Yesterday a wandered over to Bren's shed to play a dark ages battle. Bren was fielding an Anglo-Saxon army and me and Stig the Picts. Stig arrived late so we started with out him, and more importantly his troops. So I was outnumbered about 4-3 at the start. In HC Picts are OK but all my troops were only as good as Bren's worse troops and he hada division's worth of better troops.
The battlefield. Hedges across the centre, a crossable river and a couple of roads. All of these were to be vitally important
I set up 2 divisions of Pict warriors on one side of the road and one on the far side. I had some javelin armed light cavalry on the road. I looked a little light on the left
Bren was tooled up on both flanks and stationed all his good troops in the centre. My last battle consisted of me rolling 1s for 5 hours and getting pummelled. Would this continue
Yip. THis was the 1st of 5 double 1s I rolled in the 1st 3 turns. Luckily in HC double 1 is a fantastic command roll so I got to move quickly and got to the hedge line and river 1st. THe plan was to hold there and let Bren feed his men into the meat grinder
He duly obliged in the centre and my Picts broke a unit of Huscarls in the 1st battle and forced his other elite units to retreat.
He tried crossing the river on my right and pretty much had the same fate. I had terrible break rolls all game and get pushed back a lot but I had spectacular melee dice and chopped him up enough that he couldn't exploit any retreat that I needed to make.
Bren also didn't occupy the road and my light cavalry had free reign here, peppering the troops either side. This basically kept his elite troops at bay and breaking up his charges. Meanwhile Stig failed to activate his division, when he finally arrived, then they activated and advanced, and then they blundered and retreated again.
Finally they got forward to support my very thin line
Then his "mum" phoned and told him he had to go home and take his toys with him. So Stig's useless division was replaced with fewer units from the casulaties box. I advanced and forced Bren back from the road.
At this point Bren's army was pretty much shattered and mine mainly intact so we called it. 1st time Bren has been beaten with the Saxons, and 1st time my Picts have actually fought as Picts. They won.
We got the rules wrong, to Bren's advantage, and we will play again.
Overall a good game and good to get back to winning ways.
