Field of Glory Wargaming at Oxford Doubles, 2009

Game 2 saw us facing .... a Later Lithianian Army who's list is available here 

Pictures of Lithuanians from my Ancients Photo Directory

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Yet again there was no terrain of note. We decided therefore to try and turn the table 90 degrees and fight on a 4 foot frontage against an opponent with more and better LH than ours. 

We aimed to swing round on our right, and obligingly the Lithuanians put their worst LH against our right hook.

Backed up by our cavalry, our right hook progressed well on the dark side of the table... 

Having advanced forwards to buy us time, our own LH then swiftly came rushing back on our left as the Teutons advanced.

Our opponents needed coffee to stay awake as our slowly advancing troops made no headway in catching their rapidly redeploying troops in the IGO UGO move sequence.

Our baggage was home to a shed in which more Polish reserves were sleeping.

Some of the Lithuanian infantry were part of a re-enactment society. 

 

Watch the body language of our opponents hands as the excitement mounts and the game moves towards a 5 foot frontage and then a 4 foot one. 

Just to make life interesting we attempted to execute a daft maneuver in a desperate attempt to bring some of our knights back into the game and pushed them back through our line. 

With the re-enactors just outside range, we had time to do 2 moves with the knights and put pressure on the Lithuanians and Teutons knights

After much maneuvering we engineered at last a situation where we had identical troops but we had a few more of them. Brilliant! 

As the knights closed in our line of spearmen were struggling to keep up with the 4-foot plan and maneuvered desperately to get into some sort of coherent formation before the Lithuanian cavalry arrived. 

Hot knight on Knight action was imminent! 

Over on the far less interesting right hook we had managed to get the enemy baggage - but were still little closer to catching their LH who moved just as far as we did each and every turn.

Knight Fight!!!! And we won - quickly !!

With the rest of their army looking on in astonishment, some victorious Polish knights slowly turned round and headed back to the rear of the Teutons.

whilst yet more pushed onwards to help chase down LH

By now our spearmen were finding out that they, the much heralded anti cavalry formation, were actually rubbish in combat against enemy cavalry. But hark! Can I see some returning knights bearing down on the Teutons flank...?

The Teutons were eliminated saving the day just as our other knights threatened to lose against the 2 remaining Teutons, and the victorious knights then rushed on into the flank of the Lithuanian cavalry. 

Soon only one unit was left - and it too was at deaths door as our spearmen did a cheesy contraction to get 2 ranks of spear against the cavalry.

But the wide right hook of the Lithuanians still threatened to get round our rear, and so 2 light horse units crashed into it back and front, hoping that the -1 for fighting in 2 directions would help them grind down the better equipped cavalry 

Soon they were bypassed by routing Lithuanians as the knightly sweep continued the work they had done earlier... 

 

By now the Liths were running out of table to escape into. It was a close run thing, as LH can escape almost anything, but one lucky long charge and the charging Poles managed to roll up and catch a lone unit as they squirted out of the trap we were trying to close on them! 

As the end credits rolled, the unit of Lithuanian cavalry fell to Fragmented on the very last dice roll, giving us the point we needed to win the game outright!

 Post Match Summary

This was a bit of a procession, as the two armies maneuvered to avoid each other. With a bit of better planning I suspect the Lithuanians could almost certainly have avoided being caught against the table edge and escaped behind the gap created by the rearguard action of their Teutonic friends. For a game which went down to the last roll, it was curiously uninteresting with both sides seemingly being able to anticipate what might develop 

Hannibal's Post Match Analysis

You only just won, and a lot of that depended on the enemy messing up.

Your best troops ended up in 50/50 fights against identically equipped enemies as well, which can't be considered clever

And you discovered that your anti cavalry troops are useless against cavalry who actually come and fight them. And their shooting is crap too. 

So, in my world, that counts as a loss.

NEXT!!!

For Game 3 Click here !

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