El Cid Campaign Day 2015. Game 3

The last few games of round two took some time to finish, so James and I, finding oursleves opposite on anoher by a psare table decided that we'd play each other in the final round. This was good, I always enjoy playing against James, and we don't get to do it as often as we should. Plus his armies still look lovely, more than ten years on from their first apearance in the El Cid book.

He had a hill, and I'd be attacking up it.

 The Christian knights push forward on my right

 The cavalry screen mount the lower slopes

 Jinettes, javelinating the knights

 Purge the apostates!

 More javelin based sneakiness

 Al Morris, stays secure on his slope

 Steady advance to the sound of double drums

 They're behind us

 Knights versus knights.

 Scared by the Kamel Korps the Andalusian cavalry flee

 Whooosh!

 Then rally

 Unlike the Christian mercenaries...

 ...pursued by jinettes

 The glorious Kamel Korps!

 The sayid attempts to scarper, but is hemmed in

 And still the light cavalry continue harrassing

 Throw, retreat, rinse, repeat

The white line ignores them

This was a splendid game. James cavalry spent most of it pursuing my fleeing sayid around the board in serch of vistory points. My Christian knights once again disgraced themselves and I ran out of turns to make a full frontal assault on the hill. However it was a close run thing and ended in a bloody stand off. So my chocolate hoard remained safe.

All in all it was a very good day out. 

Huge thanks to Scrivs for organising this. Hope we can get an Age of Arthur one in early next year.

Nice to dust the Almoravids off and give WAB a day in the sun. James and I both felt WAB was showing its age a bit - it feels a little fussy in places - but it does give a good sized game in a relatively short period of time.

Though both of us wondered how we'd ever found the time to paint armies that big.

El Cid Campaign Day 2015. Game 2

And so to the second game.
As the alliances and powers shift in early medieval Spain it was inevitable that I would encounter unworthy Christian foes, ready to be crushed beneath the Almoravid boot-heel.
Or not.

I was drawn to play venerable WAB gamer and good-egg Trevor with his Christian army.
We had some sort of hidden deployment going on which saw me spread across the board and Trevor's Christians bunched up in one corner. He had a small and quite powerful elite force.

Here's the pictures:

 Small, but perfectly formed, Christian Spanish

 Ibn Coldir's righteous warriors

 More of the same

 Still more...

 The clash of Christian horse

 Kamel Korps forward!

 Hmmm, now where did the Emir (and all his bodyguard) go?

 Cavalry stand-off

 Kamel Korps to the rescue!

 Stab, thrust, thwack!

 Thin black line

 It's OK lads, we've got 'em surrounded

Overpriced and over here - mercenaries versus Black Guard

The battle didn't go well. An initial charge by the Christian mercenary knights was countercharged, the knights fled and panic gripped my general and his unit who duly left the field. So by the end of turn one both merecenaries and most of my characters were out of the game.

Trev then mopped me up cleanly, calmly and with good grace and humour.

Still, it was fun while it lasted.

El Cid Campaign Day 2015. Game 1

Fortified and refreshed by my sound drubbing in the warm up game (see previous post) I collected James (author of the El Cid supplement) and we wended our way to nether Mansfield for a day's worth of WABbing.
It was to be a 2,000 point event organised by Scrivs, with the usual campaign elements and hordes of chocolate coins that we've come to know and love. Full details of the rules stuff are here.
I dug out my Almoravids, which haven't seen the light of day for over a year, and hadn't been used in a WAB game since Adam were a lad. As they were set up for 1500 points I added a unit of Christian Knights and dusted off the Kamel Korps, for chuckles.
Unfortunately all my standard bearer models remain behind the bits of kitchen occupying my dining room, so I was to be flagless (though all my opponents were kind enough to imagine them).

First up I was to play Richard who, amusingly, would be using the self-same army I had lost with just two days before. This was only the third game of WAB Richard had ever played. A newbie, using an army I'd already proved to be poor - I bet you can't guess how this will turn out, eh readers?

We were to be playing along the length of the board with a church the prize between us.

 The horde of  Ibn Coldir

 The Kamel Korps

 The apostate followers of Ibn Skrivs

 Dirty Christian sell-swords

 Noble Christian allies

 The smell of fear wafts toward the enemy

 Chaaarge!

 A more cautious advance

 Grab the church!

 High water mark for Ibn Coldir

 This did not go entirely to plan...

 Remember, never charge spears with spearmen...

 The apostates start to break into the church

Fleee!

We shall draw a veil over proceedings from here. Suffice to say that my mercenary knights fled, panic ensued and despite the Black Guard battering their way into the church that was merely a temporary blip on Richard's otherwise smooth passage to victory.

A good fun game wherein I was outplayed by a splendid and charming opponent.

 

A major defeat for Ibn Coldir and territory ceded to my rivals

WAB El Cid Warm-Up

Top wargaming chum Scrivs arranged a WAB day to be played using the excellent El Cid supplement at the end of November. I jumped at the chance to take part, but the end of the month rolled around and I'd still not played a game. So Scrivs and I arranged a last minute match just a day or two before the event. The ongoing construction work here meant I faced a lst minute dash to try and locate soldiers and in the end I couldn't find the 2000 points required. Fortunately Scrivs is a man of many armies so he was able to lend me an arab army to play with.

We played on some empty rolling plains as we were a bit short of scenery, but it served the purpose to re-acquaint us with the rules.

Here follows the pictures.

Unsurprisingly I failed to win.
But it all looked splendid and by the end I had the kind of tenuous and flimsy grasp of the rules that has seen me through so many WAB events in the past.

All the models were collected and painted by Scrivs.