The Mystified On Tour :: Manchester 2011

Last Sunday Graham and I played Field of Glory in the second round of the 2011 Northern League at Walkden. These events always involve an early start but this time the clocks went forward so we all lost an hours sleep as well.  At least I didn’t have too far to travel!

We took a 900 point Later Lithuanian army and scored 26 points out of a possible 50; not a bad start to 2011 and our best performance since our first outing in September 2010.

Game #1 against Later Minoan or Early Mycenaean (23-2 win)



Alan Cole & Paul Carter proved very sporting  and pleasant opposition with their army of light foot, defensive spear and heavy chariots. The open terrain did them no favours and neither did the dice. 

The first really unlucky event occurred when my armoured cavalry charged some light foot protecting the flank of a large block of spear.  The light foot evaded as you’d expect.  However, I rolled a 6 for pursuit allowing me to reach the now unprotected flank of the spear block which never really recovered.

They were tough opponents and we had to be patient.  It took us the full three and a half hours to break their army.  They deserved better.  An absorbing game against very nice blokes.

Game #2 against Late Hungarian (22-3 loss)



After a quick lunch we faced Paul Longmore and Phil Powell in an all MAWS clash.The game was never going to be subtle with three battle groups of superior, heavily armoured knights on each side.  The crunch came when all six battle groups of knights clashed head to head over two or three bounds.

Phil’s dice in these combats were very good whilst mine were decidedly below average.  Twice I lost a base as Phil had rolled six hits with 8 dice!  There may even have been a third base lost this way but I stopped counting.

Under this onslaught all three of our battle groups of Superior knights slowly, but inexorably, evaporated. Meanwhile on our left Graham wasn’t faring any better and the Lithuanians were broken in under two hours play.

I think we could replay this game and do better more times than not.  So much so I’m currently trying to arrange a rematch.

Summary

I was pleased with the performance of the Later Lithuanians and will probably use this army again.

This was our third entry in a FOG competition and the first time we had a big win in round one.  This placed us against experienced players in round two and, although we were well beaten, we didn’t lose because we played badly.  So I think we’ve made progress.

However, we still struggled to remember the finer details of FOG and, on a few occasions, some of the more basic elements.  The former tended to arise because we were attempting complex attacks with multiple battle groups so I suppose it’s another sign of progress.  Even so, the latter is clearly something we will have to work on.

Overall, I’d say that the rules haven’t yet clicked and we certainly can’t play from memory. We’ll have to see if we do better in this respect in the fourth round at Halifax in September.

Miscellaneous

This time around I managed to take some general photos.  I tried to take a good shot of Bill Amey to make up for the photo I took at Vapnartak but it didn’t come out well; the lighting in the hall is terrible for photography.  I did however get  a great shot of Bill Skinner in DBMM action with his Ottoman Turks:



Another one for the family album Bill?