Britcon Game 3 vs Medieval Danish
The Danish were in theory very similar to the Free Company I had run over earlier in the weekend so I was mildly optimistic
The Danish list is available here
On a terrain-free table, the Danes were cowering in a corner from the off..
Q:
Why do Danish people never play hide and seek?
A: Nobody wants to look for them.
...but they still looked fairly tough to me, and a late deployment of 2 units of knights against my cavalry had caught me out badly
With the benefit of moving first, I attempted to redeploy my cavalry across the front of my entire army. I hoped to run down the mixed units of 2HCTW & XBow with my mounted, and avoid combat with my spears against the knights until late in the game.
You know you are Danish when....
- You have only two facial expressions, smiling or blank.
- You buy your own drink at the bar even when you are with a group of people.
- You find yourself more interested in the alcohol content than the name of the wine.
- You forget how to open canned beer.
- You start to believe that if it weren't for Denmark's efforts, the world would probably collapse pretty soon.
- You will leave a pub if you can't find a seat.
- Your wardrobe no longer has suits but blue shirts and mustard colored sports jackets and lots of denim.
Soon it looked like my army was in such a state it might actually beat itself without intervention from the enemy at all...
But I had managed to find an isolated unit of mixed troops who were on the end of the line for the Danes. Having thought about it, I decided that the knights of the allied Crusaders were enough, as all the cavalry needed top be kept together to make sure of killing off the main mixed formations in the middle. As the knights moved up they suffered an unlucky shot and then even worse, failed a cohesion test. But they had a general with them, so they should recover soon...
War with Denmark
Things were now looking generally quite competent - a strong punch of mounted lancers were teed up nicely, the enemy knights were sort of out of the picture...
...and my light horse were keeping the pikemen bottled up
Of course, nothing is perfect... my Superior knights, led by a GENERAL, were now at FRAGMENTED against the powerful shooting of just 3 crossbowmen (who were taking full advantage of the "everything counts against Tim" rule by measuring range from the front rank, but counting all the bases shooting as its the first SHOOTING rank that is used for assessing numbers of dice...) - and next shot they routed and fled !!!
The words "Danish" and "humour" are rarely found together. The only Danish joke I have ever been told - "Can you play the violin?" "I don't know. I've never tried" - is hardly side-splitting.
Anyways, my own lancers charged in. Some had to fight the pikemen - who were not being charged in the flank by my victorious knights - but at worst we would bounce off so hopefully it would work out OK..
and indeed that was what happened, as my line of cavalry flinched back as far as the psiloi, ready to charge again
In again they went trying bravely to break the mixed formations resolve. (The Its Against Tim rule also worked here, as a mixed MF/HF formation counts as HF for cohesion tests and combat POAs when fighting mounted!)
By now time had run out and the knights were close enough to sweep round and hit my spearmen. I intended to get my cavalry round their flank, but they had managed to get close in their charge, meaning it was impossible for me to actually do a flank charge without waiting to do about 4 or 5 turns of complicated maneuvers - and my protected spearmen weren't going to last that long ...
In fact, they were lasting better than my armoured spearmen, who had been run down by knights and heavy weapon men in short order, leaving a big gap in my line...
My cavalry were still charging in furiously, but ominously a pike block had executed its 90-degree-turn-and-move and was closing in on my flank...
Finally, with less than an inch to spare, the Crusader general persuaded his men that they might want to hang around, and rescued their rout at the last possible moment!
Likewise another general managed to arrest the rout of the armoured spearmen - it was one step forwards and one back for my teetering army ...
The Pikemen ground inexorably close to my engaged lancers...
...who managed to break their opponents and pursue to relative safety in the nick of time!!
well. relative safety anyway... ouch!
With this the game was over - a heavy loss, but by rescuing 2 routing units I had at least staved off a total defeat.
Post match Summary
The mixed XB/Hvy Weapon formations proved much tougher than the Hvy Weapon only ones of the Free Company - 3 dice per frontage at impact due to the 2nd rank shooting was a big factor in making sure they won the all important first round and avoided the -1 cohesion test modifier for losing to lancers.
But it may have been a very different game if my Knights had been even half competent and managed to charge in against the isolated mixed formation that was holding the flank. I had thought of sending 2 units to deal with them, but had decided that it was better to concentrate all my cavalry firepower in the one spot - in retrospect (of course - this was a mistake. If you want to hit something in FoG, hit it really hard - as a bad cohesion test or two can ruin your entire plan and will do so if that plan depends on just one unit.
It seemed strange to save a game by using generals to prevent routing units from fleeing off table and to rally them - and I am not entirely sure if this did me any good in the scoring system other than reducing the number of points my opponent scored.
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