Pre 1570 in Warfare 2014
Early Danish vs Henrician English
Game 2 Early Danish vs Hungarian
Game 3 Early Danish vs Maximillian Imperial
Game 4 Early Danish vs Henrician English
So, the last game at Warfare, and a 3rd-table position against Don "One of The Dons" Avis and his enormous Henrician English army. The anachronistic and backwards English were still highly reliant on poking people with short sticks, and shooting them with bows and arrows which gave the Danes a sense of innate technological superiority akin to someone who has a Bang and Olufsson TV when they visit the house of someone who bought a no-name brand from Tesco.
The lists for the Early Danish and Henrician English from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Warfare can be seen here in the FoGR Wiki.
The Henrician is an army that depends on shooting from massed bowmen, who can also do OK in melee as they are sword armes. It also has a number of hard-to-beat and harder-than-they-look sets of Superior Heavily Armoured billmen. But the mounted is pants.
The terrain was almost all on the English side, with plenty of rough terrain for their medium foot archers to hide (skulk) in The traditional baseline placing of a couple of enclosed fields slightly hampered their ability to set up as they wished, but it was doubtful they would be coming forwards much anyway as their pedestrian army faced the onrushing Danish horde.
The English's reliance on out of date tactics was revealed early on, as they pushed forwards a 4-pack of LH to delay the advance - here the Danish Levy with their crossbows provide a nasty surprise to the enemy light horse, even as the Reiters also hope to get close enough to get off a shot of their own
Quite soon the English have tidied themselves up into a neat line with which to receive the Danish attack. Lots of the Danish generals have concentrated on the right, meaning the left flank is advancing more slowly - against a linear enemy that fills the table and sits back, there is no refusing of flanks to do!
Even with a target which almost fills the board, the Danes feel compelled to pretend to do some sort of apparent envelopment, with their (in this game) fast-moving Gendarmes able to sweep majestically round the enemy flanks to a position where they can, erm, threaten a frontal charge.
The English have now crested the half-way mark, which sees their formations apparently thinned by the illusion of the large step in the middle of the table.
The two armies are still nervously shuffling towards each other, both sides making subtle and ongoing adjustments to their lines as they seek to fashion a gap, an area of advantage, or an overlap which will give they the opportunity to charge home with more than just luck as a plan to win.
And spotting exactly one of those spaces, the Danes Landsnechts are first to break the tripwire. They are overlapped dangerously against the English halberdiers but are able to steam into an exposed unit of English bowmen - a reasonable tradeoff one might hope?
And, with the halberdiers drawn forwards and engaged the Danish Gendarmes are suddenly the spare unit on the table - and the English are forced to redeploy some boarder horse to try and stop the Danes simply marching through a hole in the centre of their army.
The English horse are no match for the bacon-cooking nobility who evaporate them in the first couple of rounds of combat - the Gendarmes have expanded out, and now their overlap is looking somewhat greedily at the horrified English longbowmen who have been exposed by the sudden rout of their own horse!
An English general rushes up to stiffen the resolve of his bowmen, who receive a pursuit charge from the somewhat upbeat Gendarmes who are now threatening to drive a massive wedge through the English army.
On the far left the two armies have also matched off against each other and as in the centre the other unit of Gendarmes have also found a way to be a spare unit - they too are now attempting to be halted by English poorer quality horse, plugging a gap at the end of their line as the main bodies of infantry come to close range blows...
The Gendarmes in the centre are making steady progress - happy to come into the rough terrain as their swordsmanship and better armour (and better quality) starts to take its toll on the English, who are unprepared for the rigors of close combat. The Levy also advance into the rough as their shooting starts to degrade the morale of the other front-line longbow unit.
The English break - and the Gendarmes pursue into a reserve line as the front of the English bow formation collapses in the face of Gendarme hooves and a charge against disheartened bowmen by the Levy.
Things are not going so well on the left, as the Landsnecht block hangs on grimly whilst hoping that their Gendarmes are winning quickly on the far flank
And they are! The weaker English horse break and flee and the second line of English troops is suddenly exposed on the left as it has already been on the right. The Gendarmes start to plot a reunion dinner with their colleagues who they will probably soon meet, potentially doing their feasting in the grounds of the English baggage camp.
The Landsnechts on the left continue to suffer, but by their fingertips they hold fast as their horse start to cause more trouble ..
Having seen the Landsnechts next to them gird their loins and teeter on the edge of despair and fragmentation, the Levy on the left just kick some ass and roll up a round of fabulous dice! The English mercenary pikemen are undone at a stroke, and with their supporting troops having been forced to respond to an attack on the flank by the Danish horse, the outcome of this rout and pursuit sequence looks like it will be traumatic for the Englanders!
Traumatic doesn't even come close - the Levy pursue and smash into the flak of the hapless English halberdiers already engaged to their front - they unit is broken, and wit nowhere to rout it us obliterated
In the middle however a long slogging match has been going on unnoticed, but gradual erosion has eaten away at the Landsnechts and the English have stood firm. Danish casualties rack up for the first time in the game...
The Danish treasury is happy as the majority of casualties are falling on the hired troopers. Things start to look grim for the Landsnechts on the left too.
But in the middle and on the right the march of the Gendarmes and the rest of the Danish army have finally polished off the remnants of the English left flank - the game is over and a huge win for the Danes.
The Result is a 21-4 win for the Danes, which cunningly flips them all the way up the table to claim first place!
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 Early Danish Commander
What a sizzling result, and what a saucy outcome to end up walking away with a big fat trophy for the first time ! The Danes here were far classier and far more technologically advanced than our opponents and that I will decide is the winning factor, even though the majority of the damage was done by blokes on armoured horses and we all know that this is a technology which is imminently due for redundancy.
What really counted here was our ability to out-manoeuvre the relatively static English, and if you look carefully you can see that the decisive Gendarme unit started out on the wing and them moved into the middle as the two lines of infantry started to get glued together. The probing was very like prodding at bacon frying in a pan in order to make sure it was crisp and even - although not as deep as my Hungarian friends might have liked. The end result was super-tasty!
The other positive was that almost all of the casualties were incurred by our mercenary troops, which certainly will help with the settlement of treasury bonds - an important thing given our Carlsberg exports are down given the renaissance of craft beers in recent years.
We will now steam home from Reading with a trophy in the bag and some hope in our hearts that it is possible to end up ahead of the Hoofmeister in a 4-game competition with an army which still has a very traditional looking composition. Although not actually playing him is somewhat of a boon too.
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
Well, a fine result achieved through good fortune rather than good planning you whoreson cullionly barbermonger! Even your outrageous collection of facial hair, beset thick with the burnt shavings of over-fried bacon cannot hide your smug grin following this most undeserved victory
Here, against a linear enemy with strong troops you still resorted to ann over excess of frontal assulting whilst your successes came unsurprisingly not from these blunt headbutting attacks but instead from a piece of clever movement from your blunt instrument on horses. Great.
I can only fear for the mental state of the other players in this event, as having to drive home whilst realising that they have been out-placed by a fool, a coward, one all of luxury, an ass, a madman and all kinds of lunacy will surely send their minds spinning into despair and a lust for revenge - none of which are ideal for a Sunday evening in light drizzle on the M4 motorway.
After this great success I am sure that the future lies in more of the same - after all, how best to follow up on this success aside from playing as soon as possible? A fitting end to a year which has seen you also be placed stone cold bottom in other events. If one were to prove this is luck rather than skill, I think your tactics have been sadly spot on.
That's the end - so why not go back to the Match Reports Index and read some more reports?
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Game 2 Early Danish vs Hungarian
Game 3 Early Danish vs Maximillian Imperial
Game 4 Early Danish vs Henrician English
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