Agincourt ... Midgard style!

So Anton is away this week and I volunteered to post up the After action report from our most recent game of Midgard for those of you who are interested.  Before I begin I will apologize as my skills with a computer are far inferior to Anton's so things will not be a glossy as his work, but I hope you will enjoy.  

This game was born of two factors, Anton rediscovered the figure collection of a long departed friend and member of our group named John Williams (Little John to our group).  That find along with the Midgard "fire" which consumes all reason caused Anton to perform the heresy of wargaming ... rebasing!  Little John's Hundred Years War collection was in 15mm and is now based for Midgard duty.  

We played the game through with Anton playing the French and I playing the English.  We used the army lists for the battle as presented by Mogsymakes (explained in the preceding post) and the sides were equal by the game system.  We played the battle through in under 90 minutes with the English getting crushed.  Had these forces been historical and French outnumbering the English by more than 4:1 the results would have made sense, but since the sides were in theory equal there was some consternation.  Upon reflection, my dice were particularly wretched as well.  In any event we decided to play it again and switched sides so now I would be the French and Anton the English, both completely out of our comfort zones.  

Being out of practice at these sorts of things I forgot to take pictures during turn 1.  This photo shows the situation after the end of French Turn 2 (I won initiative and made Anton go first for the game).  The English Army consists of 3 units of foot Knights and four units of Longbowmen, as well as three powerful heroes.  Henry V is a legendary level 4 hero there is also a level 3 hero and the worthless shiftless bastard who would go on to cause Henry's son so much trouble (and eventually murder Henry VI) Edward the Duke of York as a level 2 Hero.  Anton's deployment is left to right: foot Knights, the four units of Longbowmen front and center with a unit of foot knights in reserve.  And the final Unit of Foot knights on the left.  Henry is in the center, Edward is "sinister" to Henry (on his left).  

The French Deployment is as follows left to right once again.  Front left is a unit of Coustiliers who are non noble heavy cavalry.  Behind them is the left wing commander, a level 1 hero, followed by a unit of Mounted Men-at-Arms.  These represent the only mounted troops in the French Army which I thought rather strange.  To their right is a unit of French Heavy foot which completes the left wing of the army.  Next comes the Center Wing of the French Army commanded by the level 2 hero "the Constable of France" who stands in the middle of his four units.  In front are two further units of French Heavy Foot. in the rear are the two units of French Foot Knights and Retainers.  The Right Wing of the army was commanded by another level 2 Hero and consisted of one more unit of French Heavy Foot and two units of French Crossbowmen.   In all cases having just commanded the English and presuming that Anton's dice would not be as cold as mine, I decided to meat shield my elite troops with the lower quality commoners to absorb the missile impact.  

On this turn my crossbowmen shot at Anton's Longbowmen but accomplished nothing as my poor dice rolling from the first attempt at this battle continued and Anton passed his command checks.  

Here we see the situation at the end of the turn as I had forgotten that any missile troops that did not fire in their turn got a chance to shoot in the end of turn phase.  Anton put two casualties on the left side unit of French crossbowmen, hamstringing them for the remainder of the game (they are reduced to half dice because they are at half strength), however they passed their command checks and thus did not retire in the face of the fire.  Otherwise things are moving along.  

In turn 3, Anton focused his Longbow fire on the right flank unit of French Heavy Foot from all four units.  Anton also moved his left flank foot knights to their right to replace the reserve foot knights who were moved forward to take a place on the battle line.  While he only caused one casualty to my heavy foot, the unit the unit managed to fail both command checks (maximum of two in a turn) from all the fire and had to retire twice from the volume of arrows they received.  But now it was the French half of Turn 3.

The entire French army except the crossbowmen are rated as "Impetuous" which means they MUST charge if they start their turn in range of an enemy unit.  On the French left the Coustiliers charged the English Foot Knights and were repulsed causing no harm to the English in the process.  Meanwhile, the rest of the French army advanced on the English Position.  This turn I concentrated the crossbowmen on the unit of longbows on Anton's extreme left because the Duke of York had joined them to increase their archery.  I managed to inflict one hit on the longbowmen and also managed to get a wound on the vile Edward as well!  HUZZAH!!!! 

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture from Anton's turn 4.  However the results of it can be seen here.  Anton extended his line to his left and moved his reserve foot knights up onto the line at the right edge of the left side hill.  They are the third unit left to right in the English battle line.   

On my turn four I charged across the board.  Unfortunately my Coustiliers were destroyed, but their destruction pulled their supporting Mounted Men-at-Arms into contact with Anton's Foot knights.  The Left flank unit of French Heavy foot, with their paltry level 1 hero attached, managed to push back the unit of Longbowmen they attacked.  One of my units of Foot Knights advanced behind them in support and to potentially exploit the hole being created.  The second unit of the French Heavy foot did not fare as well and were pushed back by the English reserve foot knights.  My third unit of  French Heavy Foot, with the Constable a France attached managed to push back the second unit of English Longbowmen even though Anton attached BOTH Henry and Edward to the unit!  My dice went supernova hot and I managed to not only destroy the Longbowmen, but also killed Edward the Duke of York!  Henry's son will have a VERY different future in this timeline with that varlet removed from history!  My second unit of foot knights advanced in support of the victorious Heavy Foot.  This was also a critical moment as it resulted in Anton losing 6 reputation points in one half turn: 3 for the Longbowmen, 2 for the loss of Edward and a further point as he was forced to withdraw Henry from combat to avoid risking a stand alone round of fighting with my Heavy Footmen.  My fourth and final Unit of Heavy Foot advanced, but were not quite able to make contact due to the delay caused by the previous heavy round of longbow fire.  The crossbowmen fired on the longbows on the extreme right and managed to score one hit.   

Anton's turn 4 proved decisive.  My Mounted Men-at-Arms out dueled Anton's foot knights and pushed them back, Anton's troops taking two casualties to the my troop's one.  Anton's foot knights would now be rolling half their dice and lost their special ability "Spears as Tribute" because of the two casualties while my mounted knights would roll full dice in the next round of combat as they only had one casualty.  My left flank unit of Heavy foot defeated and destroyed Anton's unit of Longbowmen on his right.  Anton charged his foot knights down off the hill and destroyed my second unit of heavy foot.  My third unit of Heavy foot stood up Anton's last unit of foot knights in melee and Anton's two remaining units of longbowmen on his left flank shot down my fourth and final unit of Heavy Foot.  However, with the breaking of Anton's longbowmen he ran out of reputation markers and lost the battle.  

Once again we got the battle done in less than 90 minutes.  So we had now played the game twice in just under 3 hours!  In both attempts the English had lost, and lost badly!  The French start the game with 8 reputation markers, the English get 9.  However the real difference is that the English are static on the hill and the French heroes are busy leading charges and thus generating more reputation markers.  The result was that the French garnered four further reputation markers during the game so when they lost 6 total markers from the destruction of troops they still had six more at the end of the game.  Meanwhile the English started with nine and generated none during the game so simply wilted under French pressure.  There are a couple of changes that could be made to improve the historical results.  The English longbowmen could be given the "Hel's Breath" ability which would make anyone shot at roll two d6 for the command tests after shooting and take the worst result.  The other easy change would be that the larger (400 point) version of the English army includes two further leaders who are designed to command the archers and have special rules for that purpose (On my command unleash hell) which can create a devastating round of missile fire.  Oddly, the version of the army we used (300 points) had no heroes for the Longbowmen.  Subbing one or both of the archer heroes could also result in more devastating missile effects to slow and dislocate the French advance.  

All in all, still a fun game.  But the historical results would never be generated as the scenario is devised.