Nationals 2001 - The Lithuanian Odyssey In The Snow
Andy Wilcox and Khazars. Another repeat opponent from last year.
By now it was getting late, and basically I was drunk. In my twisted logic, fuelled by Heineken & Stella, I thought that I might be able to overwhelm Andy's large amounts of LH (F), so I needed an open table. So, somehow I thought that Andy might deploy a river to narrow the width of the table, so if if I attacked in winter I'd be in with a chance that it might be frozen..........
Of course, if my season choice determined the weather, I'd be attacking. So Andy wouldn't be putting a river down to reduce the width of the table.......erm.....
Anyway, this was the situation. It could all be nothing if the dice fell right.....Instead we got a 5 factor shift on the dice, and we were in with a risk of a snowstorm.
Guess What ! We got a snowstorm from turn 2. It lasted to the end of the game (the wind changed direction only 1 quadrant short of 360 degrees as well).
This made the game extremely entertaining (for me).
Suddenly all moves were reduced to 2". So Andy's LH (F) were just as good as my LH (O) - but not as good at fighting. And if they retired and tried to stay facing the same direction, they would only retreat 20mm !!!
And we were both now on irregular dice. Nice if you have paid for 3 regular Cv (S) generals.
Oh - and visibility was down to, erm 6". Which is more than shooting
distance. So my wagons were largely unaffected. Shame Andy had no shooting
troops........
And of course, some of the troops hadn't exactly planned for this scenario - so had got themselves into loooots of trouble....like this !
In the center the Teutons squared up against the Cv (S) - however the Cv (S)
general was also busy rescuing LH from my LH on the left...... what would happen
?????
But on my right we had an interesting scenario. On paper Andy's wall of
Cv (S) looks lots better than my LH & Cv (O) combo - but it
was screened off by a line of LH - who were now maneuvering like close formation
foot ! Try turning that round and forming a column to escape !! Plenty of
time for me to dismount. Because Bw (O) can do quite a lot of damage to Cv (S)
now. And when 2 recoils sends them back more than their total move
distance......basically they never got anywhere near charging in
!!!!!
Another interesting thing - if you only move 2" - but flee 3", AND a base depth AND have a free turn .... its almost impossible to get back to where they start .....in several lifetimes! Andy had a lot of LH. I had a lot of Wagons. We found this fact out by repeated experimental experience.....
Shooting nailed a general over on my right - but Andy survived the dice roll. The CinC almost died as well through a blocked recoil - but he survived. The Teutons chewed up the Cv (S), but too slowly.
Finally we got in amongst the LH on the left, and skittled them over , but it was too late - a 5-5 / 17-15 to me, but I suspect young Mr Wilcox has been on the receiving end of a number of 10-0 defeats where his army took less of a beating than this game !
My wagons and LH (O) chased his LH F nearly off the table (try retiring with 2 turns when your max move is just 2" per go!), I had 3 chances to kill generals and got one (the CinC ) but he passed the dice roll, and I lost virtually nothing, 17/15, could have been more, bizzarrest game I can recall for ages !
