The Waving Flag: The Balkans 1370 AD :: A Campaign Report

Monday 1 February 2010

The Balkans 1370 AD :: A Campaign Report

In early November I posted John Davies’ Balkans Campaign after our first attempt to play the campaign was prevented by flu.  Well yesterday we finally got six players together at MAWS and fought the campaign in an afternoon.  Things went well.  At the end John was congratulated by all involved for producing a great one-day campaign.



So, how did we get on?

The teams and players were:

Catalan Team  
Catalan Company John Davies (Captain)
Lusignan Cypriot Graham Hutchinson
Wallachian Dave Redhead

Ottoman Team
Ottoman Turks Bill Skinner (Captain)
Serbian Empire Martin Stephenson
Golden Horde Brian Pierpoint

We used slightly different armies from those given in the original post to achieve an better balance between the teams.  I think this shows how flexible the system is.



The team captains, Bill and John, rolled dice to find that the Ottomans were invading giving the Catalans +1 when choosing table sides.  For the first round matches and results were:

Table Match Result
#1 Catalan v. Ottoman 0 - 25
#2 Golden Horde v. Wallachian 12 - 13
#3 Serbian v. Lusignan Cypriot 18 - 7

The first army listed defended the bottom edge of the table layouts in the original post.  The teams placings at the end of round one were:

Ottoman Catalan
Ottoman Turk (25) Wallachian (13)
Serbian (18) Lusignan Cypriot (7)
Golden Horde (12) Catalan (0)

The results were a great start for the Ottoman team and they took a 56 to 19 lead into the second round:


Table
Match Result
#1 Ottoman v. Lusignan Cypriot 15 - 10 (draw)
#2 Serbian v. Wallachian 13 - 12
#3 Golden Horde v. Catalan 11 - 14 (draw)

According to the campaign rules Graham and I should have played again as we had the middle scores in round one!  As Graham and I are regular opponents, a swap was quickly agreed.  You may want to do the same if you run the campaign and the same thing happens.

The Catalan team did much better in the second round running the Ottoman team close at 36 to 39.  However, the Ottomans were overall winners 95 to 55; mainly thanks to the Sultan’s comprehensive victory in the first round.

All the player’s were keen to run the campaign again but the consensus was that the campaign would run better at 400 points.  At 450 points the games were a touch too long to finish both games in an afternoon.

On a personal note my second game was Befuddled classic.  I’d never used massed irregular Kn(S) before, and certainly not against massed bows, and I forgot they receive +1 when losing in their own bound against foot and completely messed up the first close combat outcomes as a result.  It was spotted immediately and Dave was very sporting in allowing the mistakes to be corrected as best we could; especially as the Kn(S) went on to do what Kn(S) tend to do.  We agreed that the Serbians did not deserve more than a 13 - 12 win due to the outstanding incompetence of their commander.

No comments :

Salute The Flag

If you'd like to support this blog why not leave a comment, or buy me a beer!

Salute The Flag