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| Frenzied monks after hearing the Angles were coming (purely decorative). |
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| Elites and warriors to the left and levy to the right. |
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| The Angles are coming! |
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| First turn card order from left to right. |
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| End of turn 1 positions, the Angle elite have rapidly advanced to the left to hold off the advancing Briton levy, while the warriors are heading straight for the church. |
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| Antoninus, the Briton tribune has rapidly advanced his elites with his levy in close pursuit. |
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| The Briton's levy form a shield wall and advance toward the Angle elite to engage them in combat. They take 1 shock for rough terrain and they play the Strong Arm card (which was a mistake, I played the whole game thinking that these were warriors and not levy), 3 shock applied. |
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| A vicious combat takes place, the shieldwall is an enormous advantage to the Britons, as they can ignore the first kill on each group, and they also fortuitously for them throw very good dice. First round of combat is +1 dead for the Britons so a second round take place. |
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| The Britons take shock but are able to kill two more Angles, this results in a 3+ dead in favour of the Britons and if you look closely not only rout but also misplace their amphora, they are out of the game. How about that..... levy defeating elite! |
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| Iohannis himself now gets into the fight. See him to the centre background staying close to the Tribune Antoninus as he leads his elites to attack the Angle warriors with his champion Uther. |
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| The Angles are in disarray, the elites have been thrown back, as well as one unit of warriors. All Alaric, the Angle warlord, has is 2 units of his warriors as well as his skirmishers, it just does not look good. |
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| How the second turn played out. |
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| And the morale of the Angles is down to one! |
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| Cuthwin, Alaric's #2 man, leads his warriors to attack the remaining Angle levy. He joins his men, but Cadog plays the Shieldwall Braced card, an invaluable card for the Britons. |
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| As you can see the dice gods favour prefer neither side, they favour both. Both sides suffer multiple kills and suffer much shock, but the Shieldwall Braced card keeps the Cadog's levy in for a second round. |
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| More are killed, and Cuthin and his Angles are thrown back and rout. |
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| Turn 3 sees an end to the game as Cuthin, Alaric's # 1 man routs off the table. ....... |
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| .............and the Angle's morale goes to zero! Raid over. |
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| Raid 2 in our campaign results in a victory for the Britons. The Angles suffer moderate losses so will raid again in October, the Britons suffer light losses, so will be ready and Antoninus now has a Prefect's Riches. |
Great AAR and photos, and quite a nice win for the Britons.
ReplyDeleteGreat report, very impressive! Beautiful figures and decors...
ReplyDeleteGreat report. Love the church. What a marvelous piece of terrain.
ReplyDeleteGreat looking terrain and figures, John. The church is really sharp! Now I want to play a game.
ReplyDeleteExcellent looking game!
ReplyDeleteChristopher
Nice report, and a pretty looking table.
ReplyDeleteWhere did you get the monastery/church from?
Lovely looking game John!
ReplyDeleteSuperb looking game, great AAR - plugged here - http://troubleatthemill.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-dux-brit-battle-report.html
ReplyDeleteVery nice, very nice indeed.
ReplyDeleteNice looking game.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, the table is amazingly good
ReplyDeleteGorgeous game. Saxon player is probably discovering by now--a I have-- that you absolutely can not fight the Britons in shieldwall and expect to win even if you outclass them. In fact, even outnumbering them significantly is often not enough. You have to catch them out of formation or flank or you will lose unless you get absurdly lucky and your opponent unlucky. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteSaxons should avoid piling right into Shieldwall too quickly. Saxons need to work on staying maneuverable and outflanking the Brits. You see what happened in this game -- the Saxon player just went straight into the British shieldwalls.
ReplyDeleteHere's some ways to break Shieldwall:
Don't charge Shieldwall too early, and try to avoid frontal charges if the Shieldwall is fresh, unless you feel your cards can give you a good advantage
Outmaneuver the Shield walls, pin them with some groups and flank and kill with others
Move groups into a reasonable charge distance to threaten the Brits -- if you can, use better class troops (Elites vs Warriors, erc.)
A normal countermove by the Brits would be to go into Shieldwall
Move additional groups to flank the Shieldwall, getting into position for a flank charge.
If you can, use a Step Forth card to use that flanking unit in a follow-on turn to interrupt additional British countermoves to retire, or a bonus movement card, etc.
Keep fluid and flexible, and don't commit too early to a charge. The Brits *must* defend something, so the more mobile you stay the more likely it is that the Brits will be forced into a disadvantageous position as they try to foil the Saxons from taking the objective.
Use your archers to disrupt your *target* Shieldwall, not random shots -- shoot the same target, adding just a couple shock could give you the win in melee.
I know the desire is to just go in there and beat my shieldwall to bits -- but realize it has as many weaknesses as it does strengths. That's my two denari worth!
Fantastic looking game, and great AAR
ReplyDelete