The Crusading Era at Athens 2024
Richard The Lionheart Later Crusader vs Feudal Anglo-Irish
Game 1 Richard The Lionheart Later Crusader vs Feudal Spanish
Game 2 Richard The Lionheart Later Crusader vs Feudal English
Game 3 Richard The Lionheart Later Crusader vs Komnenan Byzantine
Game 4 Richard The Lionheart Later Crusader vs Teutonic
Game 5 Richard The Lionheart Later Crusader vs Feudal Anglo-Irish
Greek Museum Tourism (on YouTube)
After a bit of Greek Pizza (OK, quite a lot of Greek Pizza) for lunch it was suddenly time for the final round, and the welcome sight of an honorary Londoner in the shape of Thrassos Drakkkkaaaappoooolis and an Anglo-Irish Army.
This was a list I had used with remarkable success at Lisbon the previous September, so in theory I knew at least one way to assemble and use it - but given the dogs breakfast of enormous numbers of uninspiring troops who seem to function in a way which is better than the sum of their parts available to the Anglo-Isish, I really had little idea how the list might be built
The lists for the Richard The Lionheart Later Crusader and Feudal Anglo-Irish from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Athens can be seen here in the L'Art de la Guerre Wiki.
Well, it turned out that in a list rather light on Quality, Thrassos had opted to double-down on the Quantity side of the equation, and filled the open centre of the table with an enormous quantity of poor quality spearmen, a load of Longbows and other archers, and some Knights all concentrated in one block, avoiding my use of the terrain-loving Irish ally
Unusually this did mean that a lot of the Crusader army was actually in the strange situation of being better than their opponents on a pound-for-pound basis
With this puzzling development ringing in their ears, the Crusaders simply waited for the Keftedes Kickoff as the huge tidal wave of sub-par Irishmen ambled toward them
The key bit of deckchair shuffling for the Crusaders to do before being engulfed by a wall of nonsense was to make sure the handful of Crusading Knights would be facing off against the Irish Heavy Swordsmen (rather than the Colonist Spearmen) - although with the Colonists being Mediocre compared to the almost-Galloglaigch Swordsmen there probably wasn't much in it at the end of the day.
Despite the linear nature of combat, there was a bit of clever stuff to do over on the Crusader right where English and Irish bowmen moved up to try and engineer a coordinated attack on the end of the Crusader line
Having seen this flank implode in the previous game, the Crusaders were keen to avoid a repeat
Unfortunately this keenness had not extended to actually changing their deployment, leaving the same "2 mixed, 2 Knights" command over here. Cue a quick redeployment from an armoured spearman from another command to help uot !
The Anglo-Irish were getting caught up in their own shoelaces as they scrambled forward eager to get into the action (or perhaps finish the game before the remaining pizza went truly too cold to eat)?
Their lines bunched up and intermingled as they too sought to get the best of the Knight/Swordsman/Spearman game of Paper/Scissors/Stone before the Crusader Knights managed to uncurl their gaming fists and declare one of their three options.
Graviera Glee! Back on the right the Crusader's Templar Commander again found himself the unwilling foil for absorbing a barrage of archery, sacrificing his dignity to protect the mixed crossbow formations from shooting casualties.
Cheeky Irish Kerns were by now infesting the woods too, adding insult to injury by aiding their archers shooting
But if the right was a well choreographed dance of sparring equals, the left was just a huge incoherent mess, as wave after wave of Anglo-Irish troops stuttered and stumbled over one another in a frantic effort to try and get into combat first.
With such disarray arrayed before them the Crusader Knights grabbed the opportunity to strike first, and managed to wriggle their way through the Irish lines into the soft underbelly of English archers to initiate combat!
The troops from both sides were now so jammed together that the Irish' repeated attempts to wheel and twist and seek to engineer clever little advantages started to invoke the Wrath of Barker Himself!
Suddenly they found themselves both unable to fit in everyone where they wanted, paralyzed by ZoCs they did not want to enter, and most importantly, Cursed by the Gods of Dice for daring to veer so dramatically away from simple linear combat in the home of Hoplite Warfare!
Drama with Crusaders!
The Anglican Knights however had no such qualms.
They rode up, charged home and prepared to give or take their medicine like true impetuous troops should and must do as like arrows loosed from the bow of Apollo, Crusader crossbow bolts streaked through the air with unerring accuracy, finding their mark with deadly efficiency.
The left flank however was going from bad to utter carnage for the Anglo Irish and their epically bad dice
The complex formations they had carefully construed now became a cascade of routs as every unit to be lost seemed to have half a dozen more immediately behind it in the Zone of Fear and Flatulence ("ZoFF")!
It then turned out that the Anglican Knights' dice had received the same instructions from the Barker Gods as their hapless infantry.
Their charge against the wall of Crusading spearmen ended in immediate shambolic disaster, leaving a lost situation staring the mounted commander right in what was now a badly gap-toothed-formation.
With the Anglo-Irish casualties mounting rapidly the Crusaders stepped forward all along the line, punching out a bigger and bigger salient into the Anglo-Irish heartland with every seemingly inevitable victory.
The Anglo-Irish army could do naught but exercise that famous Irish good humour to laugh at their own misfortune and dreadful dice as they collapsed like a newly minted teenage drinker at a Guinness & Jamiesons Car Bomb night
Soon it looked distinctly like the Irish army, countless in numbers as they had once been, might be totally wiped out on at least one half of the table as they continued to fall like ninepins under a relentless barrage of Crusading dice
With barely a soul left alive, the Anglo-Irish were swept from the field and back into the box with remarkable alacrity
Perhaps they had tried too hard to be clever, but by god they had been punished for that by the Barkerses Dice Gods !
A huge and decisive win for Richard CdL, in which the Anglo-Irish were simply grateful to finish second
The Result is the second 90-20 victory of the weekend for the Crusaders!
Read on for the post match summaries from the Generals involved, as well as another episode of legendary expert analysis from Hannibal
Post Match Summary from the Richard The Lionheart Later Crusader Commander
Hark, ye noble souls, and listen as Richard the Lionheart recounts the latest triumph in our holy quest upon the sacred soil of the Holy Land! Though our path hath been beset with trials and tribulations, victory hath once again smiled upon us, like a beacon in the darkest night!
Behold, as the armies of the Anglo-Irish didst march forth to meet us in battle, their hearts filled with misplaced bravado and their banners fluttering in the breeze! Little did they know that they faced not merely men, but the very embodiment of genius itself, in the form of Richard the Lionheart!
With shields raised high and spears gleaming in the sun, my valiant crusaders stood as a bulwark against the tide of Anglo-Irish aggression! And as their knights didst charge headlong into the fray, like lemmings to the sea, they found themselves ensnared in the web of my cunning!
For though our tactics may seem familiar, 'twas the masterful execution that set us apart from the rabble! With each bolt from our crossbowmen's bows, we didst goad the enemy into a reckless charge, their ranks broken like waves upon the rocks!
But let it be known, dear comrades, that victory doth not merely lie in the strength of arms, but in the fickle whims of fate itself! For 'twas not only our prowess that won the day, but the misfortune of our foes, who suffered a string of unlikely accidents that left them disheartened and disorganized!
Yet fear not, for Richard the Lionheart shall not dwell upon such trivialities! Nay, let us instead look to the future with hope and determination, for our journey is far from over!
And as we make our triumphant return to the shores of England, let us not forget to take in the wonders of the ancient world, for I have heard tale of a magnificent museum of history in the storied city of Athens! So raise thy banners high, my brave crusaders, for the glory of Jerusalem awaits us, and the world shall tremble at the name of Richard the Lionheart!
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
Ah, Richard the Lionheart, the master of luck masquerading as strategy. Here we find him once again, claiming victory over a foe more inept than a blindfolded minstrel trying to hit a bullseye with a lute. It's like watching a cat triumph over a mouse that's too busy chasing its own tail to notice its impending doom
Oh, bravo, Richard! Your ability to snatch victory from the jaws of incompetence is truly remarkable. I'm beginning to suspect your armor is made of four-leaf clovers and horseshoes. 'Forward, my Crusaders, for today we shall triumph!' you cry, as the enemy's arrows veer off course like drunken swallows and their swords shatter like glass hitting stone. It's enough to make a bard pen an epic about the triumph of luck over logic.
And there they go, charging like bulls in a china shop, with all the coordination of a gaggle of geese on roller skates. It's like watching a comedy of errors performed by the village idiots. But hey, who needs strategy when you've got dumb luck on your side, right Richard?
Oh, Richard, you're a real marvel, aren't you? If only your victories matched your arrogance. But no, we're left with the same old song and dance, like a jesters' routine performed for the umpteenth time. And yet, somehow, against all odds, you emerge victorious once again. It's enough to make a tactician weep into their battle plans.
Well, there you have it, folks! Another thrilling display of medieval misfortune brought to you by Sir Richard the Serendipitous.
Tune in next time these dammed Crusaders appear, when we watch grass grow faster than a cavalry charge in molasses. Until then, I'll be here, dreaming of battles that don't rely on luck more than strategy
Athenian Museums for Wargamers
A video of the photos I took when visiting several Greek military-themed museums on the Monday after the competition finished
My Post Match List Analysis
I'd taken this list in a deliberate attempt to see if I could breath some life into a rather overlooked troop type - the Spearman, who often seems to suffer from being the "baseline" in the ADLG ecosystem, with everyone else having extra abilities layered on top. I also wanted to give an outing to some mixed Spear/Crossbow units, which are expensive shooters, and while they are considerably better in combat that vanilla crossbowmen are still rather brittle - which I like, as it makes them rather more exciting to use!
The sort of magic ingredient here was the addition of a few Armoured Spearmen to the mix - the addition of Armour makes them far more capable at standing up in a protracted fight against Medium Knights (who have an equivalent level of Armour in this period), and - importantly - are also sufficiently resilient to enemy shooting that it can compensate for the relative lack of screening light foot in this list.
Historically the army is modelled broadly on the Arsuf battle/campaign, in which the Crusaders crept along the coast of the Levant under continual harassment from enemy cavalry - and like the Arsuf army, I did find that this particular list really does need to narrow the table down. I was rather unlucky to only get one Village or Coast (rolling on a 4+ in each game!), but even so the rest of the terrain usually fell kindly enough to compensate, especially against the fairly pedestrian Knightly-led armies I faced.
The downside of course is that the requirement to have at least one, and ideally two flanks anchored on terrain meant that a lot of the battles were rather (ahem, "very") similar in how they played out, but on balance the novelty of using such a different army list, the inherent excitement of having 6 units of "Mediocre in Combat" Mixed Bow/Crossbow combinations in melee in pretty much every game, and the sheer novelty of only having a limited number of tools in the toolkit to play with did compensate for the monotone feel of the army.
I'm of course pretty chuffed with the result overall, and even more so with my surprising self-discipline in not going haring off with the army into the open spaces that some of my opponents attempted to draw me into !
I think it's certainly given me a redoubled appreciation of just how well ADLG rewards "historical" tactics, and how well balanced the points system has become in this 4th edition as well - the ability to use such different types and builds of army lists and still manage to find a way to play with them that creates games in which (usually - sorry Thrassos!) both sides feel they have a chance is great - as was the hospitality, food and the general ambiance of the event itself!
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Game 1 Richard The Lionheart Later Crusader vs Feudal Spanish
Game 2 Richard The Lionheart Later Crusader vs Feudal English
Game 3 Richard The Lionheart Later Crusader vs Komnenan Byzantine
Game 4 Richard The Lionheart Later Crusader vs Teutonic
Game 5 Richard The Lionheart Later Crusader vs Feudal Anglo-Irish
Greek Museum Tourism (on YouTube)
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