Cold Steel 2012. The Final Game

And so to the dying of the light at Beast Towers.
My battered and bruised Saxon army would be facing Dave and his something or other from the BTGG list in the Attrition scenario.
I'd not read the scenarios in any kind of depth (trans. at all) before the day, so I'd not reallly tooled up an optimum reduced list for this game. Fortunately with the previous game ending a little quickly (sorry, Tony) I had time to cross out the men I wouldn't be needing.
When the draw went up I found myself on table one. More competetive gamers should be aware that tables at Cold Steel are allocated randomly, I wasn't on "top table"! There was some shenanigans with my opponent, as the draw had not quite gone as planned, so I ended up playing against Dave. Once that had been worked out, it remained to be seen which Dave I was to play against. Dave1 had been told he was playing on table one (I heard this happen) but Dave2 (Kiwi Dave) was the name written down.
We had a brief conflab toward the end of which KiwiDave reveled that he'd rather not play the Arab that was the alternative to platying me and regaled us with the hilarious tale of how he'd butchered an Arab army at a previous GB event with his Parthain shotting cavalry. How we all laughed. Then I reminded him that it was my Arab army he'd done that to. And we all laughed some more. Then I played against the other Dave. Imagine my delight when he revealed he'd brought some Parthian Shot Cavalry as well.

What, us? Parthian shot? Naaah! You got the wrong blokes!

 The thin bearded line

 Stab, stab, grind, grind

We shoot, we run, we shoot, we run, we...oh you get the idea

All told it was a fun, fast and furious game. Over on my right, Daves big bunch of warband and his cavalry collided with my Duguth, who astonishingly held. Eventually the Gedrith joined in and saw off the cavalry but were unable to catch them.

Over on the left my other Duguth ran the gauntlet of parthian shot, after parthian shot.

Eventually the Warband broke the Duguth, but they were in turn chased off by my second, ever thining Duguth unit.

As the battle drew to a close the Gedrith were unable to lay spear on Dave's cavalry, and with his warband rallying he'd done enough to claim the victory.

Another good fun game, and though I'm never going to be a fan of PS out of supplement Dave played well and in good spirit and thoroughly deserved his victory.

And with that the day ended.

I'd failed to trouble the top of the scoring tree, and done enough to avoid coming last too.

I bought some more soldiers while I was there, which I now have to crack on and paint as they're needed for James' Top Secret Project (tm) next month.

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.

Cold Steel 2012. The Second Game.

Better crack on with this while I can still vaguely remember what occured.

My second opponent was Stephen with his very nice Age of Arthur Welsh army.
I was looking forward to this as I really like in period AoA games - my Saxons struggle a bit against the likes of the Normans and some of the BTGG lists, so a Welsh list ought to give me a bit more of a chance. Possibly.

The scenario was  The Battle in the Pass, and I'd already decided not to attempt flanking and Stephen settled on not taking advantage of that option too, thereby simplfying the whole process.
We thus lined up and went at it:

 Combrogi prepare to defend their valley

 Saxons invading the aforementioned valley

 

 Mounted Tail..tally..tell..Hard Blokes

I clumped the Duguth and Gedrith in the centre with an eye on grabbing the hill in the centre of the valley, with some Geoguth and skirmishers protecting the flanks. The Welsh deployed blocks of infantry in the centre and packed the flanks with horsemen. As a result my army ran up the hill and started handing it out, while the Welsh cavalry made short work of my flankers.

 The Welsh Hearthguard get to work...

Then head for the hill...

My Gedrith do what Gedrith do best and punched a big hole in the Welsh centre, but Stephen's cavalry reined in and headed back toward the central hill.

Once again, pictures run out at this point...
At this stage I was looking in command, but one of the things I like best about the AoA games is that it ain't over until it's over and some failed warbands combined with clever play from Stephen meant he was able to pull things back and then tip them in his favour.

The game was eventually stopped with a turn still remaining (out of time) but by then Stephen had me right where he wanted me, and the points count up gave him the win.

A great fun game that see-sawed, but Stephen deserved his win.

Cold Steel 2012. The First Game.

If it's January it must be time to go and stand in a freezing cold workshop inhaling dust and pushing soldiers around. Time, in other words, for the annual WAB Cold Steel event at Beast Towers deep in Nether Evesham. Huzzah!

Fellow Blogger and sometime opponent Scrivs has already posted his blog on the subject so go and have a read of that now, but don't forget to come back

Right, back here again?
Like Scrivs I too would be taking Early Saxons. Unlike him I wasn't planning on using them as a different army at any point in the day.
This was my list:

Cynning
Fearsome Blow, Army General
Thegn
ASB
Scop
Wiglera
Atheling
23 Duguth
Full Command
24 Duguth
Full Command
18 Gedrith
Light Armour, Full Command
24 Geoguth
Throwing Spear, Full Command
9 Skirmishers
Slings
9 Skirmishers
Javelins
The Wiglera went in with the Geoguth as they were Fierce in any case, and the Atheling in the unit of 23 Duguth. All the other characters went in with the Gedrith.
The plan was simply to charge forward, kill everything that moved and win.
Apart from a few Gripping Beast Skirmishers and a smattering of Geoguth the  army was all made up of Bill's lovely Musketeer Early Saxons, with some LBMS Banners and shield transfers

The scenarios can be found over on the Beasty Boy's site here

Game One
First up was Carl with his nice Norman army. I say nice in that it was nicely painted and Carl is a nice chap. Apart from that it was all horrid First Charging Warhorses and Duxes with 4 attacks. Yikes!
We were playing the Battle at the River scenario. I decided to go all out for the ford and use the Geoguth to merely contest the Bridge. Given that the Geoguth are Fierce and so will be warbanding towards the enemy a third of the time this was what might at best be described as a slight tactical error.
My Gedrith and Duguth on the left near the ford pushed cautiously forward whilst a second unit of Duguth pushed up to the river bank to face the onrushing Dux and his boys. Over on the right the Geoguth walked steadily toward the bridge.

 Dawn Breaks on a peaceful Saxon Valley...

Forward, men!

 Oooer! Where did they come from?

Chuck, aaargh, splash!

Fighting broke out across the ford as the skirmishers exchanged pointy sticks with the Saxons coming off worst.

 Don't panic lads, it's all under control

What could possibly go wrong?

 Run away!

Over on the river bank the Norman Knights charged, and despite the advantage of the riverbank the inevitable First Charge took it's toll and the Duguth ran way and were run over.

How did they get there?

Get off our Bridge!

This left a bunch of Norman Knights in backfield, not what the thin sketch of ragbag ideas I liked to imagine was a plan had called for at all.

Let's be having you...

It's at times like this that men step up to the plate. And the manliest men at my disposal were my Gedrith who duly stepped up to the river bank to meet the Norman knights, Dux and all, head on.
And surprisingly they did all right.
For a bit.
However the remaining Duguth disgraced themselves after catching some (admittedly outrageously accurate) javelins from the Norman skirmishers and fleeing for the hills.
Over by the Bridge the Geoguth had got round to failing a couple of Fierce tests and were splashing about half-on and half off the bridge while Normans threw sharp things at them. When they eventually emerged, somewhat bedraggled, the cowardly curs backed off. And continued a stream of pointy objects.
(For some reason I'd stopped taking pictures by this point, sorry).
Despite doing his best to blow it the Norman Dux eventually found his kicking boots and (with the aid of some foot fellas) saw off the Gedrith.
And with that Carl was able to claim the ford uncontested and get a unit of knights close enough to the bridge to deny me maximum points for that objective.

A fairly big win to Carl in the end. Norman knights are a tough match-up for the Age of Arthur armies, but that's only part of the story, Carl played better than I did and even some poor dice for him couldn't snatch me anything remotely resembling a win.

Next up, some Welshmen. In a Valley. That sounds a bit familiar...