Quick AAR: FoG:AM, Swiss vs Seljuk Turks

Well, I played my third (and final) first round game in the club's Medievals tournament this evening. My Swiss were still hunting the Burgundians (even though they had somehow time traveled back a couple of years to be able to take more crossbows) and were rather confused and surprised to encounter a Seljuk Turk army, which had obviously also been caught in a time warp, as it should have been Ottomans in the 15th Century.

The time warp, and the terrain they found themselves in (I lost the initiative roll, Simon selected "Agricultural")  caused much head-scratching and led to a complete shambles at deployment. Well, to be fair, the deployment was probably OK, but then I decided to move them which meant that it caused much faffing about later on.

I did take my camera and did take pics, so here you go:

The situation after 2 turns

And after 4 turns, my first losses - two units of light foot who were charged, rolled short for their evade moves and got broken at impact or in melee. Things were not looking good for me....

This plucky unit of handgunners had been caught by light foot pursuing one of the broken battle groups. Somehow - despite being heavily outnumbered - they managed to hold on for several turns. Simon is trying to work out how he can bring his Dailami medium foot into action. Can any of my heavy foot come to the rescue of the handgunners in time?

Hmmm, maybe these halberdiers?

Meanwhile, over on my left flank some crossbowmen have charged some light horse (who they'd already dropped to fragmented by shooting) and caused them to break, bursting through a bunch of Ghilman cavalry on their way (helpfully dropping the Ghilmans to Disrupted)

At this point, we reached the 2 hours & 10 minutes "base time" for the match when we would roll dice to add a variable amount of extra time. I did offer to call the agme at that point (Simon had 1 BG broken from 12, I had 2 broken from 10) but Simon insisted on carrying on, so we did....

A couple of turns later:

On the right of the picture, the Dailami have now joined in the melee as an overlap.

The Ghilman who had been disrupted by routing light horse had, for reasons known only to them, moved into charge range of my pikes and been shot to fragmented by my crossbows. You'll never guess what I did.

OK, you did guess - I declared a charge on them with my pikes causing them to take a cohesion test. They promptly failed the test and broke taking a general with them.

Over in my centre, the halberdiers declared a charge against the light foot in front of them, but angled such that they could contact the light foot who were in melee with my handgunners. Their original target evaded and my halberdiers surged forward, spurred by a high dice roll (they got an extra inch of charge!!) to join in the scrap. After a round of melee with the Dailami having joined in, the handgunners had gone down to Fragmented. My halberdiers coming in helped even things up a little, dropping the Turkish light foot to disrupted at impact.

During the melee, my halberdiers and handgunners managed to cause the Seljuk light foot to double-drop and break (well, the dice Simon rolled for his cohesion test did that to them). Unfortunately my handgunners, after bravely fighting for several rounds of melee could take no more and also broke.

the Dailami didn't like seeing their friends break and promptly failed their morale check and dropped to fragmented (we think - they had a disrupted marker, but we can't remember when they dropped - it may have been there to mark that they were "disordered" by the difficult terrain)

Simon's routing light foot managed to slip past the ones who had been my halberdiers original charge target. My halberdiers had rolled a 6 for their pursuit move which was just perfect - straight into the back of their original chargees. This meant they had to face me in the next turn's impact phase. Having been hit in the rear they were disrupted and would only have 1 dice needing 5s or 6s against my 2 dice needing 3s, 4s, 5s or 6s (and re-rolling 1s for being "Superior"). 

I'm pretty sure I dropped them to Fragmented at that point, During the Manouevre phase we expanded out  leaving Simon with 2 dice versus my 6 dice, with the same to hit rolls needed as at impact. I don't recall what Simon's dice were but I rolled 3 sixes, a five and 2 ones. Oooh, re-rolls! Make that another 2 sixes!Automatic base loss and a crappy roll for the cohesion test saw them break and run.

Positions at the end of the battle.

Somehow, from it looking as though my Swiss were going to suffer their first defeat of this campaign (and still no sign of those dratted Burgundians!) it all got turned around in the last 2 turns.

End result:

Swiss: 3 BGs broken from 10
Selkuks: 4 BGS broken and 1 (we believe) fragmented from 12

A narrow victory for me. As far as we can tell, that puts me in first place in our group. Clive is currently in second place, but there is a sneaking chance that either Elliot or Simon could squeak past him if they win their game 25-0. I say that, but it's been a while since the results tables were sent out.