Round 1 of the The 2017 Warrior NICT Tournament at Historicon

A Headless Body Production

Venue: Fredericksburg Expo & Conference Center
Event: The Warrior NICT Tournament at Historicon
Players: Phil Gardocki, running Anglo-Irish
                   Sean Scott running Italian Condotta

Game System: Warrior, 1600 points

Theme: Open, all lists, all mods.


The Forces:

The Anglo Irish
    The CIC is that odiferous guts-griping clack-dish, Larry!
         With half HK,L,SH, half HC,L,SH
    His ally is Darryl, whose food is such as hath been belch'd upon by infected lungs.
          Also with half HK,L,SH, half HC,L,SH
    2 units of knights, with half HK,L,SH, half HC,L,SH
    Galloglaich Clans Jordan and Ramsay, with 16 HI,2HCW,JLS,D and 16 MI, HI,2HCW,JLS,D
     Bonnachts 12 LMI,JLS,2HCW,SH and 24 LMI, JLS,SH
     3 units of Longbowmen,  8 Reg'D' HI,LB,SH and 8 Reg'D' MI,LB
     Kern Ramsay and Jordan, light infantry, half sling, half javelin, all shield.
     1 unit of Bowmen,  half sh, all bow
     Light Horse, 8 LC, JLS, SH
     2 Bombards
    
 Italian Condotta 
     Super Heavy Knights, Pike, Mixed Halberd Crossbow, and some lights.

The Board:
     The terrain is preset and this one is typical.  A stream meanders on the right flank and marshes dot the edges.

 
Deployment:  

      Darryl's command, consisting of mostly missile armed troops, are deployed deep.  Facing him is a command consisting mainly of hybrid halberd and crossbow units and some pike.  Larry's command, with most of the assault troops are deployed forward.  Meeting him is all the Knights, and a good force of foot.  Larry is running an on board flank march consisting of a large unit of Bonnachts, as they can cross the stream undisordered, and could conceivably pin skirmishers against it.

Defending the front doors from all non-paying conferee's that mightiest fort in Christendom stands vigil.

Turn 1:

But that is not where this fight is.  The bonnachts look alone, but they have supporting forces in ambush.

The Galloglaich have their right flank secured by difficult terrain.

They are backed by Monty Python's Knights of the Round Table.

While the Galloglaich right flank is hanging, it is still supported by long range weaponry, should anyone go for it.

A single unit of kerns to delay any attackers on the left.

The Anglo-Irish have nothing that can compete in hand to hand on this side of the board.  But they do have distance and should get a lot of shots in.

The Knights facing the Galloglaich are will supported by foot troops.

Facing the marsh, is just a small force of Italian lights.

 Bound 1:

Orders are given.  Larry, the odiferous guts-griping clack-dish, is commanding the right flank, gives himself Attack orders.  Darryl, whose food is such as hath been belch'd upon by infected lungs, has Wait orders.  Dicing for character, Darryl goes unreliable, and then proceeds to be actually unreliable.  Not too bad, I didn't intend for him to go forward anyway.

The Italians try to squeeze around the flank with their Light Horse, but are facing a much larger unit of Irish Light Cavalry.  Kern Jordan will just sit they and suck up crossbow quarrels.  They stopped the march, anything else I get out of these boys is a bonus.

Forcing 5 units to go tactical, about 480 paces out.  Is 61 points well spent.

If memory serves, the range here is about 520 paces.

The Galloglaich line is a little too close to the marsh, so we'll advance them while shuffling left.

Seeing half the Anglo-Irish army is locked with wait orders till bound 3, the Italians make a bold decision and change their plans.  Demoralize the Galloglaich command and the game is over.  Up come the knights in full gallop.  This is the sort of tactic I dream of.  One lucky die roll and the Knights will be ruined instead of chasing routers.

An ambush is revealed.  16 bowmen in the marsh.  There is no visibility problems here, and they are facing a 4 light horse. 

One longbow unit was held in reserve.  Now marches to support the Galloglaich.  If this was a normal game I would have time to pull this off, but this game is not normal.

Bound 2:

Normally, the game would go for adjustments in the line as each of us tries to secure an advantage with missile fire.  The Galloglaich with their darts, the Italians with their crossbow.  But with an unreliable command on the board, the Italians are going for an all or nothing attack.  On dead even die rolls, he will win the day, but dead even die rolls occur rarely in this game, especially when missiles are factored in.

As normal, the space in in front of the bombards is vacated.  But they are still going to get split fire supporting the longbow units. 

Removing both boots, Clan Ramsay gets a an accurate count on the charging knights. 

While this is definitely in the knights favor, it is not as one sided as it looks.  If either flank gets a +2, which happens 25% of the time, that knight will get receive 12 @1 in darts, causing disorder and down 3 on impact, taking their charge down to a 5 @ 3, against 6 @ 2.  Then only an up one is needed to repulse the knight, leaving the remaining knights to fight against a large number of axe men.   So the Italians are risking losing 3 units, to the Anglo-Irish losing one, albeit a major one.

But the luck of the Irish was not here this day.  Pretty much dead even die rolls. 

Clan Jordan is eyeing up a flank charge on the knights, but is looking at what comes after.

Bound 3:
Larry sends an attack order to Darryl, who rolls a one on interpret, and continues to be unresponsive.

The thin line of kerns continues to hold their line.

The crossbow manage a massive barrage upon them. 

Swiss pike get in charge range of the longbow, who counter back.  Another turn to change orders.

A number of events occurred between the shots.  Sorry about that.  To avoid being flanked, and to open a path to flank charge one of the knights, The Galloglaich Clan Jordan compressed both left and right forming a block.  However, this did not prevent the flank charge in question.  Swiss pike come forward, and Halberds on the flank.  the only redeeming bit is the longbow unit got a substantial shieldless shot on the flankers as they came in. 

Despite all the Italian advantages here, they only cause disorder and recoil.  The flanking Halberdiers have no fear of the Longbow as they know they have Wait orders and cannot charge.  The Knights of the Round Table charge the flank of the Super Heavies, but only cause disorder and recoil as well.

The knights were tempted with a burst through into longbow, but declined, going for the more traditional tactic of "Seal the Deal" and hope for a failed morale roll instead.  Clan Ramsay has had enough and has gone shaken.

On the right, there is a lot of missile exchanges, but no real results.

Turn 4.

The other unit of Knights of the Round Table deploy, but with Wait orders, they have little hope of accomplishing anything.

Swiss Pike charge.  Incoming missile fire amounted to only a minus 1. 

The Galloglaich Clan Jordan is destroyed.  The Knights of the Round Table go shaken as a result and are charged in the flank as well.  Larry commits his Knights to battle. 

Clan Ramsay, even shaken, continues to fight.

Just a normal back and forth here.  However the Light Horse units are both very tired, one taking 9 hits in a volley.

Bound 5.

Commuted to battle, Larry is minus 2 dice on command rolls, but using all his points manages to send attack orders to Darryl.  Too late to do much, but there are two knights in his command, and both have flank charges available to them, if they can charge!  Not enough to turn the game around, but enough to get 2 points out of this fight.

We don't know where Darryl's mind is, but it is not in the game.  He rolls another 1 for interpretation. 

Final shot.

We called it here.  The what if's had Darryl had managed to obey orders will remain an unknown.  The final score was 5-1.

Sean played excellently this game, taking full advantage of the situation presented to him.