TTS AAR: Anglo-Normans Hammered!
/With Viking and Norman armies now complete, I thought I’d have a look at what else this meant I could field. The most obvious mash-up was an Anglo-Norman army i.e. an English army from after William the B’s victory at Hastings.
This seemed to me to be quite a good combination: you have the the mobile power of Norman knights, the endurance and ferocity of the Viking foot (well, Anglo-Saxons…but the fyrd is a fyrd as they say!), and some lights in support.
With that decided, it was time to pick an opponent. Looking at the list of units that have been painted but haven’t been on the tabletop yet, it was obvious that the Assyrians were up. Not an historical match up by any stretch of the imagination (well, perhaps a pre-emptive strike on what would be the site of the British museum?) but this is Ancients so we won’t worry about that too much! I would play the Anglo-Normans, Kavan would play the Assyrians.
I deployed in a conventional manner - infantry in the middle, cavalry on the wings, lights with missile weapons in front - but Kavan made the unusual choice to put all his heavy infantry on his left wing, with the heavy cavalry and heavier chariots in the centre and his lighter infantry on the left. He then proceeded to march his heavy infantry forward at a rapid pace, hanging back most of his other troops.
I must confess that this completely banjaxed me, and I spent the next phase of the battle trying to re-arrange my troops to match. Talk about surrendering the initiative to your enemy!
Kavan’s troops, of course, were not waiting for me to sort myself out: they were up and at me, taking full advantage of the confusion to sneak a unit of cavalry through the middle as I tried to face the twin threats approaching my flanks.
And this was just the start!
With cavalry now driving through the middle of my line, I couldn’t advance the infantry I’d moved to the right flank to counter his infantry, meaning that I tried to stop them with my knights. Kavan had anticipated this, however, and had hung a unit back to protect his flanks. So this effectively stalemated that side of the field, taking my best troops out of the battle.
Things were going no better on my left and in the centre, with Kavan cross-ruffing his heavy chariots between the two to both prevent me getting any sort of advantage on either and then, with a superb run of cards, even managing to rear charge a unit of heavy Norman spear that I was pulling back to try and defend my camps!
Even if my heavies did survive that initial impact, I was definitely now on the back foot, and it wasn’t long before they did give way, leaving the way clear for the Assyrian chariots to break through and finish the capture of my camps that the cavalry had begun.
That took care of the last of my victory medals, meaning that the Assyrians had won a glorious victory over my utterly-defeated Anglo-Normans.
A great game of To The Strongest, fought superbly by Kavan, who knocked me off balance with his initial deployment and never let me recover. A master class!
