Cold Steel 2012. The Third Game

And so, after a brief interlude to be well stuffed by Mrs Miggins it was time for the third game. I confess my heart sank a little when I realised that it would once again be Normans across the board from me. However, play something often enough and you'll have to get the hang of it eventually, right?
We were to play the Rescue scenario, wherein we each held one anothers beautiful daughter hostage and sought to liberate our own while holding fast to theirs. Unfortunately my "beautiful" daughter Alison wouldn't fit in the army case, so Tony would just have to imagine her. You however are not so fortunate.

 He's welcome to her, to be honest...

I chose not to keep any units off table, figuring I'd need all the warm bodies at my disposal to try and see off the charging flower of Normandy. Tony meanwhile kept some spearmen behind in the hope of retaining Alison.
The centre of the battlefield was home to a reasonable sized hill and we both made for it at pace. Our skirmishers exchanged desultory fire before the inevitable Norman charges plunged in. However to my surprise (and thanks to some poor luck in Tony's dice) my line held. At first.

 Huff, puff, up the hill we go.

 Whatever you do, don't break!

 Look out, here they come...

 Hang on, isn't this the same picture...

The unit of Knights in the centre went on to punch a hole in my line and began to head for the Norman princess held just off my table edge, accompanied by some skirmishers who'd come off better against my javelinmen. At this point I was questioning the wisdom of not defending the hostage and was about to try and sling the Normans to death (seven shots needing sevens, come on!) in a desperate attempt to claw back some points. However, I was able to countercharge the knight unit on my right, which contained the Norman general, in the flank, and promptly broke them (Tony again had appalling dice). The resultant waves of panic saw every unit in Tony's army except the knights who had broken through turn tail and run. At which point we realised the Norman army had probably reached it's army break point. We tried counting it a number of ways and even asked Martin to help, but whatever way you looked at it the Normans had more than enough points fleeing to mean I'd snatched an unlikely win.
And that, gentle reader is why I'm not a big fan of the ABP rule. Tony had a bad run of dice, but most of his army, though panicking, was still in fighting fettle and could have rallied and the game would have been on. Felt a bit of a hollow win really. Sorry Tony.