Game one from CTA yesterday, Josh the Theban finally faced off against Al the Spartan... and neither of us brought Greeks. Instead it was the debut for my Burgundians against Al's late 15th century Welsh pretenders to the English throne (WotR English)
Al's army was, unsurpisingly Bw(S) and Bd(S), and he got a nice hill to sit on. Thankfully he gave me a gentlemanly game and came down to the flats to fight me. Faced with the mixed Bw and Bd, I deployed my pike in the middle, the knight and mtd bw(S) on the left and the artillery and crossbowmen on the right. The plan was... well there wasn't really one, I figured that Al would sit on the hill so I'd need my art(O) to encourage him forward, and then after that I was relying on my numbers and knight to do the job. It wasn't ideal but I figured the pike wouldn't last long so I needed the knight to break the lines.
On the right the guns began pushing the billmen back, and began popping off one or two bowmen. In return the light horse made a valiant but doomed charge against a few stragglers. Still they broke the line up a bit.
In the middle the French knights prepared to charge to support the pike and then the English bowmen loosed, killing three out of 6 knights in the first bound! In desperation Charles the Bold led his knight(S) and the few remaining knights in only to be 6 -1'd by an overlapping bw(S), breaking the command.
The pike fared slightly better, taking out a couple of billmen and, in conjunction with the artillery broke the English left. Sadly though without the knights it was a matter of 'when' not 'if' the English chewed through the pike block, and a few bounds later the Burgundians duly broke. Giving Al a 19 - 6 victory.
All taken this was a fun game, a pity that the knight died so quickly - I think I rolled 1, 1, 2 to Al's 6, 5, 6, which followed up by the 6 - 1 of Charles was... well it was nicely historical. The match-up is such a coin toss though, if the knight get in they can quickly smash through the longbow.
One thing that Al pointed out (which I forgot the next game) is that I should deploy this sort of army in columns to allow me to reposition to get favorable match-ups. It wouldn't have helped in this one instance, given Al's army, but it's something I'll have to remember in the future.
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