Sunday Morning we faced Mr Morgan & Mr Shameful, sorry, Mr Seamus, with an Avar army.
It was small, had 4 regular command and looked a bit like this:
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Cv (S) General 5 Cv (S) 5 Ps (O) 2 Lh (S) 8 Ax (I) |
Cv (S) General 6 Cv (S) 1 Ps (O) 3 Lh (S) 8 Ax (I) |
Cv (S) General 3 Irr Cv (S) 1 Ps (O) 3 Lh (S) 4 Irr Kn (F) 6 Ax (I) |
Cv (S) General 1 Ps (O) 5 Lh (S) 2 Ax (I) 2 Boats 4 Art (S) |
We (surprisingly) stuck down a river, and the twins stuck down some Rgo, one bit of which fell in the forward central sector next to the river.
This Rgo was a magnet for our Poles, so we elected to put them on totally the opposite side of the table. Instead we chose to deploy the CinC’s command in the Rgo and march out of it, then the Pechenegs, then the Poles, and flank march on our right, hoping it would arrive to rescue the Poles before they got charged by massed cavalry.
Mr Morgan commanded 2 Cv commands in the center, with the Ax hiding at the back as filler, whilst Mr Shambles was responsible for the dangerous stuff, which he deployed on the far side of the river out of harms way.
Faced with the prospect of 4 Art (S) wheeling slowly round to enfilade them, my Rus command decided that Plan A was the best approach and started to march forwards in a long line at 2” per turn and ignored the gyrating lumber yard on the far bank. We also messed about with boats a few times, with spearmen getting on and off to defend the bank against Shoddys massed knights – who were matching up in column to presumably come across the river and roll up my Sp line.
However when the Kn eventually got to the riverbank, the twinkle-toed Rus were long gone, and shameful had to spend a zillion pips to turn about and march around aimlessly again – kinda line “snake” on a Nokia phone, but a mobile phone might have been more dangerous. Oh, the Art (S) managed to make a spearman defending the bank recoil once or twice, and also they fled some LH occasionally.
Meanwhile Mr Morgan managed to survive shooting and piled massed Cv into the Polish archers, who put up only a token resistance before deciding that life in the box was better than life on the table. Somehow they managed to damage the two commands they were fighting, but had to be reinforced with the Pechenegs, who then found themselves in the unusual position of, erm, fighting. After the Poles died through sheer attrition we finally managed to claw back one command, aided by the flank march which arrived marginally too late to play any dramatic part in the game.
As the final whistle blew the Pechengs were 5 down but not out, and we were 2 elements off taking down the Avar army. We had the flank march’s cavalry and Lh in range of the enemy baggage, and my line of spears were just one turn away from contacting a block of Ax (I) filler, there was no more room for the Avar LH to flee. Oh, and also Shameful had got 1 or 2 Kn (F) across the river so they could fight a lone spearman ! 5-5.
Game 4 vs The Beja
Game 4 saw us playing on a large piece of scrub and sand. We placed a WW on our left, which may have been a mistake in retrospect, however the Beja deployed 3 Rgo, 3 Dunes and a compulsory large RGO. Two of the Rgo’s fell in the central forward sector, one on the open flank again in the center, with dunes against the WW and on our flank. Yeuch.
The plan was to stick both spear commands down the flanks, hopefully getting one over some of the Rgo before the Beja could react. On the right a column of mounted spears in ambush behind and in a small dune were to race off and force the lurking Beja camelry to do something (hopefully “die horribly” would be their selected option). It then depended on us winning a bow duel in the center, where our Bw (O) plus WWg would try t outshoot the Beja Bw (I). Difficult already but then to compound this Mick had had 2 halves of bitter at lunch and was hence too pissed to write down our deployment correctly, meaning that we had our WWg behind some Rgo and our Polish bowmen in the open.
The Beja
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16 Bw (I) 1 LH (O) General 8 Bd (F) 5 Ps (O) 4 Lh (O) |
16 Bw (I) 1 Cv (O) General 1 Cv (O) 5 Cm (S) 4 Ax (O) 1 LH (I) |
12 Bw (I) 1 Cv (O) General 1 Cv (O) 5 Cm (S) 1 Ps (O) 1 LH (I) |
LH (O) General 6 LH (O) 4 Bw (O) (mounted) 4 Bd (F) (mounted) maybe more stuff ? |
Beja deployed Command 4 mostly in ambush
on the beach-side dines on our right, then
Command 1 in the open , then command 2, then 3, the Cm being held back out of
harms way – or so they thought!!
Soon the middle of the table looked like a scene
of carnage and destruction – nothing to do with the enemy, just us trying to
redeploy 16 bowmen and 4 irregular war wagons into the right places! The
CinC’s Rus command successfully navigated the Rgo in the first couple of turns
and the Arabs unleashed their Bd (F) line into them. On the right the flying
column of spears worked a 
treat
and soon the camel corps were committed to a fight they didn’t want to have!
From here on in it was a grind, as the Bd (F) had a mare against et Rus spears and gradually fell back towards the line of bow. In the middle the Poles and Pechenegs eventually (after about 2+ hours) managed to get into a position where they could start to exchange shots with the Bw (I) holding the Rgo.
The Beja CinC’s Bd (F) command eventually imploded under the sheer weight of spears, but even with the naval landing forces attempting to join the fray the Rus Ps were unable to clear the Beja out of the beachside dunes quickly enough to overwhelm the flank command. The flying spear column killed the camelry in short order, but then started to struggle with the mopping up operation on the rest of the line - there was lots of death happening all over the shop - but lots of break points as well. As the final curtain came down we were still 1 element off the entire huge damn army… a 7-3 win to leave us on 28 points, but a cigar free zone nonetheless.