ADLG: Another Learning Game

I have finally found another local ADLG player.  His name is Gareth and he's got a mate called Paul who also plays ADLG. Hooray!

Our meeting was a happy accident. At the 5th Round of the Northern League I bemoaned my lack of local ADLG opponents to one or two players as one does in such circumstances.  As one conversation developed it turned out the person I was talking to had not only just bought something of mine from eBay but lived close enough to make regular games a real possibility. As we didn't play one another in competition we arranged a friendly a game for last Sunday.

Gareth has played far more ADLG in 2017 than I have so playing him would be good practice for me and build on my recent experience in the Northern League. I also wanted to see if my newly designed "cheat sheets" would be useful during a game.

We played at a new venue to me: Brimstage Forge. This is not exactly close to Warrington but it's an easy journey for me: all but 4 miles are by Motorway. As a bonus the venue has plenty of free off road parking. On a Sunday afternoon the venue was very quiet almost peaceful. We had our choice of tables in the clean, warm and well laid out large gaming room on the first floor.

Gareth brought along a Ayyubid Egyptian which was a good historical match for my Ilkhanid Mongols. I've decided to stick to the Ilkhanids until I get my head around the rules. I did make a few tweaks to my list moving away from the "all arms" approach I adopted in the Northern League and removing the competition specific restrictions.

The game itself was decided by a series of 6-1 & 5-2 dice rolls. About half way through Gareth apologised for rolling so many sixes but it was really my fault for rolling so many ones and twos. I was looking at a sound trashing.

Then it all changed. I nipped in and took the Ayyubid camp with some light horse and then charged four units of disordered heavy cavalry with my elite heavy cavalry. Gareth decided to evade which was the percentage play but he rolled short and I rolled long. The Ayyubid cavalry were caught in the rear and soon crumbled. Elsewhere the Ayyubids lost a general from behind a destroyed unit and that was that really. A complete reversal in fortunes.

Enjoyable but close and worth a rematch.

Date	19 November 2017
Competition	Friendly
Venue	Brimstage
Army	Ilkhanid Mongol with a Cilician Armenian Ally
Army list	List details
Army number	255
Army date	1260 AD

Opposition	Gareth Jones
Army	Ayyubid Egyptian
Army number	199
Army date	1171-1250 AD
Initiative	No
My Posture	Attacker
Terrain	Plains
Game time	02:10
Attrition	26/22 to 15/22
Decisive	Yes
Result	Win

Learning points:

• Don't position light horse close to a side table edge and at such an angle that would result in them evading off table if charged.
• If you get round a flank and a camp is on offer take it. Don't mess around too much with light horse trying to harass medium infantry etc.
• Take time to work through all the combat factors.  Resist the temptation to just roll the dice. Things like elite status and armour can, and do, change outcomes. With the rounding up mechanism in ADLG there's a lot of difference between a deficit of 2 and one of 3.
• I must "unlearn" the DBMM/FOG approach of troops having just one factor. In ADLG units have quite different shooting, protection and combat factors. My "cheat sheets" worked well for the first two but I kept forgetting to look at the combat factors later in the game as things got tense.
  

That's it for now. In my next post I will write about the "cheat sheets" I've been using and why the process sheets I've written aren't really viable playing aids.