Medieval and Later Dark Ages in Godendag 2016
French Ordonnance & Italian Condotta vs Swiss & French Ordonnance
Game 1 French Ordonnance & Italian Condotta vs Ottomans & Serbs
Game 2 French Ordonnance & Italian Condotta vs Nikephorian & North African Arab
Game 3 French Ordonnance & Italian Condotta vs Swiss & Condottiere Venetian
Game 4 French Ordonnance & Italian Condotta vs Swiss & French Ordonnance
After the deep joy of a second Glen-yr-Afon lunch in 2 days, it was suddenly almost time to go home. All that now stood between us and an evening of queuing traffic on the M4 into London was yet another wall of Swiss, this time with a French ally to provide yet more heavy metal.
The lists for the French Ordonnance & Italian Condotta and Swiss & French Ordonnance from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Godendag can be seen here in the L'Art de la Guerre Wiki.
Our opponents were fully committed to the battle, and had even brought their own livery with them in the shape of matching club t-shirts. Their army was equally balanced - two huge blocks of Swiss flanked by Gendarmes either side of an area of rough ground into which they were going to be pushing Swiss Halberdiers, and a longbow formation on the far left of their line.
What's Going on Here Then?
The Swiss pike are firmly in the centre, with an all-halberdier command in the rough going. This creates a target for the Almughavars. There is a matchup between two sets of longbowmen on the right, but with a force of French/Italian knights on the far right of the table as an overlap. The Italo-French are facing half of the Swiss with all of their heavy foot on the right side and are looking to avoid one of the blocks of Swiss on the left by only placing one block of knights there. (This graphic does not show all the enemy commands separately, but instead shows the major blocks of troops)
Faced with a symmetrical table we had grasped the nettle of imagination and deployed all of our infantry on the right flank, again with the longbow men on the extreme right and then with some Gendarmes beyond even them. We had then matched the enemy right with a fearsome and potent attacking force of... 5 bases of mounted noblemen. The Almughavar command would again be in the middle and hunting Swiss halberdiers it seemed....
The impetuous knights in our army appeared to have drawn the short straw in this matchup, and were already wondering about the possibility of sneaking off early and riding their won horses down the hard shoulder of the motorway back to their safe warm tray in London.
The Franco-Swiss started by pushing their longbowmen into the terrain on the flank next to someone else's waterway. A quick count-up revealed that we had one extra unit of longbowmen in this otherwise even matchup - plus a lone Swiss halberdier who had been summoned up from whatever trodloglytic netherworld that Mikes Models renaissance Swiss inhabit when they are not standing at the back of a FoGR pike block and press-ganged into service to provide a cutting edge to the longbowmen in our army. Having not featured in any of the previous reports, the 6 small dwarf-like figures on the double base were hoping to make much more of an impact this game...
At least the Almughavars had a plan - advance as fast as they could and get into contact before the Swiss pike could advance and render their flanks indefensible !
The first exchanges of longbow fire saw markers sprout on both sides - us dropping Greens and ops opponents going for the more hipsteresque use of stackable markers, using here yellows to denominate the first casualty.
The Almughavars appeared to be succeeding in executing their ridiculously simple plan of full speed frontal attack and a coherent line of halberd-hefting French and Italian infantry was slowly making its way towards a date with destiny against half of the Swiss pike. It was time for the serious soldiers now, and both sides rushed to withdraw their skirmishers before the lines clashed.
What's Going on Here Then?
The Almughavars are rushing forwards, and the rest of the two armies are moving forwards towards each other.
This was very much destined to be medieval combat as Phillippe Le Barquer had intended, with solid lines of troops going toe to toe at each other with a wide variety of sharp implements. The Almughavars were first into action, ignoring the risk of overlaps as they hurled themselves in slightly ahead of the rest of their main line.
The immediate impact was spectacular, with units being evaporated and suffering excessive damage right from the off! The Almughavar unit who had smashed their opponents was also brave enough to hurl himself forward into the breach that he had created, as the units supporting him on both sides were still pretty much intact and so were unlikely to die and expose his flank anytime soon.
What's Going on Here Then?
The Almughavars greater speed sees them in contact early on, whilst the rest of the Italo-French army's infantry have converged on the Swiss pike to their right. The longbowmen are in contact, and the French/Italian knights have also moved into a position to join in the combat.
The rest of the Italo-French line had a much more mixed experience of combat, with the Swiss punching a hole right through the centre, but losing the outermost unit of their line as well to a cheeky Regular Italian Vanilla pikeman, as the combination of an overlap plus a cohesion loss from skirmisher shooting plus some outrageously uneven dice did for the end of the Swiss line. This was now a pretty significant hole for the Swiss to deal with...
Swiss Pikemen
With the fearsome battle cry of "Remember the MATH!" ringing in their ears the Italo-French longbowmen had rushed into combat, allowing the Swiss Halberdiers their moment of fame as the mustard-flavoured shock troops in this mostly plan English sandwich. With the Italian Gendarmes also joining in on the flank the 2-commands-into-one trick was working pretty quickly here, as the enemy markers grew in stature in step with their general's level of consternation and concern.
Whilst all this excitement was happening the remaining scrapings of the Italo-French army on the other flank were looking to get their share of the action as they pretended not to have received their orders to just dick about and not lose by drifting surreptitiously to the left and launching a rather unexpected charge against some enemy knights and their accompanying sub-standard bowmen who had presumably been seduced by their paucity of opposition and had unwisely ventured into the open.
The whole of the two armies were now locked in deadly close quarters combat. In the foreground the supposedly delaying force has piled into an equal matchup against the enemy knights by also has a base against the enemy bowmen, whilst next along the line Swiss pike look in vain for opponents. Beyond then the Almughavars continue to trade bases with the Swiss halberdiers and in the distance the two lines of heavy foot are starting to come unzipped as gaps appear in both sets of lines.
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The Almughavar base-trading has now ended, and they are all lost - however the Swiss halberdiers are badly mauled as a result, with many of them sporting serious amounts of markers. This combat has however allowed the slightly wider Italo-French infantry time to begin to outflank and roll up the main block of Swiss on the right and even now the last few cantonal pikemen are drowning under a tide of enemy troops.
On the far flank the enemy longbowmen have been all but eliminated as the weight of numbers and the arrival of Italian Gendarmes on their flank has the inevitable effect - the lone Swiss halberdier in italo-French service has done sterling work breaking through the enemy line like a storm trooper emerging from a start-wars themed cuckoo clock.
Knight Fighting ...
Over on the other flank the three Italo-French knights are still surviving - although the imminent arrival of a Swiss pike block on their flank is a cause for no little concern. Importantly though they have punched a hole in the poor quality enemy bowmen, and are chewing away at the other knight who is next to the hole..
This looks like the last Hurrah for the embattled Swiss as countless halberdiers and enemy pikemen surround them and drag them to the floor.
What's Going on Here Then?
The concentration of infantry on the Italo-French right has overwhelmed a command of Swiss and this is allowing the victorious infantry to join up with the longbowmen, who are also winning on their right. Weight of numbers is starting to count...
The other Swiss command has faced nothing but air and skirmishing crossbowmen all day as they prepare to take out their frustration on the flanks of the three eagerly committed Franco-Italian knights.
Italo-Frankish skirmishing crossbows are also causing trouble in the middle, as they return to the fray and start hunting halberdiers on 2 cohesion losses, hoping to pick off some of the damaged units for extra points losses. With the battle troops in their command all killed, their general has more than enough pips to spare to recommit the light foot to the front line.
LArt de la Guerre hint- commands don't break in ADLG. It's the whole army or nothing.
The last of the Swiss-French longbowmen are finally despatched as the Italo-French Gendarmes rush at speed into the area of the table where they can join in the main battle again
Frustrated Swiss pikemen receive the finger from evading Italian crossbow-armed LH who steadfastly refuse to flee off table.
The rashly-committed French knights are continuing to put up a better than expected account of themselves, and cause more casualties than they lose even whilst trying up a goodly proportion of the enemy army over on the left side of the table. Casualties are racking up fast for the Swiss-French forces.
The last of the main body of Swiss go down, as the unit already sporting a purple-headed three-layer erection representing 3 hit points is hammered from all directions, whilst the elite (and admittedly somewhat Teutonic-looking) Papal Guard spearmen hold out against the Swiss halberdiers in the middle.
What's Going on Here Then?
The Swiss/Italian left has largely collapsed and with the relatively few Italian/French troops on the right also managing to achieve a decent tradeoff in combat the Italian/Swiss army has run out of bases and run out of time. Concentration of force appears to have worked for the Italian/French forces against the better quality of the Swiss.
With gendarmes fast arriving, the last of the enemy army on the right side of the table suffers yet another hit - the game is over for the Swiss-French alliance and a victory is recorded for the Condotta and Ordonnance forces!
The Result is a significant victory for the French & Condotta.
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 French Ordonnance & Italian Condotta Commander
A-harrrr! For France! For Italy! Well, for the bit of France and Italy we weren't fighting against in these last two games which
both feel very much as if they were dominated by the once mighty but now vanquished by me Swiss.
Here those long, long days in my childhood spent in the classroom rather than on the jousting lists learning to take off my shoes and socks and count my toes have at last paid off, as I was able to skilfully calculate that my trustworthy English longbowmen outnumbered their counterparts by at least one unit, and armed with this unique and secret knowledge I was able to dazzle my nobles and send them off to victory secure in the knowledge of my intellectual as well as martial superiority.
Our choice to use heavily armed foot also paid dividends in spades, as they outfought and outlasted the enemy in a sustained slogging battle of attrition which one expects instinctively with two lines of heavy foot, but which previous rulesets of recent history have often failed to deliver. This slow erosion allowed us to win on the flank and roll up the enemy army from the right, as well as chipping away at them on the left with a brave charge or three
Coming away with a trophy is always satisfying, but proving the validity of the rules of engagement in this new 400 point format is almost an even greater prize!
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
How can one so clod-brained end up achieving so many wins in one weekend? It is as if the very buttocks of God have parted in the heavens above and shat forth a victory as unexpected as it is undeserved.
All I can say is in this game you clearly had the advantages of being able to copy the previous game, and taking on the Swiss Kiels with your more heaviliy armoured heavy foot - allowing the multi-spet cohesion mechanic of this gaming system to help you plan a slow loss to the Swiss whilst you chewed up their flanks with a massive concentration of force so great on the right that it veered on incompetent deployment
Apart from having to wipe from my mind the multiple examples of your knotty-pated spewings of tactical incompetence, this weekend has in many ways been a quite enjoyable outing which has once again proved the robustness of these rules, and also demonstrated that foreigners are already playing them to a far higher standard than you will ever achieve.
I just hope that you and your raccoon-liver'd sidekick in this venture will not join forces again as seeing such double-teamed slacktivism is more than I am prepared to bear. Roll on some more Malifaux is what I say!
What really happened this weekend?
This, first ever doubles competition for ADLG appeared to go really well, and provided a strong follow-up event to the 25mm competition held in Cardiff (tapping into the West Country ancients circuit) at the end of 2015. Even though ADLG was still new to many players, there were very few umpire calls over the weekend and plenty of comments as to how the rules are well written, well laid out and do a better job of explaining every eventuality better than most sets players had played previously.
The 2-player, 2 x 200AP format was also deemed a success. Having 40-50 maneuver elements on table on both sides really made the games feel like a large battle - especially compared to the dozen or so with FoGR or even the 7-8 of Malifaux!), and with 6 commanders rolling pip dice, both players were engaged throughout.
As the games went on you will see from these reports that deployments became more innovative, flanks were refused or strongly reinforced, and the meta-game became more important that the mechanics of the matchups as ourselves and the other players we faced started to work out how to play the game and the scenario the 2 x 200 AP game created.
Whilst exposing a flank and then exploiting it can still be significant, and whilst in game 1 this was pretty vital, after that the odd flank attack taking place at a tactical level did not change the game. Looking back at the reports, there were also very few occasions where a "6-1" seems to have been important enough to have been worth recording !
The final thing that came through was that whilst ADLG is still very much a DBx-based system, the addition of different cohesion levels for light and heavy troops together with the more 'logical' and finessed application of troop quality does bring a lot more to the overall gameplay than is apparent at first run-through.
Being able to commit heavily-armoured heavy foot into the line in the last 2 games, knowing that whilst they might not be as good frontally as the Swiss they faced, their 4-step cohesion and the "add +1 to a losing score for better armour" factor would mean they would still take a long time to lose allowing our weight of numbers to work in other areas of the field was something that just felt "right". In both FoG and (to a lesser extent) DBx games, greater resilience is generated by making troops Superior - which also impacts their offensive capabilities, their morale and their ability to execute complex maneuvers so to see it here play out as a unique, stand alone characteristic was really interesting to watch.
Next up is the Burton Doubles, where the Roman era will see even larger armies (as the elements are cheaper), and more probably maneuvering as well (more cavalry, less stodgy foot). Roll On Burton!
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Game 1 French Ordonnance & Italian Condotta vs Ottomans & Serbs
Game 2 French Ordonnance & Italian Condotta vs Nikephorian & North African Arab
Game 3 French Ordonnance & Italian Condotta vs Swiss & Condottiere Venetian
Game 4 French Ordonnance & Italian Condotta vs Swiss & French Ordonnance
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