Friday Night Dark Ages Game - WARNING R18!

 Chris, John and I had another game of Ospreys Wars of the Republic. This time, I was allowed to use my Valkyrie Army - hence the R18 warning 😉

Chris and I had 12 units to 9 for the other lot - they had three units of the legionary style Roman British BUT we had house ruled it that they only get the formation bonus if attacked frontally - so 4 hits for each casualty if attacked from the front but only 2 hits if attacked from flank or rear.

Julian set up (and I use the term advisedly!) an ambush scenario - the "British" were three quarters of the way across the table but strung out on both sides of a stream - the "Saxons" (or whoever) had troops between them and the table edge but also some deployed in adjacent woods. Supporting cavalry faced each on one flank. John and I had the infantry Julian and Chris the cavalry (Chris had two infantry as well, in the woods.)

The three nearest the viewer are my troops, as are the archers in the wood - John's force is on both sides of the stream

Three of my six units face John's right flank, behind them are Chris and Julians forces

The battlefield overall

The Queen of the Shield Maidens!

One feature of the rules is both sides use their store of Commanders Gaze tokens to bid for the first activation, Given the precarious situation I was in, Chris and I decided we would go all out to get the first activation of the first turn, so bid 6 of our 13 available tokens - and it worked!

The shield walls

I was able to weaken Johns supporting archers with my own arrow fire then assault them with my "Drilled Infantry" shield wall and push them back over the river. Meanwhile, the archers in the woods fired at the leading Roman British "legionary" unit and got a hit on them, taking their courage down one level.

The first attack 

Julians cavalry advances .........

And is instantly ambushed by Chris's heavy infantry!

The cavalry got the shock of their lives and were driven back, Arthur only just surviving the combat!

The Roman British won the first combat and pushed the shield maidens back, but suffered from the archery from the woods 

Meanwhile on the other flank, the shield maiden cavalry joined the fray 

I must have got so excited at this point, I failed to take a picture of one of the pivotal events of the game! The Roman British legion unit followed up on the shield wall they had earlier repulsed, but a second shield maiden unit was able to charge into them from the flank. Under the new house rule, this reduced the Britons armour rating to 2. An adjacent British unit came in to support their colleagues, so we ended up with me rolling 8 dice needing 4 to hit and 2 hits for a kill, and John rolling 6 dice. 

The result, we got three each! Then Julian suggested John use a "Commanders Gaze" token to re roll one hit, he did and got to four, and I did the same, with the same result. They pointed out that the two casualties went on both units - my attacking unit and the unit that the Britons had pursued earlier - and I said "Oh, thanks for reminding me - I should have another two dice for that unit -and I rolled two hits - so the shield maidens won the fight, destroying the main target unit and putting three hits on the support, which left it as "wavering"

A hail of arrows hit the wavering Roman British ......

As they are wavering, only two hits required and they only have a single courage point

Four firing dice needing a 4 5 or 6 - that's a 50/50 chance of success .......

Now, there is only one unit of Romano British on the shield maidens' side of the stream!

The original shield wall unit was down to one "courage" marker - but you can rebuild that by spending "Commanders Gaze" tokens 

The final remaining Romano British legionary unit

Me taking the picture above!

 

At the top right, you can see the confused melee of the shield maiden shield walls and cavalry compressing Arthur and his "knights" into a smaller and smaller pocket

The battle was won and lost!

Chris continued mopping up Julians cavalry

As my shield walls moved forwards towards the stream

To the victors, the spoils!

The ravens will feast today

Johns' final "comment" on the game!! 😍😂

And finally, this - bloody Blogger is still playing up - my latest post has been "hidden for 60+ hours and you can see the result compared with the previous post that appeared within minutes - hopefully todays does the same - but do hit the "older post" tab by the comments and have a look at my recently arrived WW2 3D prints!

UPDATE - as at 1415 NZT Sun 19 July, neither this post nor the previous has updated on Blogger