Two identical and typical retinue armies pitted against each other. The dice decided which players went with which armies which gave Chris and Tim the Tudors and Tony and I the Lancastrians.
In this battle of equals, only the terrain features could give an advantage to either side and therefore manoeuvre and speed were key elements. Both sides had 5 units of heavy cavalry and 2 units of hobilars (light cavalry), but the other 12 units were longbows and bill units all of which were initially deployed in column formation for quick movement. The dice roll for first move was won by Chris and Tim who wasted no time advancing at full speed to grab as much ground as possible.
Tony positioned all but one of our mounted men-at-arms units behind our Lancastrian longbow and the threat of a charge made Chris cautious and he halted his advance and his longbow planted stakes. However, Tim through caution to the wind and charged his infantry and cavalry towards the central wood and my extreme left wing. In response to Tim’s attack I could either pull back into a strong defensive line or meet him head-on. I chose the latter!
With the Tudor army in possession of the 2 areas of woodland, to the front and my left my counter-attack was ‘squeezed’ into a salient and when I failed to push the Tudors back I was left with an open flank. Tim charged this flank with 2 units of mounted knights (mounted men-at-arms), demolishing 2 of my bill units and recoiling and disrupting another. Things went from bad to worse when Tim’s hobilars pinned my general and his accompanying unit of knights in the left hand woodland.
Meanwhile, Tony had managed to gain the upper-hand in the shooting match against Chris’s longbow forcing some recoils but was not yet ready to charge with his knights following up behind. We really needed possession of the central woodland to secure his flank before the charge went in. However, that was the task of my infantry which were making no headway into the wood and were being now thoroughly defeated on the left by Tim’s flanking attack.
Our last chance to turn the game in our favour rested now with Tony, our ace cavalry commander. The expected heavy cavalry charge hit the Tudor longbow line demolishing it, but Chris’s men-at-arms were waiting behind with 2 generals! The following round of hand-to-hand combat went squarely in favour the Tudors helped by some of Tony’s worst dice rolls!
Tony and I are very stubborn, and we fought on for another 3 game turns but the fate of our Lancastrians was already sealed. We had the consolation of resigning a good number of Tudor units to the casualty tray, but nearly twice this number of Lancastrians were already off the table! We gracefully accepted defeat!
Game Analysis
Tim and Chris’s Tudors had out-manoeuvred and out-fought our Lancastrians and because the composition of both armies was identical, full credit must go to their better generalship!
