It has been an eventful couple of weeks for me and my family, which pretty well sabotaged any gaming or hobby work for me. But things are finally settling down - I hope - and so I was able to attend Kevin's Carolingians vs. Danes battle at Guardian last night. We used De Bellis Antiquitatis 3.0, big battle version - my first time playing this in a large format.
On the side of good, i.e., my side, we had Karl Magnus leading four battlegroups of Christian Franks and such - mostly Knights and Spears - and my pagan Slavs, mostly Fast Auxiliaries with two bases of Cavalry and two Psiloi for support. On the side of evil - i.e., hapless Danes of the Low Countries defending their settlement - we faced five battlegroups of mostly Blades, with a few Psiloi and Fast Hordes thrown in for good measure.
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| The center of the Carolingian line as battle begins. Charlemagne himself is to the right of this photo, with the yellow flag. |
The battlefield was a simple one - a road leading across the field to the Danish town, flanked by a pair of woods quite a ways from the road on either side, with a bay anchoring the Danish left. The Danes deployed first in a simple battle line with a single battlegroup behind as a reserve. The Carolingians pretty much likewise, but constrained by the woods. The Slavs took up the Frankish left, hoping to charge through the woods, and two battlegroups held the reserve - including Charlemagne's own command.
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| Moments before the clash. |
The battle proceeded to unfold in a fairly predictable manner - knights charged in, and either triumphed or were repulsed by Danish axes and blades.
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| After the initial clash - one Carolingian battlegroup has broken and fled the field, but the Danes are in disarray. |
The initial clash found one entire Carolingian battlegroup broken and fled, but the Danes were in too much disarray to capitalize on this Frankish setback, and shortly afterward lost the battlegroup that had been anchoring their own left flank.
Meanwhile, on the Danish right/Frankish left, the peasant Hordes managed to hold up valiantly against the Slavic auxiliaries in the woods - thanks to their local knowledge, they suffered no combat penalty in their own forests (scenario ruling), and proved amazingly resilient.
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| The reserves coming into play. |
The reserves on both sides moved up to fill in gaps, and things came down to the grind of Frankish cavalry against the Danish shield wall. The Danes made one last push with their final battle line, but...
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| Just prior to the final Danish push - the Slavs and Danes have been tied up in that wood in the foreground most of the game. |
It was in vain. The peasants finally fell to Slavic swords, and that shook the final Danish battlegroup. Their morale broken, the Carolingians held the field and moved in to sack the settlement - for the Emperor!
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| The final shot of the game. A Danish warlord is still locked in combat with his Christian counterpart... for at least five combats with a tied result. |
Not exactly a decisive victory of Karl, but the bards will dress it up well enough. The Danes retreat in their longships and leave the Christians to the sack, but they've given Karl a bloody nose. Maybe next year it'll be their turn to do a little pillaging.
