The Re-Mystified On Tour :: Walkden 2013

2013 is going to be a year of transition. After reviewing last year's tour and thinking about what to do in 2013 I decided that I try the Renaissance version of Field of Glory. The choice was really between learning version 2 of the Ancient & Medieval rules or version 1 of the Renaissance rules and I decided on a change in period.

I won't be attending more than a couple of rounds of the Northern League this year but I thought the first round at Walkden would be a good place to start playing competitive FOG R so I created a TYW Danish army list and emailed my entry to the list checkers.

Now before I comment on the games I'd like to say little about the army I fielded. It was essentially a converted DBR army but as DBR armies tend to be smaller I had little choice in what I fielded. With some very minor tweaks I played with what I had painted. I'm just glad I managed to finish some dragoons.

With all this in mind and the fact that the FOG R competition is mainly singles I turned up on a cold Sunday morning in Manchester wondering what the day would bring.

Game 1 against Wars of Religion French Huguenot (21-4 win)



My first ever competitive game of FOG R was against Neil Duffell who came third in the 2012 Northern League competition. So I was expecting a tough start and I got one.

Neil's army contained a lot of medium foot aquebusiers and with lots of terrain to hide in on my left I knew it was going to be difficult there but in the centre Neil deployed away from my four artillery pieces and left a large gap between his allied left wing and the centre. So my plan was to delay on my left and exploit the gap with cavalry.

In the game I was able to exploit the gap despite early losses on the left due to shooting. On the right of the gap Neil eventually lost his ally command of four battle groups. On the left of the gap the Danish cavalry were hunting down the medium foot in the open wherever possible. They broke a battlegroup and opened the path to the baggage.

Elsewhere, the heavy horse had an especially pleasing ride through Neil's light artillery and supporting medium foot. This left Neil close to breaking but as an experience player he recaptured his artillery, by this time my cavalry were long gone, delaying things a touch. The game ended when I destroyed the last remaining allied battlegroup but Neil grabbed a few points back by breaking one of my weakened battlegroups of cavalry and I also lost a neighbouring group when it failed the resultant cohesion test.
All in all a great game and Neil was helpful and a pleasure to play against. There was a bit of a cock up with the scoring as no one could use the score sheets properly. It was recorded as a 19-6 win when in fact it was 21-4. I lost only 6 of 14 (or 42%) giving Neil 4 points. The score sheet is awful.

Half-time

In between the games people just hung around, ate their packed lunches, or popped out for a pint or a sandwich. The local subway seemed very popular.



Game 2 against Japanese (8-17 loss) 



So having played the third placed player from 2012 the only way was up! I sat down across from Kevin Johnson who came first in the 2012 competition.

Updated: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 - for some reason this post has been truncated and is missing the report on my game with Kevin. I thought it was because of yesterday's crash but I've since learned it wasn't. Shame! :-(