I grabbed a couple boxes of armies from the games room, and found that I had Arthur's knights in one of them, and the curious lion-centaurs of The Knights of Simba in another. It seemed too good a pairing to waste.
Catherine chose Simba, so I ended up defending with the Knights of the Round Table. For this game I dropped Merlin and went with Galahad as a paladin, to give me 2 x Heroes (including the general), 1 x Paladin, 4 x Knights and 2 x Blades.
The Knights of Simba are one of my most straightforward army compositions - 6 x Knights (including the general) and 6 x Warband.
Catherine matched her knights against mine, and massed her warband on the flank opposite my blades, which didn't bode well.
I refused my right flank (the blades) and charged with the rest of the army. Catherine brought the Knights of Simba forward at full speed too, and we quickly collided in the centre.
The results were mixed, and we shoved each other back and forth.
Simba's allied ape-men (the warband) seemed curiously reluctant to charge Arthur's foot-soldiers, despite their numerical advantage. I bolstered them with Galahad, hoping to bluff her into inactivity.
The fight between the knights was always going to be influenced by the first casualty. I stood a good chance there, with two heroes in my line, but it was Catherine who inflicted it, riding down the knights that were covering Arthur's right.
The Knights of Simba exploited the gap, and more of Arthur's knights fell.
Arthur himself was now threatened, so I moved Galahad in from the right flank to assist him. The Knights of Simba simply killed Galahad.
Arthur came under attack. If he fell his army would be defeated. Now the performance of heroes in this game so far had been disappointing to say the least, but Arthur did manage to pull his finger out, not die, and see off his attackers. More than once.
With Galahad gone, Catherine sent in the ape-men against Camelot's finest foot-soldiers, half of whom fled.
Interlude: We are now at the point where it is impossible to play a game in the dining room without at least one cat joining us. This time it was Miller.
The scores currently stood at 10AP to ... 0AP. Catherine only needed to kill one more element to achieve a total whitewash. But I finally got my dice together, and killed her general. Obviously with the disparity of losses this was simply a command and control issue for her; in order for the loss of her general to affect her army I had to basically destroy it anyway, but it was a start.
Inevitably Catherine's attacks slowed as the extra PIP cost for having no general hit home. Sadly Arthur seemed complacent as well, and for a couple of turns both armies started at each other, throwing in the occasional half-hearted charge for form's sake.
Finally Arthur showed that being king wasn't simply a matter of not having shit on him, but also one of leadership, and showed his surviving knights how to kill an enemy element.
But it wasn't enough. The surviving foot-soldiers had put up a stubborn fight on the right flank, but eventually succumbed to the ape-man hordes. And that broke my army.
Catherine won 12AP to 4AP, although I did get her general.
This was good fun to play, and was more interesting than it first appeared, as both sides tried to exploit their overlaps to maximise the odds of a kill. The differing based depths of the opposing knight elements also made a difference, with the Knights of Simba recoiling out of contact if they lost, forcing me to spend PIPs to maintain a fight, but also allowing Arthur's knights to fall back if they pursued too far ahead. Swings and roundabouts. I was outnumbered, and would have lost much quicker had Catherine not hesitated with the warband. I failed to get the die rolls to exploit my one advantage - the double hero and paladin combination.
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