No Valkyries this time - Julian did not want his troops distracted from the job of killing the enemy, like what happened last time. For this game, it was Saxon invaders versus the Arthurian Romano-British.
I was assigned the Romano British - less units but better quality.
I had eight units which gave me 8 "Commanders Gaze" points plus one for the commander
John and Julian had the Saxon invaders - 12 units - so thirteen CG points
The battle commenced and I advanced into the space between the two wooded areas, sending my light archers into the woods as my cavalry swung left to confront an expected attack from Julian
My solitary heavy cavalry unit (Arthur and his Round Table companions) pushed the Saxon lights back.
The Romano British had three units of "legionary trained" heavy infantry - they do enjoy significant advantages over any Saxon unit.
The "legionnaires" have already dispatched one unit of Saxon archers and are now bearing down on the rest of Johns command (the archers in the woods are mine!)
Legionnaires smash into an already disrupted Saxon unit - 4 5 or 6 is a hit and Saxons have an armour value of 1 ....
So, they are all dead!
Meanwhile, the left side Romano British unit chased off Julians archers, but as they had "entered" the wood to do so, went into open order and lost some of their formidableness.
Julian meanwhile had sent three of his four light cavalry units into the woods, where the leading unit engaged my archers (bottom right)
The Saxons thought this was their best chance to charge the open order legionnaires - but I pointed out to them, because I was "in the woods" I got to add one to their armour - so three hits required for each damage, rather than the four required if they are in a fully formed formation - still "quite" formidable!
It didn't go so well - the Saxons piled in with supports to get extra dice, but I think even then, they only had seven - so even if they scored seven hits, that would only translate to two damage (3 hit = 1 damage) whereas the Romano British were rolling three dice but each hit was a kill.
Interestingly, in these rules, all damage suffered by the primary attacking or defending unit is shared equally on all the supports - which makes you think about whether to support certain units. I think I scored three hits, so three different Saxon units all suffered three hits!
This seemed to be another occasion when the Saxons should go well - the Saxon commander and his elite household troops get on the flank of my other legionnaire unit. They get extra dice for that of course but despite a frantic search of the rules and much wailing and gnashing of teeth, neither John nor Julian could find anything that said flank or rear = degradation of legion type armour - so these guys in formation were a 4 - John rolled 7 D6 and scored two hits - so no kills at all, and I got one hit on him in
return
When a unit takes casualties, it has to do a discipline test and then a leader test. If you throw a 1, the leader is killed...... and if your overall leader is killed, you have to test every unit. AND if you have already suffered two previous leaders dying, you have to roll a 6 or the unit breaks and flees!
If you look carefully, you will observe one single unit of Saxon cavalry in the woods - every other unit failed the morale test!
The victorious Romano British!
Thanks to John for all the lovely close-up shots as usual. A fun game for me, not so much for the Saxons - maybe next time, Julian will let me bring my Dark Ages Dames again?! Let's hope this post appears within a decent time frame - my previous one took three days and has half the usual number of comments as a result - so if you have not seen it and read this - hit the "previous post" tab below!
