Slitherine

The Longships pulled into Laodikeia to continue our tour of the Holy Land. That was seriously thick pea soup we sailed through as when we came ashore the locals hadn't even HEARD of the Christ, so naturally we had to teach them.

The Vikings consisted of:
2 BG's of Huscarls
3 BG's of Freemen
1 BG of Freemen Archers
2 BG's of Irish allies.

The Seleucids consisted of:

2 BG's of Pike
1 BG of Galatians
1 BG of Therakotai
1 BG of LH with javelins
1 BG of LH with bows
1 BG of Light infantry with javelins
1 BG of Light infantry with bows.
1 BG of Companions

The battlefield (from the perspective of the Vikings):
On the left rear was a gentle hill.
On the right rear was an Plantation on a hill
On the right centre was a hill with the famous Lebanese Cedars covering it
On centre left was a steep hill with a village on it.

The deployment looked something like this:
-----------------------------------Companions
LHLH---------PikePikeThorakataiGalatiansLF
----------------LF------------------------------


LF------FreeHuscFreeHuscFreeIrishIrish

In the intitial few turns the Irish moved fast up on the Galatians and Light foot to try to occupy the wooded hill. The Huscarls and Freemen moved substantially slower as they were trying to do a few fancy manouvers to get the Huscarls vs the pike. The freemen on the left wheeled around to try to cut off the Viking LF and the light foot moved up on the left to shoot at the Selucid LH.

The first combat went well for the Selucids. The Galatians cut through one BG of Irish without much bother, but they stuck around until they 'autobroke'. They didn't cause any disruption to the other Irish who managed to securre the hill. The LH managed to charge the LF and successfully contact the evading LF in the rear. Fortunately I did make it to the hill though, so in the subsequent turn the Freemen charged the LH in the flank and the now fragmented LF on the hill managed to break the LH.

The tide looked like it might turn.

I'd managed to get only one of my BG's of Huscarls directly opposite the Pike, but shrunk one of the Fremen down to only 2 bases wide so that the second unit of Huscarls at least managed to put in one base against the pike.

The ensuing impact phase did not go well for the Selucids. It wasn't bad for them, but they didn't do any real damage to the Vikings. For about 2 turns not a lot happened until with some luck the Huscarls managed to disrupt the pike on the Vikings left flank. That looked bad all round. The Vikings were still steady having only lost two elements of Freemen.

In the next combat phase the huscarls managed to fragment the pike on the viking left and kill the general commanding it, fragment the galatians on the viking right and kill the general although the central pike unit also managed to rout the Viking Freemen. This didn't matter though as the death of the commanders so demoralised the Selucids that they called it quits and ceded a substantial amount of territory to the Dublin Vikings.

The ensuing 'party' looks like resulting in a large number of blonde haired children in that part of the world.

The Vikings, after cutting down the cedars to make repairs to their longships, returned to the seas. Who knows where they will be raiding next.

There has been rumours that the Swiss and Andalusians are ripe for the picking...

Sigtrygg Caech

Crikey , how many generals have you killed this week ?

Keith wrote:Crikey , how many generals have you killed this week ?

Well, that really depends on how you count it.

There were your two Generals of course - that's a given.
Then there were Paul's two Generals... that's a given also.
That makes 4 .

Then of course you COULD add my Irish Ally General that YOU killed, which I can partially take responsibility for as I DID put him in the front rank .

So, somewhere between 4 and 5 , depending on whether you get a full 'kill' if it's your own General

Ian

You didn't specify the date, which leaves open whether the Huscarls and Irish were wielding axes or spears.

Is alternating Huscarls with Freemen your doctrine or just how it worked out during deployment? How did you like it?

I was thinking about a default doctrine involving having Huscarls with axes in a second line in rear support of Freemen with the intention of moving them where needed as the situation develops - though they would resent being left out of the line.

Mike

MikeK wrote:You didn't specify the date, which leaves open whether the Huscarls and Irish were wielding axes or spears.

Well, we have to keep SOME secrets .

They were all Heavy Weapon - and boy were they nice

MikeK wrote:Is alternating Huscarls with Freemen your doctrine or just how it worked out during deployment? How did you like it?

No, it's just how it came about. I started (almost what you said) with my Huscarls behind my Freemen. The idea being that I could move them into the right position to take on the pikes. It half worked. I got one of the Huscarls into the pikes and colapsed the width of one of my Freemen so that I could get one file of Huscarls into the other Pike. Ultimately I wanted to get them both in, but it worked out fine (obviously) as it was.

MikeK wrote:I was thinking about a default doctrine involving having Huscarls with axes in a second line in rear support of Freemen with the intention of moving them where needed as the situation develops - though they would resent being left out of the line.

Well, it's almost what I did. The manouver element makes it difficult to guarantee anything. I have an inspirational general, so chances are increased, but it's still a bit 'scary' trying to get my guys to do things like Romans, but when they do it obviously works well .

Ian