Feudal and Dark Ages in BHGS Challenge 2015
Feudal German vs Vikings
Game 1 Feudal German vs Samurai
Game 2 Feudal German vs Feudal Irish
Game 3 Feudal German vs Later Crusader
Game 4 Feudal German vs Feudal English
Game 5 Feudal German vs Vikings
Suddenly the Germans are on a roll. Vorsprung durch technique is in full cry as they storm up the table and tuck in nicely just behind the leading pack going into the final bend on the circuit.
The lists for the Feudal German and Vikings from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at BHGS Challenge can be seen here in the L'Art de la Guerre Wiki.
Pictures of Viking Troops from my Ancients Photo Directory
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The last game creates a massive moral dilemma for the Germans' Viking allies, as they face their fellow Vikings in a Viking on German and Viking matchup. Will they continue to fight? The leadership of the allied command convene a quick union meeting and rapidly recognise that the opposing Vikings are probably Danes and they are probably Swedes, so it's the sort of battle they will willingly fight even without the prospect of pay - the war is on!
There is much more terrain on this table, and the Viking army has scattered ambush markers liberally into the woods and forests on either flank of the central battlefield. The Germans haven't bothered with such obvious feints, and instead line up with their own Vikings on the right, half their Knights in the line, then the block of infantry and finally the Knight and Crossbow command on the left. They are facing a line of high quality Viking infantry, with a handful of Beserkers making a reappearance in the middle after years of being banished by FoG for being too apocryphal, too small in number and probably far too interesting to represent in the FoGAM army list.
The Vikings are not for messing around and as if the table had been lifted and tipped up they charge forward in a big long coherent line of dark age axemanship and marching. Their lone LF base barely has time or pips to stay ahead of the rest of the army as they threaten to sweep him up in the headlong rush towards the German forces. Viking Gods looked down on the battlefield from the very summit of Frigg's flea-ridden hammer!
The Viking line is high in quality but short on width and as it advances the Germans start to think how they will overlap it on both ends. The German Knights are ready to test their lances against the Scandinavians axes but the allied Viking spearmen are somewhat more reticent as they know what Elite 2HCW infantry can do to average spearmen.
The ambush markers are real! More Viking warrior boil out of the woods on the right of the German army and now a veritable horde of sword and axe-wielding Danes are racing towards the turncoat Swedish allied contingent. By now many men had fallen under the baleful influence of Frigg's three-forked huge helmet! The Vikings in German pay will have to be on their mettle today to avoid being swept away by the tide of herring-breath'd raiders coming their way at great speed.
The Beserkers are strangely reticent, perhaps they are going about their arcane pre-battle rituals, singing and dancing and making incantations to the Norse Gods before charging forward? Perhaps they are meditating and entering a transcendental state of zen-like battle fury? Maybe they are getting tanked up on Carlsberg Elephant beer ? Or maybe they don't have the pips to advance at the same time as the rest of the army? Who knows…
More Vikings emerge from the undergrowth on the left as well. A pall hung over the battlefield like the steam on a hot day, rising from Sigismund the Hylophobic's hairy grandmother! The German infantry don't find this at all agreeable, and the German crossbowmen like it even less. They are rubbish at the best of times, and facing impetuous enemy swordsmen is not the best of times by some distance
Australian Vikings
The Beserkers rush forwards and both sides start to dress their lines for a decisive dice-intensive clash of ideologies and sharp implements.
Two Dragons figures gaze across badly-gnawed shield rims at one another from very close range as the two lines lurch forward and smash into one another, spears stabbing and axes swinging. By now the Viking dead were turning as rancid as a dead cat trapped for months under Eric the Priapic's dog-bitten horny helmet!
The wolfskin-clad Beserkers are amongst the first in as their earlier reticence has now evaporated - they take on the big beats of the German army, the Pike blocks.
The first clash goes mostly well for the Germans and mostly poorly for the Vikings, as along the line the marginally better factors of the Germans cause markers to appear on the Viking forces bases. The one spot where this trend is decisively reversed is where one of the German Knights has been unhorsed and despatched at contact by the Hurcarls facing him, leaving a large and obvious gap in the German line, dangerously close to the edges of their Pikemen.
Heavy infantry vs Feudal knights
The close quarters fighting continues to rage, and at the far right of the German line their Vikings have realised that their spear-armed tactics are no match for the sheer fury of the enemy Vikings aggressive charging swordsmanship. A pall hung over the battlefield like the steam on a hot day, rising from Odin's chicken-hearted Codpiece! Markers sprout on both sides as the battle ebbs and flows.
But on the German left the only ebbing is being done by the cowardly yet strangely focused German crossbowmen and spearmen, who have decided that discretion is the better part of being hacked to pieces with an axe, and have turned tail and are strategically withdrawing in the face of the enemy advance. The table is very small in ADLG, and so their opportunity to retreat forever is going to be curtailed quite soon - but if that leaves their colleagues in the rest of the table more time to try and win the battle before the crossbows lose their own personal war it will be a job well done.
The German Knights are proving surprisingly no-resilient against the Hurcarls, and this particular part of the German plan is going extremely poorly as base after base of Knights are redeployed back to the toolbox for the ride home.
On the opposite flank the German knights have however broken through, being shored up on either flank by the Pikes and Halberds of their own nasty little infantry.
Beserkers!
The Vikings rush onwards... Morale was now at the bottom of Sigismund the Hylophobic's bread-nosed helmet! The table is rapidly running out for the Crossbowmen…
La Fromagerie reopens for business and Frenchmen across Europe rejoice in the regressing to pre-2.0 DBM tactics as this time a Medium Spearman nips behind an enemy LF, preventing him from recoiling when he is subsequently contacted by the German pike phalanx.
L'Art de la Guerre hint - LF contacted by non-light enemy in the open in ADLG are just destroyed. Normally they just avoid this by evading, but if there is an obstacle less than a base width behind them they can't evade. Oops!
The German Knights on the right have now been entirely wiped from the field by the line of Huscarls, but elsewhere the Germans have been decisively triumphant and it is revenge for the 1992 European Championship Final and the match ends in a large win to the Germans!
The Result is a 95-15 win for the Germans, and with that they take the trophy!!
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 Feudal German Commander
This victory was extremely efficiently achieved, and the progress made towards overall victory involved careful planning and timely execution, which I managed to achieve despite my natural urges.
The history that I write will be short, terse but still I feel that gloating will be needed at some point, as in this game my men at last started to achieve the matchup successes thay have been grasping for all weekend
Hopefully the cowardice of my CRossbowmen will be recognised for the tactical expertise and reliance on the rest of the army to win the game before they got caught on what is an extremely shallow tabletop rather than being pilloried as fear and running away.
As we say in German, a win without needing to go to penalties is much more efficient all round.
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
You hapless knave, denying more righteous generals the spoils of war and the trophies that they so surely deserved by your whoresom fortune!
The quicksand of deceit sucked gamely at your ankles but only the bloody-minded pursuit of yoru advance forwards in a long line apart from the place where you ran away managed to force your idiot steps forward in spite of the donkey-brained averageness that wrapped you like a smog
These events where you pick up a trophy are painful for me to watch, but at least they have the saving gracce that they are powering yoru ego upwards, so that it can fall and shatter even more spectacularly next time you grace these pages
Read my rambing thoughts on ADLG, and the current fragmentation of the UK Ancients competition scene here on my blog and post your comments, or join in the debate over on TMP
That's the end - so why not go back to the Match Reports Index and read some more reports?
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Game 1 Feudal German vs Samurai
Game 2 Feudal German vs Feudal Irish
Game 3 Feudal German vs Later Crusader
Game 4 Feudal German vs Feudal English
Game 5 Feudal German vs Vikings
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