A Saxon-Irish Chronicle (Song of Arthur Campaign)

Played two games of our Song of Arthur & Merlin campaign with Kyle on Friday.  This will pit my Irish marauders warband against Kyle's Saxon invaders (we're not sure how that works historically – both groups marauding deep into Northumbria?).  After a couple Song of Arthur games we felt that the campaign element was pretty crucial for the playability of the game - the need to fight another day short-circuits any movement towards win-it-all last all out attacks (which usually result in one or the other warbands being killed to the last man - sorta fun but not realistic and also dragged out and somewhat boring).

The first game was a 'raid' scenario with both sides trying to capture the majority of 10 herds of sheep scatter about the middle of the board. Both warbands were 600 points. The Irish had a mounted chieftain, a sub-chieftain, a champion, 7 warriors, and 3 riders. I forget what the Saxons had specificallly but they also had the leader + sub-leader, and also had more figures because they took a small group of cheap slingers.

The Irish lost the first game. I rolled a turnover almost immediately and lost the initiative. With my three mounted riders this was bad, because they could have made a quick dash to wrangle some sheep early on. Still, I made a game of it and it came down to control of one herd to determine the game, and after some melee, when the Saxons ended up with about 4 guys around that one herd, I conceded the game.

We spent our victory points to buy some warband advances. The Irish added 'host of riders' (one free L move at beginning of game for entire warband) and the Saxons picked up 'boars snout' to add some offensive punch to thier shieldwall skills.

The second game was was the "all out battle" scenario. The Saxons deployed in this long continuous battle line. My strategy was for the riders to cross the entire board and hit one end of the line, with the Irish foot warriors on their heels and hopefully score a gruesome kill and trigger morale checks for the entire Saxon flank. But again the mounted guys could not move fast enough.

But because I used 'host of riders' at the beginning of the game, the Irish still crossed the board pretty quickly. When melee was joined, the Saxons were dangerously close to the table edge. If the Irish could trigger a morale check, most of the Saxon line could melt away as they fled.

But Kyle was aggressive and it was me who ended up just getting totally mauled in melee. The first game was won by the Saxons by about 18 victory points to 12 points. In the second game, the Saxons won like 20+ points to 8. Ouch!

Post-game we both noted that the rules lend themselves nicely to a sort of narrative flow that keeps the game fun and light (even though I was getting my butt kicked). The campaign element also really helped things along.  In a couple of weeks we'll play another two-game set and see where this goes.

All my foot Irish figures are Old Glory. The mounted Warlord is Gripping Beast and the riders are plastic Wargames Factory Celts. I think all of Kyle's Saxon figures are Gripping Beast.