So you may remember I spent most of July/August painting up a bunch of Saxons for a campaign game being run by the Boston Trained Bands. Last weekend we had a test game so my guys got into action for the first time.
Right, so the rule set of choice for this game is Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB). An interesting choice because the gamers in the group are extremely uninterested in most Warhammer products. Although, to be fair, WAB is barely kept in print by GW and you have to order it special from them and give the password and special wink. I’ve never played with it before and it’s been ages since I’ve done any straight-up Warhammer stuff so it was going to be a learning experience.
We broke up into two sides for a big battle. I took center stage with my Saxons. On my left I had a small but powerful Romano-British group and on my left and another batch on my right. Across the table we had (from left to right as I saw it): an unruly band of Scots, a small block of frenzied Vikings and…I believe some more Scots/Picts (the majority of which were represented by my figures…so I guess I win no matter what).
Here let me show you:
I’ve got a pair of warbands flanked by a couple of small groups of archers. The group on the right has my leader. The guy with the red stick is trying to work out how quickly he can run me over with his Vikings.
It’s not like I’ve got bolters, so we all start rumbling towards one another. That little block on the left coming towards me is a warband of Scots. But you’ll probably notice the group of horsemen bearing down towards me. Keep an eye on that.
Here are a couple of wider shots of the battlefield. On the center-right side:
You can see my valiant allies taking their sweet time getting around the village. My only saving grace is that the Picts who oppose him haven’t really gotten off their starting positions yet.
And now we pan to the left:
I’m not sure why the Scot split up his forces like this, but he decided to send his skirmishers after the guy with the cavalry and heavy infantry. It goes about as well as you’d expect.
Back to my guys. Yeah, that cavalry charge goes in on my hapless archers. Well…maybe. The archers took a snap shot as the horses rolled in. It was totally ineffectual so they took to their heels. They actually managed to outrun the cavalry’s charge and then managed to make their Leadership test so they spun around to take another shot at them.
And take a shot they did. Put down two of the pesky Picts.
Meanwhile, the Scots had advanced just close enough so I decided to rush ‘em:
I get lots of bonuses for charging in like that. However, this is my group without a leader and I’m facing off against the leader of the Scots. Also, I apparently can’t roll for crap. In one brutal exchange, I chip one guy out of his group, he peels away four of mine, and then proceeds to rout me and run me down.
Yeah. It was like that.
My archers didn’t survive a second round with the cavalry and the other group of archers, as you might be able to see above, were running for the hills and never rallied.
Well, when in doubt, attack. So I lined up on the Viking horde and rushed them with all I had left:
So, in a 500-point army, that block of 20 Vikings, with leader, musician and priest probably gobbles up 400 of them. By contrast, my group is about 200 points (and 75 of that is the leader). The Vikings are frenzied (so each guy who can fight gets to attack twice) and the priest makes them immune to all psychological effects (like the auto-rout warbands like mine cause). We had a pitched exchange, but I gave a little better than I got (surprisingly) and we stayed locked in combat. My hope is that my allies there would hit the flank and give us enough weight to grind them down.
Sadly, we started late and it was well past lunchtime so we called the game here. I was probably toast on a stick.
On the right side:
I don’t know what was going on here. Neither side came to grips. The enemy tried a bunch of piddling shots that never did anything. I have no idea where that cavalry is going. Perhaps he was going to send it after the Pictish cavalry that ran down my archers or maybe he wanted to swing them around to hit the Vikings, but it’s a bit of a mess on that side.
On the left, however:
Man, the Scots kept hanging in there, but they were just meat to the grinder. The Romano-British would’ve finished them up but who knows what they’d face as they cut across into the flanks of the enemy.
Oh hey, my other group of archers. Bye, guys!
So what did we learn? First, the Vikings are going to be a real hassle to take on so find some allies (preferably some guys with cavalry). Second, the archers need to be massed into a bigger block to be effective. They could probably also stand to have a champion or other leader figure who can boost their morale. The same could be true for the warbands though. The Thegns are a bit fragile without a leader type.
Also, I need to power up a dice charger because my rolls were just terrible this time around.
But hey, it was fun and my investment of time and effort has started to pay off.
Later
Tom
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