Crusades

For my Pagan Peoples, I mostly used my Jomsviking figures, which gave me a good set of hearthguards with heavy weapons. I also had some mounted vikings from a Wargames Foundry horde pack I got about 20 years ago. I think I’ve only used them in a Cult of Ulric army a couple of times for Warhammer. A had some viking archers, and some levee with javelins which I split into two units of six.

For the Ordensstaat, I had some knights from a set I bought pre-painted last year. They are all infantry. I didn’t have anything suitable for mounted knights. Some English bowmen and foot knights did for levee and warriors.

So neither of us were going to have perfectly designed armies for the two factions, but it was close enough.

The Ordensstaat went first, and was able to force a small amount of terrain. They put down a swamp and a hill, leaving me with just some rocky ground and a large wood. The Pagan People have a lot of saga abilities which make use of uneven terrain, so the lack of it was going to be to my detriment.

For setup, the Ordensstaat clustered around the hill, and they barely moved from there for the entire battle. This played into their strengths and into my weaknesses.

Turn 1

The Ordensstaat went first, and put all their Saga dice on abilities, but didn’t activate anyone. The Pagan Peoples played Dievs as an Order/Reaction on the unit of warriors, giving them the option of fatigue or moving back. They chose to move back towards the edge of the table.

The Pagan Peoples played Ümber Piirama to activate three units with six or fewer figures. I moved one unit of 6 hearthguard mostly into the rocky terrain, and shuffled some other units forward.

Turn 2

The Ordensstaat moved their archers forward. Both their units then opened up on my unit of 8 warriors, but only getting one kill. Because I had more than 6 figures in this unit, I almost wanted them to suffer two casualties. A lot of Pagan Peoples abilities require 6 or fewer figures in the unit.

The Pagan Peoples then decided to get aggressive. I used Meza Mata to move my hearthguards from the rocky ground to the woods, effectively teleporting them. I wanted to use them to attack from the side, but they still had a long way to go.

Then I used We Obey to move my unit of mounted cavalry with javelins forward, followed by Perkons to activate them for a charge with 4 bonus attack dice. They would charge at the unit of archers on the hill. If I could wipe them out, it would remove one of the cheap troop pools that the Ordensstaat could use for regenerating figures.

The Ordensstaat then played Serfs. This allowed them to sacrifice a figure i order to move them or make a shooting attack as a reaction to a charge. They couldn’t move far enough back out of the way, so decided to stand and shoot. It turned out to be the right choice.

They got three hits and three kills, taking my unit of 4 hearthguard down to 1. The lone figure charged in, equipped with only 2 attack dice, and their bonus of 4 cut down to 1.

I played Saavuttamaton to get a re-roll on misses, and they played Tyrants to also re-roll plus used my fatigue to lower my armour. I got a single kill, they got 4 – more than enough to wipe out my unit. So that was a bit of a disaster.

I then played Kiire to move my infantry out of the woods at full move. I could have used Kiire to charge my cavalry without fatigue, but had decided to go with bonus attack dice instead.

Turn 3

The Ordensstaat now started to do things. They played Slay the Pagans to activate two units to attack my hearthguard. First their warriors charged in, and with Din of Battle they gave me a fatigue before getting 6 kills and wiping out my second hearthguard unit. At least this time I killed 4 of them.

The second Ordensstaat unit now had nobody else to charge, so did nothing.

The Pagan Peoples played Taara Avita to give all my units 2 bonus attack dice, and in response the Ordensstaat played Enlist to gain back two warriors.

My final unit of Hearthguard charged some Ordensstaat hearthguard, and despite the knights using Sword Brothers to give themselves an extra 7 defence dice (they got only two saves on 16 defence dice), were completely wiped out. The Pagans suffered only two casualties.

My warrior archers, who had not done much for a while, took some shots at another hearthguard unit, killing one of them.

Turn 4

The Ordensstaat shuffle into position, and again play Slay the Pagans. A unit of hearthguard charge my hearthguard, using Tyrants for re-rolls of attack dice and Sword Brothers for defence dice. We were both four figures against four, and manage to wipe each other out.

The rest of the knights shuffle up onto the hill.

At this point it is pretty much the end of the game, so the Pagan Peoples put all their activation dice onto their warrior archers, getting them to shoot three times. Out of a total of 6 hits on the hearthguard unit of Ordensstaat, they get just two kills.

At this point the Pagan Peoples don’t have much left. They have a unit of warriors with bows, and two six figure units of levee with javelins. The javelins won’t be able to get close enough to shoot before getting cut down by bowmen, and my archers would suffer a similar problem.

So we call an end to it at that point.

The Pagan Peoples scored a total of 13 massacre points, but the Ordensstaat got 17, so the victory went to them.

I think another unit of hearthguard rather than the levee would have been better for the Pagan Peoples. I rolled maybe two rare dice during the game, so didn’t get much opportunity to activate multiple small units.

There was no uneven terrain for my to take advantage of in any of the fights, and I lose two of my most effective units right at the start.