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.

The teams:

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.

First round

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)

A great start for the Ottoman team.

Second round

With the Ottomans leading 56 to 19 the Ctaalns looked to claw something back.

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 this round running the Ottoman team much closer at 36 to 39.

Final scores

The Ottomans were overall winners 95 to 55; mainly thanks to the Sultan’s comprehensive victory in the first round.

Closing remarks

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.