Encounter at Terril’s Tavern, part 1

I hope this will be a preliminary report, to be followed by some version of fiction.  I have had a battle in my solo “Northlands” campaign pending for a couple of months, and I was baking some bread this morning.  That gives me about three hours to wait while things rise and bake, so it seemed like a good time to resolve the battle.

Different hobby project

Overview of the field near the end

 The background for this is a raid launched into enemy (Darmis) territory by the King of Verdance, while Darmis was occupied with an invasion of Cold Islanders.  The last game played resolved the Cold Island invasion (in favor of Darmis), so the raiders were generally looking for one good score before heading for home.  As luck would have it, my battle generation system generated a skirmish (to be played with Dragon Rampant), and the forces turned out to be fairly general medieval groups. I therefore decided to use a scenario from Lion Rampant, the Dragon Rampant scenarios being not terribly generic.  I ended up with a convoy action (what else, eh, Ross?). Darmis, with a force of three knights (elite riders), an archer and a scout unit, had the convoy, and the Verdance raiders (a knight, an offensive heavy foot unit, an elite archer, a regular archer, and a scout) had the task of preventing them from getting it across the table.  The convoy player is allowed to attach his three transport elements to any unit, so I put two with the archers (carts I painted in August), and one (an Airfix Maid Marion as a Darmish noblewoman) with a unit of knights.  Having a transport element keeps a unit from being issued attack orders.  It’s not clear whether a countercharge should be allowed, but the Darmish situation was bad enough, in my opinion, that I thought I’d better allow it.  As a solo game, I knew the opponent wouldn’t complain...

As is usual for a Rampant-series game, there were a few turns where initiative turned over quickly, but they pretty much balanced out.  Both sides had their commander with a unit of knights, and lost them to repeated wild charges.  It might have been worth paying the extra points for the command units to be rated as “steady”, not subject to the wild charge rule.  At the end of the game, the Verdance raiders had both of their units of archers pouring arrows on the Darmish archers, who failed courage checks for casualties twice and rallied both times before ultimately routing.  It did prevent them from effectively returning fire.

Last of the Darmish units fails a morale check and abandons the convoy

 So, with the noblewoman and her attendants captured, I expected that the raiders will be heading home in the next map move.

Near the end; Darmish archers attempt to shoot their way through the roadblock without success

All in all, it was an entertaining little game.  It fit in well with the baking, and advanced the campaign a bit, which is pretty good for an afternoon’s entertainment.