Edington 878 AD

 Off to the Dark Ages with the Table Battles system. Tim had come across this user created scenario on BGG, covering the climatic encounter between Alfred the Great and Guthrum, the Danish ruler of East Anglia (and Uhtred Ragnusson, for followers of the Last Kingdom novels and TV series!).

This is a really interesting scenario, each side only has three units, two wings of troops and their commander. The commanders can rally their wings  a (very) limited number of times, and allow the allocation of command dice to both wings simultaneously.

The Saxons can form a shield wall, and the Vikings can attack without loss unless the Saxons counterattack. All the actions are controlled by various combinations of command dice, it is much easier to activate Aelfred than Guthrum for example.

It really is a minimal setup, but both sides wings have masses of SP. The leaders are behind. They need the special command blocks on them to do their command magic. Saxons on the left, Danes/Vikings on the right.

Pleasingly, there aren't any restrictions on how many command dice per turn you can place on the combat cards either (apart from the usual ones relating to dice numbers and total number of dice available) - so you can quickly build up strong attacks. The Saxons need dice on both wings  to be able to claim their 'Shield Wall' defensive bonus.

A big effort from the Saxons! Alfred seems to have burnt all his command points though.

Mmm, that could have gone better. We've both lost a wing, but this disadvantages the Saxons as they can't form Shield Wall now.

Everyones front lines have broken, but Alfreds ran first, so Guthrum wins! I guess he won't be converting to Christianity this time then.

We set it up and went again the next evening with sides swapped.

So far much the same.

Hard pounding Gentlemen! The Saxons seem to be doing better in the battle of attrition though, however once again Alfred has committed all his reserves early.

The Danes are fading faster, just.

One Danish wing goes.

And then a Saxon wing.

But Alfred breaks the last of the Danes with SP to spare. Aelfred wins!

That was very quick, so we did it again.

And Aelfred wins again!

That is more in line with the historical result where Guthrum was just outclassed. 

That worked really well and felt very much like a Dark Ages battle, even though it didn't have many moving parts. It reminded me a bit of the board/minis game 'Battle Ravens', which covers similar ground.