Monday 11 July 2016

Teutonic Knights in the snow

ColinU. of the club has created a new project of the Baltic Crusades fought during the winter so white sheet, bare trees covered in white and plaster covered buildings.  Using the rules "Lion Rampant" and the nicely animated Fireforge plastics.  Great stuff.
And a project which I so very recently coveted.  Do I still do my own thing, or simply play in his games.  What are the 'ethics' of big desire to do it yourself?

ColinU's 'Grand Master' unit of knights
Anyway, I jumped at the opportunity to play so to get a better idea of the rules.  Simple and 'fun'.  Depending upon your definition of course.  I had the enemy in my sights with my mounted knights posed to descend upon the hapless pagans horde only to fail my initiative for three turns in a row! I justified this by they having blown horses from the previous combat, but, come on....3 turns straight?!
What is it with my dice rolling??   Not as bad as PeterM's playing as my Crusading partner and his German retinue but pretty bad nonetheless.
The village garrisoned by some pagan dudes.
We, the good and peaceful religious types, were tasked to murder any of the pagan types and burn their village...for the love of Christ you understand.   Perhaps this would be easy but my opponent, CraigM. was a very lucky sod.  At 5+ and rolling 8-10 hits of 12 is lucky, once.  Twice is unbelievable.  But multiple times throughout the game is really just....annoying!

Oh and don't have fleet-footed foot enter woods nearby so your stupid mounted knights need to wild charge them at foolish odds...just saying....

But to his credit his tactics were good.  Sit out in the open, tempt the knights to move toward them, then jump back into the woods so the knights are forced to wild charge into the woods which decreases the knight's armour making them very vulnerable indeed.  This tactic indeed worked well until the last turn of the game, until I was forced to move to his side of the table, throw the curse of God upon his dice.  Miracle!  For the first time in the game (I kid you not) he did not get a kill on my Teutonic knights.  Didn't even get a hit!  The power of prayer apparently.  That or the odds finally evened out.  The result:  my boys in white sheets finally eliminated the pagans last hope at victory.

With Colin, the GM,  ignoring the retinue courage to keep the game going, both sides were down to only a couple of units left. It was conceited that we could burn the village. But only just.  Glory in the name of God and smite the heathens.  ( I do a bit a silly role-playing with the funner games!)