Friday Night Game - Reconquista with To the Strongest

 John and I led a larger, lighter Arab army against Julians "Spaniards" (they are actually Normans, but close enough for us!) All the figures are from Julians collection.

We had more army points but many light units that only take one hit to be destroyed (and lose a coin)

I took the right wing with the cavalry, and John had the infantry in the centre and left. He had one single heavy cavalry unit too.

The battle ebbed to and fro and at the three quarters point, I thought we had it in the bag - we had around 14 coins left and Julian was down to 8 - but Julians incredible card drawing (every second card seemed to be an 8, a hit if attacking and a save if defending!) saw him survive and gradually whittle down our lead. On our last turn, I failed to activate any of my cavalry, despite being in a perfect position to wipe out the remaining Spaniards on my wing, and when it was Julians turn, he managed to kill off two more infantry units, to reduce our coin pile to zero - he still had two coins remaining!

Here are some pictures of the action - not a huge number, because there was not a lot of movement really, so no point in taking a multitude of pictures that all look very similar!

Initial set up with the Muslim army at the bottom - the disparity in numbers is very obvious in this shot!

Some of the Arab forces

The Spanish commander

My cavalry command - 4 light horse archers and 6 cataphract type heavy cavalry

Arab infantry with the Spaniards opposite

An imposing view of the Muslim cavalry

Looking over the field from the Spanish commandeers position

Light horse archers confronting the flower of Spanish chivalry - they were quickly driven back into the woods to their rear!

On the other flank, the Spanish mounted warriors attempted to turn John's flank

The mounted warriors clash on our right wing - despite having a numerical advantage, the terrain made it hard for me to bring all my units to bare - plus, I often failed to activate some of them.

Getting towards the end of the game, one of Johns units, disordered from having received a hit earlier, has just destroyed a Spanish unit in melee.

Here, my heavy cavalry with officer attached has finally destroyed the Spanish unit they have been engaged with for most of the game - the Spanish general survived and joined an adjacent unit - if he had died, that would have removed another two coins from Julians pile.....

Johns' archers finally managed to get some hits on the Spanish line and another enemy unit was destroyed!

Muslim cavalry everywhere! I had both the remaining Spanish units shaken and had formed heavy cavalry on their flanks - BUT Julian managed to evade back with both of them, and I could not land a killer blow!

This is the turn when I turned an ace then a two then another ace for activation - perfectly positioned to finish off the Spaniards and I couldn't activate anything to get the job done!

And at the other end of the field, Julian managed to kill off a couple more units of our light infantry, and get us down to zero coins, while he retained two for a famous victory.

A great game - we played from around 6pm to 11pm with an hour or so in the middle for dinner. The ending was slightly frustrating, but we had to laugh when Julian was turning so many eights - he honestly should have lost units on multiple occasions but just kept managing to turn the right cards. Meanwhile, I outnumbered his cavalry 3:1 but could not get half of my units involved and the half I did get into action, got one or two activations per turn rather than four or five which can be possible with these rules.

ACW with Marks home brew rules at Barrys place tomorrow, so another report to follow on that game - but I might leave it till Monday, to let people read and comment on this post first!

PS 

A few close up images of Julian's collection,  courtesy of John.....