Open Theme in Devizes 2016
Condotta Italian vs Ordonnance French
Game 1 Condotta Italian vs Condotta Italian
Game 2 Condotta Italian vs Ordonnance French
Game 3 Condotta Italian vs Bactrian and Indo-Greek
Game 4 Condotta Italian vs Alexandrian Macedonian
Its game 2, and after a roam around the perfectly formed Attack! Trade show and a ham sandwich the opposition the Florentines faced was another "all the toys" Medieval army made up of bowmen, Knights and a core of Swiss, not as an ally but straight paid mercenaries in the core list.
The lists for the Condotta Italian and Ordonnance French from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Devizes can be seen here in the L'Art de la Guerre Wiki.
It's very tempting to take a Late Medieval army to an open period - Knights and heavily armoured foot tend to be pretty good in most rulesets, and everyone ends up with a Medieval army at some point in their gaming career - and with the new Perry plastic troops flooding into circulation that trend will only continue. ADLG certain has - like most rules - a better feel when played in period too, but whether the points system really means that Medieval armies are the bees knees in an open theme only time will tell. Or, put another way, don't read anything into the presence of three Medieval armies so far in these reports - everyone is so new at ADLG in the UK its just people bringing out their new (or old) toys rather than any clever understanding of what's actually the best to try and win with.
The table was a good one for heavy foot and Knights - a clear plain with some clutter on the Florentine right to protect everyone's flanks. I deployed with the Knights on the open side, the main foot command with bowmen and crossbowmen next to them, hopefully to provide some extra shooting to soften up the enemy Knights who would surely be facing mine, and then the solid halberdier line of Hawksmoor's infantry on the right. The French had refused their centre, daring the Florentines to advance into their wall of bowfire and Swiss pike as their "better than mine" knights contested the open space on their left.
Hawksmoor and his men were in classic mercenary mode - being asked to do the hard dangerous stuff, whilst the rest of the army waited for them to break the enemy line.
The Late Medieval armies are inevitably somewhat similar, and with Perry Miniatures on both sides these were even more similar than usual. Both sides had knights, both had LH with crossbows, but with the large investment in Swiss pikemen the French were light on supporting troops to back up their Gendarmes, allowing the Florentine bowmen and crossbows a chance to harass the enemy at long distance...
The Perry Men at Arms were a solid formation of well armoured infantry, confident and keen to get involved - but this time they had a lot of ground to cover to close with the opposition.
As the identically attired Knights moved cautiously towards charge range, longbowmen raised their bows and started to shower heavy arrows onto the Frenchmen from distance.
French Knights
The range of a longbow in the 25mm game is a rather impressive 24cms, and so even with the two sides seemingly miles apart there was still an opportunity for enemy archery fire to cause Hawksmoor's men to break out the injured markers - and with one being a man hit by an arrow, he was the obvious first choice.
The French had better knights, but the Italians had the quality of quantity. Taking full advantage of some good pips and the ability to do up to a full base with slide as part of each move, the Florentine Gendarmerie co-ordinated with the mercenary longbowmen to set up a traumatic future for the French, pinning them frontally whilst teeing up flank charges and inflicting some additional shooting hits at the same time.
As Hawksmoor's men advanced their longbowmen had picked up too many markers - a yellow-based one signifying that this unit was within 1 hit of removal. The better-armoured and more resilient (4 hits) Halberdiers shuffled across and closed ranks in front of the wounded longbowmen, narrowing their own frontage but preventing a full unit loss by shielding them with their own well-armoured bodies.
How to fight even more like a Condottieri
With the enemy Knights well taken care of, the rest of the Florentine army could start to think about how to deal with the enemy Swiss pikemen and halberdiers. The initial though was to call in an airstrike from space, but with that not really an option due to the non-invention of the necessary comms gear to get in contact with the satellite space station, long range crossbow fire and a very liberal approach to the concept of 'advancing' was the only remaining option.
On the opposite flank the two sides were keener to get to grips - and with the French having many more archers than Hawksmoor's men, the balance of power in any protracted exchange of fire was always going to be in the enemy's favour. The Italians mercenaries had already split their command up in order to protect some battered bowmen, leaving odd units hanging out to dry as a result - and this allowed the French to rush forward and try and deliver the coup de grace to the isolated bowmen.
On the other side of the board, the French knights had no alternative but to trust to luck and their innate quality - they charged home, bringing their mounted crossbowmen with them as well. Going in first they had to make a big impact in this first bound, as a devastating flank charge was already teed up from the Florentine longbowmen.
Hawksmoor's men were also into combat - some against other halberdiers, but one unit against the potentially far more squishy longbowmen at the end of the French line. Halberds flashed through the air and the sounds of steel and leather rent the air as the heavyweight infantry fought hand to hand.
French Knights in combat
The French Swiss Mercenaries were starting to feel left out, with combat taking place everywhere that they weren't - a state of affairs that was very positive if you were an Italian Inferior Pikeman facing off against an Elite Swiss Pikeman in the line. But, with a surfeit of troops across most of the board, the Florentines had already become confident enough to spare a lone unit of Gendarmes from the combat on the left, and even now they were moving up ominously towards the flank of the Swiss formation. The Poor Quality pikemen may now have wanted to initiate combat, but even they could see that they might need to become the anvil whilst the hammer blow of the flanking Gendarmes pummelled the Swiss in the flank.
Hawksmoor's men were locked in savage fighting against a more numerous enemy. The two lines of halberdiers were giving as good as they got, but on balance the tide was slowly turning towards the French as weight of numbers began, inexorably, to count.
The French Knights however were suffering a mauling at the hands of Italy's gendarmes. The Florentine mercenary Longbowmen were doing a pre-1500 Pac-man impersonation and steadily chewing their way along the line of French nobility, dragging them from their horses and despatching them one by one with a dagger and a sharpened stake.
Even the French mounted crossbowmen were starting to lose heart as the futility of their fight became more apparent each time the Longbowmen got a base-width closer to their increasingly prophetic "end of the line" position.
Hawksmoor had broken through! In a brutal exchange, both sides on the right were swapping units and the Italian's mercenaries were desperate to conclude their fight before the returning French Archers, fresh from polishing off the dregs of the English Mercenary longbowmen, returned to deliver a crushing rear charge against the Free Company men already well-engaged to their front.
How to play Condottieri
The French mounted wing was no more, and with that destruction of 5 units on one flank, neither was the 18-unit French army. The two smallest armies in the competition had now both fallen to the 21-unit-strong Florentines, both losing wings before their Swiss could make any meaningful impact in the battle. Victory Again!!
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition, or read on for the post match summaries from the Generals involved, as well as another episode of legendary expert analysis from Hannibal
Post Match Summary from the Condotta Italian Commander
Heavens Above! The golden light of victory has broken through the cumulonimbus clouds of potential defeat and now I am soaring high in the sunlit heavens of ultimate success like a eagle of militarism with feathers made of pure cold steel! How my men will glory in the luxuriant deep-pile carpets of the French baggage train as they walk barefoot in the very tent of victory, grasping to their bosoms the stolen goblets and trinkets of the calm after the storm.
Having avoided the Swiss for most of the first battle after they were paralyzed with wet-legged naked fear at the sight of my heroic army, here I guided my troops with a firm but sure hand to avoid combat with the cuckoo-clock-making trodloglytes until their mercenary contribution became a pecuniary irrelevance to the outcome of the crescendo of combat.
So, not only has my train-stopping countenance struck so much fear into those who claimed once, unjustly, to be the crème of Europe's footsoldiery in our first battle that they dare not e'en take up arms against me and my men, I have now added to that mastery of all things war with a use of tactics so clever that surely Alexander himself must rise from his grave, to join with an as-yet unborn Napoleon to jointly acclaim my wondrousness!
This day will go down long, hard and deep in the annals of military history, and many tomes will be written on the genius I have deployed here today, long to be studied by mere mortal Generals and Field Marshals as they aspire to the peaks of greatness which I so easily bestride!
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
What drivel, what tosh, I struggle to break free of its cloying embrace as your unjustified hyperbole drags me down into a well of despair so deep that I fear it could soon become easier to find myself commentating on the results of a Chinese army from thar side of the world than to connect the reality I have seen here today on the tabletop with the fantastical claims which fall so freely from your bloated and sweat-stained lips.
All you really did here was deploy second so you could try and avoid the Swiss, and then race across the table as fast as the little legs of your allied command could carry them to run down a mismatched group of non-combat-ready archers standing almost in the open - and even that you almost managed to mess up.
In reality, and in any sane analysis it is hard to come to any conclusion other than to reckon up the units on each side, and find that in a head to head battle your larger army somehow managed to lose more slowy than the slightly smaller opposition you yet again faced here.
I was however greatly impressed yet again with how 200 points of 25mm ADLG troops filled enough of the table to make a solid set of battle lines, but without cluttering things too much to the point at which they risked squeezing out anyy possibility of movements and in so doing reducing the game to a line-em-up dicefest of unit on unit, which has long been the problem of other games in the 25mm scale. This solid yet portable, proper-feeling unit density so allowing of tactics is one thing that I expect will come back to haunt you as you play less unfortunate opponents in the next game
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition
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Game 1 Condotta Italian vs Condotta Italian
Game 2 Condotta Italian vs Ordonnance French
Game 3 Condotta Italian vs Bactrian and Indo-Greek
Game 4 Condotta Italian vs Alexandrian Macedonian
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