Only a few of us turned up for our pre Christmas meet up as everyone else had other things on. John produced the 'Battle of Maldon', which we've done several times before but works well as it is pretty simple but thought provoking and can take a fair number of players as teams.
A brief reminder. Saxons on the left, Danes on the right, Maldon up in the top left and a stream running down the middle. The stream is fordable at a combat penalty. Either side wins if they wipe out the enemy, but sudden death victory happens if the Danes take Maldon or the Danish King is killed.
Both sides have a core of infantry (move 1, cv 1) but the Danes have a pair of Berserkers (cv 2) while the Saxons have a pair of cavalry (move 2, cv 1). Both sides have a Leader (can stack, +1 cv). So the Danes have an advantage in combat power, but the Saxons an advantage in mobility.
I was the Saxons and Tim and Jim the Danes. You can only activate two units a turn so the Danes did the obvious thing of sending their berserkers forwards with the king as individually they have a 3:1 combat advantage over a standard Saxon.
Rather than fighting a losing defensive battle, I tried an indirect approach and attacked with the cavalry (and King) in the north. This caused a degree of confusion in the Danish ranks and a couple of infantry units lumbered north to stop me.
My cavalry rode around riding down the second line Danes.
And eventually they all ended up huddled around the bridge! I'd killed half the Danish army and lost only one unit so far. I'd still not managed to kill a berserker yet though.
The concentration around the bridge didn't look very inviting but I went for it anyway.
And was rewarded with another kill! The Danish King barely escaped with his life.
Sadly that was the Saxons high point, I didn't have a tactical answer to the berserkers and the Saxons king went down in one charge too many.
And after that, the few remaining Danes just marched around in a clump wiping out each Saxons unit in turn. The last Saxons tried a desparate charge against the Danish King, but it was defeated and Maldon fell.
What a great little game, it is different every time. Although my initial strategy worked OK, it all went a bit pear shaped later on. There must be some way of manouvering to force the Danes to attack across the river as it is the only way to negate their combat advantage. Picking off their weaker units only gets you so far, and fighting at poor odds in the hope of good fortune isn't really an optimum strategy!
Many thanks to John for putting that on.
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