Taler du Dansk?

'Cause as of today, it's the new official language of northern Mercia!

 Ian made one redeployment too many.  From a starting position of unbroken shieldwall, he came forward to anchor both flanks on terrain features.  Made sense, good move and I said so.



Then as I continued to incline around to his left, he pivoted on the Left , bringing the right end of his line around to the next terrain feature.


 If anything, even better, as this was closer and allowed him to form a shorter shield wall AND retain a reserve.

Then, though, he detached two small units from the right of his line to go and form a seperate shield wall, out of supporting range of the rest of his force, on a small hill of no significance.

I thought: thanks very much, don't mind if I do!

This was the element I was closing in on - with my Jarl's armoured Hirdmen -  through the rough terrain when you left.

To go around the rough terrain I would have either had to present myself to his slingers or march across the front of his main force and invite a flank charge - didn't much fancy either.




























As I came to the edge of the rough terrain, the two-unit shieldwall left their hill and charged me!  Basically, giving up a permanent +1 uphill bonus for a one-round-only charge bonus.  And because I was still in rough ground, his ranked spear bonus was negated!



I got the best of the melee - Ian bemoaned the dice.
 Bottom line is, I didn't throw great dice; he threw poorly and I did just enough. 
My men were mailed, so Saxon narrow-margin wins just bounced, and had 2-H axes, so Viking narrow wins went up +2.



The only really jammy throw of the game was a hopeful punt with a javelin by one of Ian's peasants, which one of my D12 Bezerkers caught in his teeth for an instant kill!



The Saxons did reinforce their isolated units, but, for some reason, not en masse... they only sent one other element to join them.  Moving to flank my engaged unit, they found my biggest unit - spearmen, mixed armour - in rough ground, barring their way.  Again, they charged into the rough ground, neither side getting their ranked-spear bonus.



By half-three, the remnants of the isolated Saxon shieldwall were running away, and their relief force - failing to make any headway through the contested rough ground - was now similarly isolated and next in line for defeat in detail...

My archers had routed the Saxon skirmishers and moved to a position where they could bring the main Saxon shieldwall under fire...

My mighty four-man cavalry horde had reached the rear of the Saxon positions...
 



And at that point, the Saxon Thegn conceded the game, handed over the keys to the Burh and started updating his CV.




Cracking good fun, I thought, and we didn't manage to break the system at all!

Note:

I was stuck working this Saturday, so only got a chance to pop into the club for half an hour to say Hi and snap a few pics of Ian and Phil's Saxon/Viking skirmish game.



Phil - left- (A.K.A Einar, A.K.A. Norman D Landings) kindly sent me this summary of the game by E-Mail.

Einar - making a guest appearance!

I  inserted the pictures I got where appropriate!

Wish I could have played in this game, I could have brought my trees etc down, it does rather look like a fumble in the bushes in some of my pictures!

Herkybird!