No painting today as I had my first of 3 Round 1 games in the club's FoG Medievals tournament. Sorry - no pics as I thought I didn't have my camera with me, then found it as I was unpacking when I got home a short while ago.
My Swiss and Lorraine troops were rather startled to discover a force of 100 Years War Continental Scots where they had expected to find those nasty Burgundians. Never ones to skip a good scrap, they got stuck in anyway.
Clive's army consisted of 5 BGs of longbowmen, 5 of heavy weapon troops and some light artillery (which didn't even get to fire once). Mine had 2 BGs of knights, my mounted crossbowmen, 5 small BGs of handgunners, 6 bases of "enfants perdu" and 3 large pike blocks (2 of 10 bases, 1 of 12). Clive had initiative, which suited me as it meant I got to move first.
My mounted troops were on my left wing, with the pikes forming up as centre and right wing.
After a few turns of inching towards each other, my battle troops were finally in a position to start taking on the Scots, despite my having crammed them far too close together which made manoeuvring a little awkward at times. I also rather foolishly charged 2 of Clive's battle groups with one of my pike blocks as it took a few more turns for the rest of my men with very long fondue skewers to join them leaving the engaged block at a big disadvantage on melee dice.
On my right wing, 2 of Clive's longbow units were engaged in a pretty silly game of skirmish-and-chase with 2 of my little BGs of handgunners (later joined by a 3rd who'd decided there was nothing much for them to do over at the main battle)
Meanwhile my mounted crossbowmen had rather niftily snuck around Clive's right wing - the gap was very tight, but his longbowmen there couldn't risk heading them off as my knights were menacing them. Spotting his camp, they decided to sack it and I managed to successfully stop them looting it in the same turn. The knights had by then charged into the longbowmen, leading to a very protracted melee which eventually saw my knights victorious and the longbowmen fleeing from the field.
Unfortunately, their Lorrainer brothers weren't so successful in the adjacent melee and were turned into red-mist from base losses. At the far end of my battle line, the first pike block to charge in had gradually been whittled down and turned into red mist by some of Clive's billmen, who then decided to flank charge my very-big-block of pikes, forcing them to fight in 2 directions. Not that they cared a jot about that, winning the impact and both melees.
However, further along the line one of the other pike blocks had managed to break one of Clive's groups and another was fragmented. At this point, we had actually reached the time limit for our match, so totted up the scores:
Clive: 1 camp sacked + 2 BGs broken + 1 BG fragged = 7 AP lost from 11 BGs
Me: 2 BGs broken = 4 AP lost from 12 BGs
Oooh, my word, golly gosh - I won!!!!
The enfants perdu were last seen stuffing their faces with grapes in the vineyard they had occupied.
Lessons To Remember:
1) Leave some space between pike blocks to allow for manoeuvre
2) Don't charge 2 enemy BGs with a single pike block
3) Try to make better use of the handgunners - only 3 of them actually did anything (and only one of them did anything useful, taking out 2 bases from a 6-base longbow unit)
I've got 2 more matches in Round 1. Next Thursday I am fighting Elliot's French troops (not sure which era - 100 YW I suspect) and I still need to arrange a game against Simon's Seljuk Turks.
