TTS AAR: Early Imperial Romans versus Anglo-Normans
/A second run out for my Romans in the same weekend, this time against Peter playing Anglo-Normans.
The Romans won the scouting, achieving a rather nice right flank overlap in the deployment that followed.
My strategy was simple: hammer down the right hand side of the field, then curl round to take the AN’s in their left flank.
I had the plan, I had the men: what could possibly go wrong?
Things began well, with my advance in the centre moving forward strongly.
In response, Peter’s plan was to hold his left flank with a deep unit of Fyrd forming orbis on a convenient hill, whilst the rest of his men defeated the veteran legionaries in front of them. If he could then use his heavy Norman cavalry to outflank my line on the left, then so much the better.
Let’s look at my out-flanking manoeuvre first.
Although the initial advance into an outflanking position had gone well, I just couldn’t quite get into actual combat before Peter had time to stabilise his line.
The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that the unit of Auxilia with the blue shields refused to charge the orbis on the hill three times in a row, despite having an officer present, meaning that the whole infantry command there was effectively moribund, meaning that I had to send in the cavalry before the enemy infantry line was properly softened up.
Despite this, the situation on the right ended up generally positive…but a far cry from the sweeping victory I needed to win the game before anything could go wrong on the left.
Meanwhile, on the left, Peter had advanced forward strongly, intending to beat me there with his knights and foot knights before I had a chance to win on the right.
Although I managed to use the terrain to anchor my veteran legionaries in place, a small but significant gap in my line allowed a unit Norman Knights, accompanied by some Lights, to sneak through and threaten my flanks.
This was a bit of a problem but, meanwhile, there was some very good news from the flank: a unit of eastern auxiliary light horse archers managed to shoot down a unit of veteran Norman knights - and it’s not often that that happens!
The Equites Sagittarii would go on to almost taking out another unit of Norman Knights with their bows, only failing because they ran out of ammo, having used every arrow in the camp as well!
More good news in that a good run of the cards allowed me to stabilise the situation on that flank. I was still outnumbered, but had formed a rough defensive circle as I waited for the game to be won on the right!
Unfortunately my luck then visciously rebounded, with a couple of Aces at critical moments effectively losing me the battle, even if it wasn’t immediately obvious. Firstly, the Legionaries in the centre of the picture above failed to make an easy turn to take two Norman units in the flank. Secondly, a unit of veteran Legionaries failed to activate when in the midst of fighting more Norman knights. To put that in perspective, the two Aces appear like that only 1% of the time!
Then I made a bad tactical error…or at least a tactical error as far as the To The Strongest rules are concerned.
Worried about the disordered Legionaries in the right-hand picture, above, I retreated them back into a square containing another unit of Legionaries, but facing the other way: the idea being that the Romans would fight bravely back-to-back. What I hadn’t realised was that the way that the Zone of Control rules work meant that if Peter was able to get a unit onto the flank of the back-to-backers, the back-to-backers would then be effectively pinned in place unable to rotate to face their aggressors.
I had never encountered this situation before, and it was a bit of a hard lesson to learn, as my Legionaries had to just sit there and be hit in the flank, unable to fight back, until one of the units died!
It’s a quirk in the rules, to be sure, but not one that breaks To The Strongest (I could argue it’s “realism” either way if I needed to!) but is something to be aware of and watch out for. As I said: a hard lesson to learn!
Meanwhile, back on the right flank, my winning situation had been reversed by the fact that my failures on the left had freed up a couple of units of Norman Knights to use their internal lines to rescue the situation: as you can see in the picture below, I went from an “about to take the two Anglo-Norman camps” situation to a “hit in the flank and rear” situation!
All was not lost, however, as high casualties on both sides meant that the game could still be mine. All I really needed was for my infantry on the right to finish off the Fyrd that were in orbis. The Fyrd had already been disordered, and I had two strong units ready to attack them. Surely the Fyrd would now die or, if that attack failed, there were some disordered Knights to kill instead.
All was looking good as I prepared to start my turn…
The bad news continued as we resolved the back-to-back situation, leading to a debate about whther I was actually just unlucky or, given that I had had some luck in the game, just unlucky at the wrong times in a game: is an Ace just an Ace, or is it an ACE!
And unfortunately I didn’t get another chance, as on Peter’s subsequent turn he managed to break one more of my units sending my troops reeling into retreat.
A roller coaster of game that both sides could easily have won. I was glad that I’d learnt about the back-to-back quirk in the rules: something to watch out for in future games.
So my losing streak continues: five games of To The Strongest in a row now. Hopefully this means that I’ll have got all the losses out of my system before the Wales tournament in a week’s time!
