Bloodfeud

Last night Caesar and I played Lion Rampant. We cobbled together two armies using his mix of Dark Age and Early Medieval figures, using the Anglo-Norman list. We ended up with the same forces - a Elite Foot with the leader, and Elite Cavalry, two Heavy Infantry and two Skirmishers.

Randomly rolling for a scenario we got Bloodfeud. This is a straight fight except that one side has the goal of killing the enemy leader (which ends the game and gives them loads of Glory) whilst the other has to keep their leader alive and destroy the enemy force (which gives them slightly less Glory). Caesar ended up as the attacker, with my leader as the target. We both chose a few boasts to add some extra points in as well.

The terrain consisted of three large woods in a rough diagonal across the table, the two in each corner also having hills in them, and a stream winding across the other diagonal. My troops are at the bottom of the picture.

I pushed my skirmishers into the woods to slow Caesar's advance. But he put his Elite Foot to the fire and they fight just fine in rough terrain, so quickly slaughtered one unit of them.

The other group of skirmishers commanded the open ground approach to my leader. They moved up to tempt Caesar's elite cavalry into a charge

Too easy! Naturally fighting an enemy in rough going the cavalry suffered badly.

Especially when they were charged by my cavalry as well. That swept them from the field.

The majority of Caesar's troops were moving carefully down the middle of the board using the woods for protection.

Meanwhile my elite cavalry resisted the temptation to charge some of Caesar's skirmishers, and moved up to some of his heavy foot instead. Then charged them. This shattered their morale and they never recovered, falling back steadily and eventually disintegrating as a unit.

Caesar had pushed his skirmishers forward quite boldly, and they found themselves sandwiched between my heavy infantry units.

One of these fell back from an attack, got shot at and routed.

My elite cavalry was down to its last two figures and still charging boldly (not that I had any choice in that). It attacked Caesar's other heavy infantry unit, inflicted a couple of hits and took no casualties in return.

I lost some heavy infantry to Caesar's elite infantry. But each fight was costing his unit figures, and this was the unit that would need to attack my leader's unit in order to kill him.

My elite cavalry kept charging, riding down the last of one of Caesar's skirmisher units.

Having destroyed half of the enemy units and (at one point) caused two enemy units to be battered, I had now completed two of my three boasts. I failed on the other (make the first attack of the game). So I was looking good in terms of points.

And so we were into the end-game. My leader was hiding in the woods on top of a hill, for maximum defensive advantage. But Caesar had moved up ready to issue a challenge to single combat; one of his boasts gave him points for doing that, with the added advantage that it would help achieve his overall objective as well. But we were now down to only five units on the table, which meant that each turn we had to see if the game ended.

It did.

If the game ended before either side achieved their victory condition then you simply scored points for destroying enemy units. I had destroyed three of Caesar's and he had destroyed four of mine, so he was up on points there.

But we also had to check boasts. Caesar had achieved one of his (destroy half of my units), so got another couple of points of Glory, but lost 2 Glory for two failed Boasts. I had achieved 4 points of Glory for Boasts and failed only one, increasing my score by 3. So I managed a 6-4 win.

Caesar had a chance to issue a challenge earlier, but opted not to in favour of attacking one of my units. Had he issued the challenge he would have gained a net 2 Glory, making the battle a draw at the very least and possibly killing my leader for a big 5 Glory bonus.

Just goes to show how important the Boasts can be in affecting the end of game scores.

Anyway, the game was a lot of fun. I was convinced I'd lost the fight as Caesar's forces cooperated very well, and seemed set to concentrate very neatly on mine. But we picked off each other's units and with my leader being hard to get at the game came down to casualties. My elite cavalry pretty much accounted for all three of my kills (albeit that they struck the final blows on units that had suffered at the hands of others). With a lot of woods in play the skirmishers came into their own as well. A couple of well-deployed skirmishers in woods can be really useful.