Pre 1570 in Warfare 2014
Early Danish vs Mughal
Game 2 Early Danish vs Hungarian
Game 3 Early Danish vs Maximillian Imperial
Game 4 Early Danish vs Henrician English
Wafare, The Gorge Cafe for breakfast, lots of bacon.. and a Danish army. < This was going to be a weekend with nothing not to like!
The lists for the Early Danish and Mughal from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Warfare can be seen here in the FoGR Wiki.
In an early period I'd picked a Danish army that I'd tried using with some success before, and improved it after reading on the Slitherine forum that there might be more Eastern cavalry armies and maybe Samurai about. This involved dropping out a Kiel for 2 mixed units of Danish Heavy weapon/Crossbowmen, and giving some rarely used light guns an outing too. The first opponents were Mughals - an ideal opponent to practice the theory against...
The first game saw the Danes heading for a bacon-curry mashup (hmmm - curried bacon... nice!) agianst the Mughals, and fortunately the terrain has already fallen well for the Danes, narrowing the field and protecting the flank against what willo be a mostly mounted army. The Mughals have deployed to support the shooting of their guns (lots of, and big!) with mounted bowfire, but the game depends for them on some highly effective artillery shooting disrupting the Danes advance... the Danish plan is simple - advance and engage the enemy.
The Danish advance moved forward unimpeded, as if on rails greased by the effluvium of a breakfast frying pan, and the very artfully arranged Mughal lineup starts to wonder what will happen when they are slammed into by a wall of Pikemen and Heavy Weapon infantry that looks to be almost the full width of the table...?
The advance continues as the heat is turned up on the Mughals. Having allowed the Mughals to fool themselves into thinking they might actually be doing something with their faffing around, the Danish Gendarmes simply slam the door on any potential threat from the right flank as they expand, move up and fill the gap between the terrain and the Landsnecht Kiel. There is nowhere for the Mughals to go on this side of the table...
A wall of Heavily armoured Horse and Gendarmerie is also closing in on the curryaholics from the Danish left as the rest of the Danish army just marches forwards in an unimaginative yet effective solid line, leaving the mobile but not ideally equipped to deal with the Danes Mughals scratching their heads in puzzlement. Pork vs lamb, what will triumph?
The troops think about fighting, but realising that their opponents are better armoured, led by Generals and supported by shooting infantry and their own artillery park and are also Danish Gendarmes, the Mughal cavalry choose instead to turn tail and retreat - exposing their light guns to be captured by the Danish noblemen. The mornings bacon breakfast has hardly settled and the Mughals are in some trouble already.
Everything is now firing furiously, but in the case of the Mughals, ineffectually as the enormous winged Kiels continue to shrug off cohesion tests with their 13-strong effective element counts. With nothing left on the left that can even hint at stoppoing the Danes the Mughals are in danger of being rolled up and rolled over simultaneously in a herring-flavoured naan bread of Danish attacks
A simple touchdown for the Gendarmes, as they capture the already-crewless Mughal light guns - not that diffficult in the face of effectively no opposition. The Mughal army is already thinking of whether it will still technically be elevenses when they lose, or if the game will in fact stretch out to become "an early lunch" and the Warfare traders are licking their lips in anticipation of a lot of spending time from both generals before the afternoon games commence
The Reiters pursue - the luckless Mughal horse roll long, at least getting themselves out of danger for a while but allowing the Danes to use the pursuit to close on the quivering artillery park. Flatulence smells are starting emanate from the Mughal gunners, but this is the flatulence of fear, not of the post-curry gamer that so many of us are familiar with on a Sunday morning.
And yet more ornately carved guns are added to the collection and set off to the store-room of the Copenhagen Carlsberg brewery as the Reiters continue their pursuit of the last base. They sneak in another "artillery capture selfie" for the Danes..!
The Mughal nobility are starting to wonder if they should convert to Hinduism in order to hopefully have a luckier life next time around, as their efforts to save their own expensively curated artillery have come to naught. Their expensively assembled firepower has proved woefully inadequate to take on the advancing wall of not entirely Muslim-friendly Danish baconneers and Landsnechts. To rub curry powder into the wound, they then find the potentially least useful unit on the board, the 6-pack of carbine-sword horse, breathing down their flank...
The smell of gunpowder mixes with the smell of bacon as the Danes continue their "we have 8 bases and are only in 2 ranks so yah boo sucks" advance towards the Mughal artillery park.
Finally the Mughal gunners manage to range in on the by-now almost unmissable Danish Levy infantry. Losing a base (which I subsequently decide to take off the other end of the line) is not the worst outcome in the world when you are already in danger-close-charge range of two sets of as of now undefended guns though...
Carnage - the tin can wearing Reiters thunder into the flank of the hapless Mughal horse, as they sit transfixed (almost literally, according to both definitions) by the wall of pikemen to their front. Dropping cohesion they become Fragged, taking the Mughal army even closer to catastrophe.
Boom! Revenge is as sweet as bacon with maple syrup for the Danish infantry, as they charge forwards and capture two batteries of heavy guns in one turn. The Mughals are teetering on the bring of a very extended shopping break, and even perhaps the possibility of popping home to India for lunch and still getting back before the next round starts
And, with a thunder of hooves and a faint whiff of bacon, the Gendarmes charge, fleeing the Mughal skirmishers off table. Added to the cohesion loss of the cavalry in the centre who were hit in the flank by the Carbine/Sword Reiters the game ends in a whitewash for the otherwise quite colourful Mughals
The only two bases to be lost look on disconsolately from the touchlines..
The Result is a 25-0 win for the Danes
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 Early Danish Commander
This is such a tasty and crispy start, and if this were to get any better it could only be that the future is one in which I will be liberally smeared with ketchup and enjoyed between two slices of bread by a buxom maiden with her morning tea
The enemy were materially ill equipped to deal with our Danish forces, and psychologically I am not sure where they were coming from either. There was however no fire for them to jump into as our frying pan of Danish military technology advanced upon their static line of streakey gunners - only the ravening hungry maw of Lansdnecht advances which took them down as quickly as in any game I can remember.
The full suite of points is of course very nice, but the real beneficiaries of this game will be the traders in the expo hall next door, as much money will be spent in the extended shopping opportunity that this victory affords me I am sure.
A weekend awaits in which I have already racked up half the points required for a mid-table outcome by 11am Saturday morning - what else can possibly go wrong ?
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
For a man who has not so much brain as ear wax, this result is most out of character and in so doing appears to be an outlier rather than an nindicator of permanent change
The enemy were most obliging in gifting you 4 units of artillery by placing them so invitingly and as close to your advancing legions as it was possible to do, and the infillings in their artillery sandwich being on horseback made little difference to the tide of pikery that you unleashed upon them at high speed. If they had separated their park into 2 artillery batteries, and set them on opposite sides of the table, positioned at angles to concentrate their fire and enfilade advancing troops it might have been different but that was not to be.
Having admitted this, your tactical subtlety has not greatly been tested by a game in which your army lined up and advanced at maximum speed and fought whatever was placed before it - this is your normal tactic I admit, but one victory does not precurse a change in the tide of military history for this approach I assure you.
I will look forward with some interest to the next game
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition
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Game 2 Early Danish vs Hungarian
Game 3 Early Danish vs Maximillian Imperial
Game 4 Early Danish vs Henrician English
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