Arthur and the Saxons, playing Midgard

 

a little vignette I made a few years back of the cover of Osprey's

 "Arthur and the Anglo-Saxon Wars" you can find the step-by-step here

   

   Having run several test games to give us a handle on how things worked, and when to spend those all-important Heroic Deeds, we decided to run a "historical game" as in historical according to Arthurian lore. In this game Arthur and his brave lads would be facing the land-hungry masses of invasive Saxons. 

       To add a twist (and test an idea) the Saxons were broken down into three allied, but not necessarily cooperative, tribes.  Collectively they seriously outnumbered the Britons but were laden with slightly divergent victory conditions. To represent this each tribe was assigned a quarter of the total Saxon Reputation points, with the final quarter given to the overall leader to use at his discretion. Reputation earned by each tribe was retained by that tribe and could not be shared with the others. Reputation earned by the overall commander could be used as he wished but he was also leading the center tribe and had to be wary of depleting his supply. This, we hoped, would create a spirit of parochialism amongst the Saxons.

       The Britons had their Reputation points all assigned to Arthur to be used as he wished, this was intended to reflect the superior training and combined purpose to the Britons while defending their homes.

      Each side had an Army Commander, two lesser generals and one "hero at large" who was free to follow the leader of his choice. 

      I ask the dear reader to forgive the messy playing surface, we are still mastering the rules and we were employing a lot of playing aids to speed the game.

 

the collective Heathen Hordes, in the course of the game Cynwaed would send his spare hero, a unit of his veteran foot and one of his cavalry units to his right to stem the tide of the dreaded knights

 

Arthur and his crew, the knights were assembled on the left as a hammer, Arthur also assigned his personal bodyguard "The Hundred" to the left flank as well with the intention of shattering the barbarians in one crushing blow

 

 

turn one; the Saxon right hurried forward (burning Heroic Deeds to maintain the pace) to bottle up the opposing cavalry while in the center both sides marched stolidly forward  while on the other flank both forces moved to occupy the narrow space between the two woods

 

 

turn two; long before the center forces could make contact the iron hammer of Arthur's cavalry slammed into the Saxon foot on both flanks, these attacks dealt grievous wounds to the Saxon foot but the unflinching warriors dealt heavy blows as well, many units were reduced to a battered state that left them rolling half their allotted dice and teetering on the brink of routing away

 

 

 

turn three; on the Saxon left the loss of two units of foot forces the Army Commander to release several Reputation points from the reserve to keep the left from collapsing, on the right a titanic bloodbath consumed two units of foot and one unit of cavalry demanding the release of further Reputation points from the reserve (the Army Commander had gone from a comfortable ten points to four in one turn!) but the battle was not entirely in Arthurs favor, both of his units of Knights had been shattered and on the other flanks a unit of Commitatus had fled, in the center both leaders fought leading their troops, (both being wounded in the process) this clash had destroyed three units of Briton foot, one unit of Saxon foot (and had left the remaining Saxons exhausted) however the loss of so many units had broken the British morale and they gave up the field, the Saxons had gotten by on the narrowest of margins having but four Reputation points between the tribes

       Following the game we found that we liked the idea of having separate pools of Reputation dice for each tribe (although it gave the Saxon Army Commander a few gray hairs trying to manage the supply). Overall the game was jolly fun and we agreed to the idea of a mini campaign wherein each Saxon tribe should be assigned to an individual player, the Britons (Post-Roman British.....I'm never sure what to call them) would have a central command and the Irish and Picts would be occasional annoyances to everyone. I guess I'm up for making another map....

        One thing stood out quite clearly: taking pictures at the end of a turn misses too much of the action, henceforth I will be capturing images at the end of each player turn to more clearly document the action.