Spring 1001 - Tereken vs Altengard - Pfannkuchen Flachland

Feels like it's been awhile since I did one of these.

Sorry for the delay, my hobby stuff has become a shambles and I had trouble finding various things and carving out space to even play the game.

My son helped my by being official die roller and we had some fun playing out the battle.

I hope you enjoy it.

Altengard lost one Infantry, the Mercenary Horse Archers and the White Company Archers in the pursuit from Tereken. It is possible Herr General Rudolf Von Gelstorf dropped the Spear of St. Lindorf and the Fiddle of Calling when his men routed.

I chose to use the "Painted 3" filter as it obscures the fact that half, at a minimum, of my figures are unfinished.

Thanks for looking.

Wind Maidens Lead the Way

Just finished the battle between Tereken and Treyine.

Casualties were pretty heavy on the Tereken side - bad dice rolling and the Wind Maidens move pretty fast!

Teufelswald - Tereken vs. Altengard - Spring 998

Sorry I'm late, here it is.

 

Hopefully I caught all the spelling mistakes and the worst of the grammatical errors. Altengard was quite the juggernaut and the terrain really favored them. In the after battle pursuit Tereken lost 2 levies and the Mounted Huscarls. Magic wasn't much of  factor and the cannon caused hits, but failed to stop the cavalry. The heroes were on opposite sides of the line and so didn't see each other. Aelberht played more of a role. Altengard had too many units for Manfred to really get stuck in, or Tereken had too few for him to get at.

I'll be quicker with the next one. (Famous last words!)

Autumn 997 - Colle Della Battaglia (Tereken invades Treyine)

I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

Tereken also lost two levies in the after battle pursuit.

Fladnag's use of the blast spell was helpful in softening up the Treyine foot knights. With an AC of 6 they need to be whittled down so that they can be affected by reaction tests. I rolled pretty abismally for them. With both sides only having a war rating of two I had trouble getting things moving for Treyine especially. The plan to use the wind maiden's ships to get a bridgehead on the hill was the right idea, I just should have had the ships deployed as one body. I only realized after setup that they were not.

Tereken's luck just ran out this time. The icy finger of death last battle was incredibly lucky. The general being injured this time around was a little unlucky.

On a technical note, I used my photography backdrop cloth for the pictures. I think it was worth it.

See you next time.

Summer 997 - Tereken vs. Treyine - Isle of Blood

Sorry this one took so long. I got stubborn about fixing the backgrounds and then couldn't push myself to finish them. I also took way too many pictures, but sometimes it's hard to know which moment is the key one as you're playing.

I hope it was worth the wait. Treyine only lost one archer in pursuit. I don't know what became of Lord Wigstaff or the fiddle of calling. The knight unit never routed and only took one hit. The Finger of Death spell was incredibly lucky.

Autumn 994 - The Battle of Gnita Heath

It was a fine Autumn day when the armies met on the heath at Gnita. The Tereken army consisted of just 500 hardened warriors, a small mercenary band of Eskelin knights and a handful of youths armed with rocks and slings. The Capalan army numbered the finest spearmen they could field and two lances of the best armoured knights in Talomir.

Naturally, the Tereken army was confident. They would fight and die, and their names would be sung in the songs of the scops forever afterwards.

 As the Capalan general ordered the advance, the Tereken knights swiftly rode to meet the enemy knights. The young men accompanied them, ready to rain rocks on the Capalan knights. Wulf the Mystic and Geir the Unseelie began to chant and the bodies of the dead from previous battles arose beside their position. Gnita Heath was the most common route of advance into Capalan territory and many warriors had fertilised its soil with their bones. Lord Uhtred was determined to take any advantage he could get against the Capalan soldiers. They owed him for the ache in his bones when the winters were cold, which they always were; the wound they had given him before had never quite healed right.

Uhtred cheered as a contingent of Capalan knights were driven back by the Eskelin knights, and swiftly cursed as the Eskelin knights were driven from the field by the Capalan general, who pursued them hotly. His young skirmishers had all been ridden down in the process. No doubt they were already feasting in Valhalla. Meanwhile the Capalan wizards were ineffectually trying to make an incantation work. A cloud of purple smoke over their position suggested that all was not well. Seeing his chance, Uhtred ordered his huscarles to turn about face and charge the enemy knights. With a loud cry of "They don't like it up 'em!" the huscarles lifted their spears and shields and planted them firmly in the bottoms of the Capalan cavalry, who immediately fled, taking their general with them. Suddenly the Capalan army disintegrated. Only the spearmen remained, huddling together for comfort. The captain of the spearmen, seeing that he outnumbered the enemy 3:1 ordered the charge at the rear of the Tereken warband.

The spearmen made contact but the enemy stood firm and fought back even harder. Very soon the huscarles had disposed of the spearmen facing them, while the revenant heroes were being cut apart, but did not seem bothered. Uhtred ordered the about face once more and charged the spearmen. This final charge was too much and the remains of the Capalan army fled. The field belonged to Tereken and Capalan was no more.

Notes
I really expected the Capalan army to carry the day, so I planned to target the enemy general and try to remove him from the field. If I could kill him, then I thought that Tereken might lose the battle but that Capalan would be more likely to capitulate when I rolled national morale. As it happened, Steve chose to charge with the general, which played right into my hands. When Capalan made the Leader Lost test, only the spearmen stood. The average Rep of 3 in the Capalan army is truly appalling and really requires all the troops to stay together in contact with as many of their own as possible. This makes the army unwieldy, but is necessary to prevent the kind of disintegration that happened.

This battle was also notable for the sudden success of my Magic Users. I am not a great fan of Magic Users in RrtK because I think that you need too many of them working together for them to be cost effective, but the stand of undead that I raised was well worthwhile, and a single successful blast spell against the Capalan knights made the difference between rout and victory.

Summer 994 - In the Forest of Tears

"Your Highness, I bring news from the front."
"Well, tell me. Have we driven Altengard before us? Where are the prisoners? Why do I not hear the lamentations of their women?"
"Your Highness, the news from the front is this ..."

We deployed our troops to face their numbers. Our shieldwall was strong and our mercenaries keen to see the blood of the enemy. Their army deployed with woods on either flank.

Then we deployed our secret weapon, but they did not fear it and it was soon vanquished.

Our cavalry wing drove all before it. The Altengard knights were ground into the dust. Jarl Godwin led the charge and he bloodied his blade well in this battle.

Then it all went wrong. Godwin fell to the lance of Graf Manfred von Spittlebucken in a heroic duel that the skalds will sing of for many years. He lies grievously wounded in his hof even now. The Altengard army must have had magical help, for our wizards could do nothing against them and soon fled the field. Our levies fled at the first sign of trouble. They had barely broken a single spear before they chose to rout. Only our huscarles stayed and fought. Lord Uhtred stood to the last and fell with all his bodyguard, surrounded by the corpses of his enemies. It was a glorious death and he must already be feasting in Valhalla.

"Your Highness, shall I permit the emissaries from Altengard in to accept our surrender now?"

Tereken's permanent losses:
1 Mounted Huscarles
2 Huscarles
3 Levy
Godwin the hero (left after failing the Keeping the Hero Happy roll)
Lord Uhtred (general)

National Morale
Tereken suffered total morale failure and is now at peace with Altengard.

Comment
You know how some days things never go right. This was one of those days. I rolled high for Reaction Tests and low for all attacks. My dice rolls were ridiculously extreme. I still managed to rout the Altengard cavalry, but that was almost despite my dice rolling rather than on account of it. Then, when it came to major pursuit I rolled enough sixes in a row to make a D&D player happy. I wish I had been generating a character at that point! The end result was total defeat for Tereken, and I can only apologise to Sean for messing up his army in this way.

To be honest, I did not think that Tereken could win this one, but I did hope to bloody Altengard's nose. I thought that having 5 levels of Wizard in the army might make a difference, but they only got the chance to cast one spell and failed that abysmally thanks to only rolling 2 successes on 5 dice, while Steve rolled 3 on 3 dice. Ho hum! The hero did some good work, which was nice, but it was not enough on its own to win the battle.

The imbalance in this battle has got me thinking once more about casualties. Only the loser in a battle can permanently lose units, and the chance of permanent losses is high because battles only end when all the loser's units have routed. The winner can have only a single unit left on the battlefield and yet they get their entire army back. The argument for this that I have heard before is that each turn is a season, so they have plenty of time to recruit new troops. If that is the case, then surely the loser does too and it does not feel quite right. I feel that there should be a chance for the winner to suffer permanent losses too, because victorious armies in reality suffer attrition, and nations can be bled white.

The question is how to do this without unbalancing the game in the other direction. My initial idea was to apply the Casualty Recovery table to the victor, as well as to the loser. All units from the victor's army that routed must test as if pursued by a slower enemy. This means that they would only be permanently lost on two failed dice. The problem with this is that the loser's army gets back all unpursued units, so it creates a situation where each army is treated differently.

My second idea, which I am tempted to test, is to have all routed units test, regardless of whether they are pursued or not. Those that are not pursued (on both sides) get to add one to their Rep for purposes of this test, although a 6 is still a fail. This will increase the chance of casualties on the loser's side a bit, but will also mean that the winner's army has a chance of permanent losses, hopefully balancing out in the end. What do people think of this idea?

Spring 993: Godwin prevails!

Capalan had invaded Tereken!

The wizards helped by casting healing spells and one blast on the guards, which may have made the difference. They tried Icy Finger of Death twice, but Bonaduce shrugged it off both times. Godwin really saved Tereken's bacon.