In the second part of my three battles for survival in this month, I faced Richard who raided my lands.
Out to set fire to my Watchtower, I had to play the one thing I love to do... defending behind my pallisades.
My army was still recovering from it's losses in the first turn of the campaign, and as we are only in the second one still, I`m still lacking half my force as all my Levies are out for the count. Now, this was actually a benefit today, as instead of three groups of levies, it would become warriors that held the walls.
My lord with his elites, my archers and my warrior cavalry would arrive at turn 2, and I had a plan in mind for them: lure and drop like a vulture.
The cavalry would ride up and engage Richard's two units of missile troops if able, as those are guaranteed dispersals. In the meantime, my Lord and his infantry would be moving left and right, hopefully luring the mass cavalry of my opponent around until a moment to strike was opportune.
My walls would be held by infantry pushing away any climbers, preferring not to engage until some small units became seperated. He had to hit me on 6s, I hit him on 4s... so those are great odds to play the break the morale game and grab the win that way.
As his army rode up, his cavalry did as expected and rode towards the point my reinforcements would arrive. The rest slowly but surely advanced to the walls, but kept a spread formation to cope with any fresh troops from my side. At this point, I got the disengage card, the only thing that would get his troops out of combat at the walls if needed. I kept on to it during the whole game, letting him spend action points and cycle through his hand in the hope he drew it...
During turn two, my reinforcements arrived, and the cavalry dashed along the side of the table towards his archers. My lord hovered around the woods in the hopes of getting the big infantry block coming that way... while my archers sacrificed themselves bravely to try and fail to cause shock on his cavalry...
His levies in the meantime came knocking at the door of the fort, but as the cavalry started taking down both his archer units in two succesive turns, he formed both the flanks into shieldwalls to receive the charge... that would never come.
See, I gambled here. At first his warriors turned to face the cavalry. Then they turned 180 around in order that my lord would come their way... and while my horsemen kept riding from left to right, both his shieldwalls kept watching their backs and didn`t dare to start scaling the walls...
Which was the moment I struck all around the board. My lord charged his cavalry block, and he disengaged. My troops on the ramparts struck out at the levies on both sides of the wall, and locked them in combat, and under thread of the cavalry scouring the hinterland of his line.
The battle between the elites was very bloody, and resulted in both our units running off, while his cavalry was now down to two horsemen. His lord feld the elites to rejoin them, while mine left the elites and lurked in the woods again. But more importantly, this kept nibbling at his morale.
When after several turns of combat his levies all broke off, he was coming in the dangerzone. My warriors engaged his shieldwall that was beginning to climb my walls, and my lord charged his. After four round of combat (both went each after the other), my lord was on his last wound, but had his champion, while his had lost one wound and his champion had ran out of combat being an athlete.
When the warriors broke away from my wall, the final turn came and I knew I couldn`t lose anymore. I was on 4 morale, he on 1. So i charged my horses into the two warrior units, or what remained of them, hoping to break one. Even though they paid the highest price and dropping morale to 1, they wiped out his unit, broke the other, and he lost the final point netting me victory.
A rather calculated risk, as it depended on what card came first. I could loose max 3 morale in one fight, so had the lords activated first and should I have lost him, I never would have charged with the horses, but had him come to my wall again and break him that way for the final point.
But the second survival was a big success, with a +5. This meant I had no losses at all, gained some gold, prestige went up, and my warriors on foot regiment got boosted by two additional warriors. Richard's army faired badly, as it was mauled taking 29 losses. His mercenaries left him, his levies are out of the campaign for three months...
He might think twice before invading my lands again!
