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Miniatures Adventure => Medieval Adventures => Topic started by: guitarheroandy on 14 February 2012, 04:49:28 PM
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At the weekend, I was fortunate enough to take part in a truly epic battle organised by James (WAB 'Age of Arthur' & 'El Cid') Morris and hosted by Wargames Illustrated magazine. The battle was fought for an article in the September 2012 celebratory 300th issue of the magazine and was a re-fight of a famous battle from around 600AD that was later immortalised in early British poetry.
I can't post too many photos, or give too mant details of what happened, as I am not allowed to take anything away from the article that will be in the magazine in September, but the following 5 pictures will hopefully give some idea of the scale of it! We had over a thousand models (700 Saxon spearmen, plus mounted troops and skirmishers) and almost 300 Britons, around 200 of whom were mounted, making the battle probaly close to 1:1 scale. There were three players on each side and each commanded two Hail Caesar divisons. I commanded the British left flank. My orders were simple: Slaughter as many of the foul heathen Saxons as possible, as gloriously as possible!
The first picture shows the full set up at the beginning of turn 1:
(http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/ad276/guitarheroandy/Arthurians/YGododdinWABforum1.jpg)
The next shows the full Saxon army...hundreds of 'em!!!!
(http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/ad276/guitarheroandy/Arthurians/YGododdinWABforum2.jpg)
The next shows the British army with Steve (WAB Age of Arthur) Jones wondering just how on Earth he's gonna break the Saxon flank with his Picts!
(http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/ad276/guitarheroandy/Arthurians/YGododdinWABForum3.jpg)
The next shows my models (Cydywal of Gwynedd and his companion cavalry, supported by mounted nobles) smashing into the Saxon horde around turn 3.
(http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/ad276/guitarheroandy/Arthurians/YGododdinWABforum4.jpg)
The final picture I'll share today shows one of Cydywal's Noble cavalry units witth nothing left in front of them by the road to freedom, having just smashed through and utterly obliterated 4 times their number of Saxons in two large warbands!!
(http://i943.photobucket.com/albums/ad276/guitarheroandy/Arthurians/YGododdinWABForum5.jpg)
I hope these pics give you some indication of what a superb day we had. Hail Caesar played very well with the huge armies on the table and we all enjoyed getting into character with our orders given using the poetic language of the day! HUGE thanks go to James for organising, to Dan from WI for hosting and feeding us and to all the other players (incudling Dan Mersey, author of soon-to-be-released 'Dux Bellorum' Arthurian rules.)
May I please encourage you to buy Wargames Illustrated issue 300 in September, as the article from this game will be there in all its glory, written by James Morris...the photos will be superb. I have seen just one and it is immense! Also, the other games chosen for the articles in the magazine have something for pretty much every gamer out there!!
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:-* :o :-*
Wow! what an impressive looking game...can't wait for the full report!
Thanks for sharing.
Blue
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Now thats a wargame :o :o
Brilliant looking Game Andy :-* :-*
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Fantastic - great pictures but such a pity we have until September to see more! :(
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Proper job. Fabulous spread :-*
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Looks great. Any special rules for the drunk warriors?
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Great looking set up :-* :-* :-*
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Now I'm so envious! Well done, guys, have to link that thread.
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GOOD LORD!!! :-*
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Splendid work gentlemen :-* :-* :-*
Just a few questions if I may without detracting from the article :)
How long did the game take and how many turns were there?
Was there much manoeuvring as the table is cramped or was it just a case of 'stick it to 'em lads!'
How was the division set up arranged?
And one last final one, is it possible to get a picture of the waterfall in the background :)
cheers
James
*edit for dodgy iPad spellchecker ::) *
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Looks stunning 8) 8) 8)
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Oooh oooh! 300 British warriors, cAD600 - was it Catraeth?
'...he glutted the ravens, though he was no Arthur...'
is the only bit I can remember.
Oh, and
'...of three hundred men, only one returned.'
Treacherous Derians!
Of course it may turn out it wasn't Catraeth at all and then I'll look a bit foolish.
Smashing-looking game though. Really quite spectacular.
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Oooh oooh! 300 British warriors, cAD600 - was it Catraeth?
'...he glutted the ravens, though he was no Arthur...'
is the only bit I can remember.
Oh, and
'...of three hundred men, only one returned.'
Treacherous Derians!
Of course it may turn out it wasn't Catraeth at all and then I'll look a bit foolish.
Smashing-looking game though. Really quite spectacular.
This is what I was thinking as well, though the Saxons at Catreath may have been Christian as a scholar (sadly I forget the name and am far too lazy to dig through my papers to find it) wrote an interesting essay on how Aneirin, the composer of Y Gododdin, was likely a priest which is why the Saxons spared his life, why he did not fight in the battle but was at it, and why the Britons then ransomed him back. Still Catreath seems a good guess.
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If they were Christians, it makes the notion of Gregory the Great sending Augustine to England because he'd seen the Derian slave boys in the market and said 'non angli sed angeli' ('not English but Anglicans'... only joking) all a bit pointless. Converted before his guy even got here. By the British? Hmmm. Would Bede not likely have mentioned that the Derians were Christian though?
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Catraeth definitely. Hence my reference to 'gwenwyn yn ei gwaed'.
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Beautiful, I am looking forward to the article in the mag.
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Splendid work gentlemen :-* :-* :-*
Just a few questions if I may without detracting from the article :)
How long did the game take and how many turns were there?
Was there much manoeuvring as the table is cramped or was it just a case of 'stick it to 'em lads!'
How was the division set up arranged?
And one last final one, is it possible to get a picture of the waterfall in the background :)
cheers
James
*edit for dodgy iPad spellchecker ::) *
The game lasted from about 10.45am until 5.20pm, with a short lunch break and occasional tea breaks while WI Dan took pics for the mag without us around to block his shots.
Each player commanded two divisions. The size and composition varied across the armies, e.g. my main division had a unit of companion cavalry, 2 units of nobles and 2 units of light cavalry, plus 2 units of foot skirmishers, while my second division contained 1 unit of noble cavalry, 2 units of spearmen and 2 of foot skirmishers. One Saxon division was entirely mounted and all the rest were on foot. I think each one had one unit of Gedriht (hearthguard) and then varying numbers of spearmen units plus assorted skirmishers.
There was limited room for manoeuvre, but then that is probaly entirely accurate for much Dark Age warfare. What we found was that the front lines tended to pile in and 'stick it to 'em' while the more cunning manoeuvre was in the rear lines as one attempted to fully support one's attacks in the front and use reserves effectively. This was ably demonstrated by the saxons in front of me who generally kept their front line VERY well-supported. On the one occasion they didn't, I took advantage and that was when my unit broke through (aided by uncharacteristically good dice throwing from me, it has to be admitted!) It was less easy for the British, as we didn't really have many reserves to play with!!!
Apologies, but I neglected to take a pic of the waterfall!!!
I hope that helps. If you haven't played it, HC is a great game. Believe it or not, this was my first ever game using the rules and I coped really rather well (we did have one really expert player and some others had played a bit, but at least one other player on the Saxon side hadn't played either before the big day!!)
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That's great Andy, thanks very much :)
I've had it since it was released but haven't had the time to play it yet :'(
The impression I get is that it is very easy to pick up.
cheers
James
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If they were Christians, it makes the notion of Gregory the Great sending Augustine to England because he'd seen the Derian slave boys in the market and said 'non angli sed angeli' ('not English but Anglicans'... only joking) all a bit pointless. Converted before his guy even got here. By the British? Hmmm. Would Bede not likely have mentioned that the Derians were Christian though?
Yup. Just working on what I remember this was a few years ago I read it. Maybe they weren't but saw the importance of not killing a priest for the benefit of ransom. Wish I had time to go digging because he really had some interesting things to say.
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Awesome looking game, September seems a long way off.
If they were Christians, it makes the notion of Gregory the Great sending Augustine to England because he'd seen the Derian slave boys in the market and said 'non angli sed angeli' ('not English but Anglicans'... only joking) all a bit pointless. Converted before his guy even got here. By the British? Hmmm. Would Bede not likely have mentioned that the Derians were Christian though?
St Augustine was too busy converting in the South of England and being the first Archbishop of Canterbury to convert Northumbrians. Those British in the the Northumbrian Army may have still been Christians though. Officially the conversion of the Northumbrian King (and by implication the Northumbrians themselves) was in 627AD and again around 635AD by St. Aiden. Bear in mind that with the exception of St. Aiden and St. Patrick, the 'Celtic' Church and their ways were not encouraged by 'The' Church in Rome.
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Sure, Bede certainly downplayed the role of the British and Irish Christians and 'bigged up' Gregory's mission.
I've beren thinking about this a lot over the last 24 hours, and the idea of Derian Christians makes most sense I think if they are British. After all, most of Deira (including York, probably) wasn't in English hands in AD580, but had been conquered by 600. Seems likely that the new Anglian overlords had a large British population in their kingdom, and quite probably a British contingent in the army too.
Incidently, that might explain the Deiran 'treachery', if they were Britons fighting for a 'Saxon' overlord. Interesting... but possibly slightly off-topic!
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I'll see if I can remember to get a pic of the waterfall and post it. It's a piece I made about 15 years ago, but still serviceable. I'm hoping to add a few of my own pics of the game sometime but have been too busy writing down what happened and getting the article beaten into shape for WI 300.
Hail Caesar gets a big thumbs up from us an ideal rules set for this scale of game - we like WAB, but this battle would have been almost unplayable using it. Three of the six players had never played HC before but we still managed to get a result in 7 turns. We've played smaller games that have also been great fun, but HC was specifically chosen as we knew we were going to have a lot of figures on the table - no casualty removal, no faffing with angles/ wheels etc and 'easy to pick up' were three big selling points for us.
The battle is, obviously, Catraeth: 'Three hundred against a hundred thousand.' Possibly a bit ambitious but we did what we could! :)
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Thanks for the recommendation of Hail Caesar James, I think I'm going to have to have a look at them. :)
Sure, Bede certainly downplayed the role of the British and Irish Christians and 'bigged up' Gregory's mission.
I've beren thinking about this a lot over the last 24 hours, and the idea of Derian Christians makes most sense I think if they are British. After all, most of Deira (including York, probably) wasn't in English hands in AD580, but had been conquered by 600. Seems likely that the new Anglian overlords had a large British population in their kingdom, and quite probably a British contingent in the army too.
Incidently, that might explain the Deiran 'treachery', if they were Britons fighting for a 'Saxon' overlord. Interesting... but possibly slightly off-topic!
I'd imagine that most of the English Kingdoms had a lot of Britons within their population and only their culture largely disappeared. Whether they remained Christian or not, I wouldn't dare to hazard a guess, certainly there doesn't appear to have been much resistance to missionaries entering the Kingdom and doing their thing. Deira retained its British name, so may only have experienced a change of management under Ælla and his 'shareholders'.
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Oh wow I'm so envious. I've got the rule book. Some figures but no opponents. Hmm I guess I'm just living in the wrong part of the world :( Oh well. It looks like an awesome game. What table top gamings all about :)
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:o this is not good for my brain... ;D
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I've posted more detailed pics of the game to the WAB Forum (sorry, but it's the site I find easiest to post to). Here is the link:
http://wabforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=10796
I've also included a shot of the waterfall, just for James! ;)
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Thank you James :)
That first shot is absolutely outstanding :o :-* :-*
cheers
James
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Mr Morris paints a mean figure or two doesn't he?? And yes, that first pic is amazing...just imagine the whole article stuffed full of pics of that quality!!! ;D
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:o :o :o
WOW!
Simply amazing!
I love the attention to detail, with the command bases and viginettes telling a story all of their own. Superb!
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That looks brilliant. I am very green with envy right now :-* :-* :-*
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Breathtaking :-*