allowable moves if in combat).


Pursuit: I had a BG all of whose combat opponents broke, therefore they had to pursue. However, my BG was broken too. I could not find any rule to say they did not pursue (specifically, it is not included in the list of pursuit exceptions). By the rules, I would have had to do a rout move followed by a pursuit move.

Rout/evade: If a unit needs to shift or contract (i.e. drop bases behind) to avoid friends, does it have a choice which to do? If it needs to clear two base widths can it shift and do a contraction as well?

Lawrence Greaves

2nd moves: We had one incident where a general moved to a certain position, then several BG moved to form a BL with the general, then the BL did a second move. I think this was illegal because one BG must stop when another moves, but Lance felt that was not clear.

We discussed hypothetically a general using some of his move to join a BL and then moving with the BL for the rest of his move distance.

I've now found the box at the top of p22 that clearly prohibits both of these.

I see Pictish spear are shown as defensive spear. I have not seen this list but presume this is the official classification?
John

marshalney2000 wrote:I see Pictish spear are shown as defensive spear. I have not seen this list but presume this is the official classification?
John

We are open to discussion on this one. We weren't really sure whether to classify them as Offensive or Defensive. E-mail me John if you have reason to disagree with Defensive.

Richard, I will do some digging and get back to you. Just bought a new book on the Picts so that should help.
John