The Mystified On Tour :: Walkden 2012

Sunday saw us taking the well worn path to Walkden for the final round of the Northern League for 2012.



We decided to give my Later Lithuanians a run out in an attempt to improve our scores with a class 2 army. Last time out we managed 23 points with a Early Russian army; we managed to do better but only just.

Game #1 against Early Mycenaean Greek (27-0 win)



Paul Carter was due to play with his regular partner Alan Cole. Unfortunately, Alan isn't very well and couldn't make it and I would like to wish Alan a speedy recovery.

This was the third time we'd played against one another this year; last time was a big loss and before that we had a big win. All our games have been played in a great spirit and one team always looses big. This game was no exception.

We didn't seem to put a foot wrong. We had a flank march which arrived at the first attempt without any stragglers; it's just visible in the bottom left hand corner of the photo. Flank marching is risky but is very effective against lines of infantry (in Paul's case armoured medium foot). However, the infantry never recovered being flanked and attacked in the rear. Meanwhile Graham made short work of three battle groups of light chariots winning us the game.

This was the worst possible match up for Paul. To compound matters, whilst we never seemed to put a foot wrong Paul rolled some shocking dice. We gained two bonus points for breaking a class 1 army (it was a class 2 army but with more than 15 battle groups).

Game #2 against Dailami Dynasties(3-22 loss)



First things first: I managed to get a photo of Rob this time after failing miserably when we met at Stoke earlier in the year. As it turned out this was also a re-match on the table as we were both fielding 900 point versions of the 650 point armies from Stoke.

As expected, Rob piled the pressure on our weaker troops whilst running away from our numerically stronger cavalry and massed superior knights. All his medium foot were drilled and they danced across the table.

Having lost at Stoke I felt I did better facing off the armoured, superior, impact foot with nothing more than cavalry, light horse and light foot. I lasted a few hours and even broke two units of medium foot.
The key point came as I was beating two battle groups of lancer armed light horse with average light horse when I failed a cohesion test very badly. Both my light horse broke and ran away leaving a fragmented battle group of lance armed light horse and a second that had lost 25%.

Later we lost two units of light foot, who'd failed to break a single battle group of superior light foot before the supporting medium foot arrived, which pushed us close to breaking. A couple of fragmented units and the loss of our camp, to some sneaky light horse, gave Rob the points he needed.

As a doubles team we have to learn to apply consistent pressure along the battle line: our cavalry and knights did very little but chase after things. Failure to do so merely hands the initiative to experienced players like Rob.