El Cid Warhammer Ancient Battles

At some point over lockdown Stephen painted up an El Cid Spanish army - using mostly Footsore models.

He's packing his house up in preparation for moving to the Isle of Man and wanted to give them a run out for the first time before packing them away. So we dusted off the excellent El Cid supplement and the 1.5 version of WAB. We were aiming for around 2,000 points but in the end I just threw down what was about the right amount.

I had a core of spearmen and pushed some cavalry up on my right

Inevitably Spanish light cavalry swarmed my flank.

At this point I changed the settings on the camera qhich makes things look bleaker then they were...

The Almoravid centre steamrollered on.

While the Christian cavalry waited

More light cavalry on my left too

Facing the mighty Kamel Korps of Khamu Khazi

The Berber horse forgot to run away and I remembered how rubbish they are.

Their death triggered a "panic bomb" and most of my right flank ran away.

Things were going better on the left, where an attempted charge was foiled and driven off with javelins

Meanwhile my centre bore down

My spears rallied and faced off the caballeros

Finally the Almoravids crashed home into the peons.

My archers were caught by jinettes

Still the face off in the centre

Christian cavalry joined the fight in the middle of the lines.

However the Black Guard proved triumphant and panic gripped the Christians who fled in numbers

The caballeros continued to shoot down the Berber spear

Before deciding enough was enough, charging home and routing the spears!

My other spear unit turned to face the caballeros breaking through in the middle

With the Spanish centre destroyed the Black Guard chased off the crossbows

And with that the game came to a close. A victory to the Almoravid invaders.

Fun to get the soldiers out and WAB gives a fun game. The rules did feel a bit dated and "fantasy" after a long time away from them.

It all looked splendid with two fully painted quite big armies going at it.

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.