Friday, October 24, 2014

Raiding the Briton Farm

 Lord Cuthwulf still smarting form his failed raid in the spring and been fretfully rebuilding and petitioning his king for permission to raid the Britons again though a long summer.  Finally the king relented and Cuthwulf with his Bergred and his cosine Osbert prepared to strike a farm in northern England
 This poor sleeping hamlet has no idea what is about to happen to it.
 Bergred and his two bands of warriors reach the main farmstead quickly and begin searching for loot (I was singularly  unsuccessful at this endeavor for most of the game.
 John has his two bands of warriors sneaking though the woods.  I have learned and Cuthwulf and his elite war band are positioned to keep the way home open
 John's reinforcement arrive and begin moving across the field (our terrain looks very realistic this time around)
 Bergred and his men continue their fruitless search while Osbert's men try to chase off the slingers.  Osbert himself is searing the building in the lower corner.  John and his elites cross the field and I move to strike them.
 An epic clash ensues as 6 Briton Elites with their lord and champion face of against 12 Saxon Elites with their lord and champion.  The battle (lasting several rounds) is quite even six men on each side fall before the end but numbers tell and the Briton Lord and his champion Uther must flee.
 I manage to chase off the Briton slingers with a band of warriors but the levies come up. Bergred gives up looting the farm house and joins the battle.  John drives off one leaderless band of Saxon warriors...
 Bergred has done great damage to another group of levies killing one and inflicting 4 shock
 Cuthwulf falls on the other end of the line of Levies and breaks a unit but fails to chase it down and destroy it (it will run off board latter).  Bergred breaks another band of levies and hist the 3rd in his attempt at pursuit.
  Both side are badly damaged pursuit leaves me exposed... when the Briton lord card some up
I try to use evasion but my dice (which had been hot or cold all night go very cold) the Briton lord and his champion break this band and now both john and I have our moral hanging by thread... fortunately the Briton levies run off the board first breaking Briton moral. I win though there is some question as to the level of victory as its not clear if I get the loot or if the farm was more or less empty.

Lessons raiding is hard!  The looting checks are a 1in6 chance and their is nothing you can do to improve your odds... The Briton player has the more straight forward task of simply trying to break my moral.  On that note my men are better average quality but the lose of each unit has a bigger potential loss of moral... so while I am man for man better my force is also more fragile as a whole I did kill 22 Britons (3 points) to the loss of 17 (2 points) Saxons but that is still heavy losses... but with winter a head at least I have enough gold to satisfy my king one way or the other.

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