(and if you haven’t read the Year One’s report, you probably should do that too…)
YEAR THREE
Declarations of War
IN this third and final year of our saga The Norse, Scots, Irish and Welsh all declared war on Wessex! Wessex and the Normans declared war on the Welsh… Mercia declared war on no one. And the Danes declared war on Norway!?
Deployment
The Danes started the year with their grand army of three elements (just enough to spend a whole year besieging cities up north) mustered in Aarhus. The Welsh rallied to the flag in Caer Gurricon. The Scots started in Dumbarton. The Irish wandered south to Loch Gurricon. The Army of Wessex started in their capitol of Winchester. The Norse remained in Burghead. And the Normans started off on the coast at Dieppa.
SPRING
(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)
It was no surprise that the Danes sailed for Oslo and laid siege to it. They had no trouble getting there but the defenders proved resilient and the Danes numbers slowly melted away (mostly due to men deserting to run off with the local ladies and start up new farms of their own…).
The Welsh Marched on London but found no the Army of Wessex there, but the Horsemen of the Normans, freshly across the channel! The Mercians marched into their old town of Nottigham to send a contingent to aid their overlords and the Irish Sailed across the sea to Deganwy and marched further inland to Caer Gurricon to also aid in the attack on Wessex. A token contingent of the Army of Wessex marched out of Winchester for London to aid the Normans who were now fighting their battles for them.
The Norse spent the spring in Burghead keeping an ear to the steady north wind for any news of trouble back in Oslo…
The Battle of London
Once again setting up in the living room – where there’s comfy chairs for all…
Once again Keira was enlisted as Dice rolling assistant, as she had proven so lucky for the Norse…
The Normans Galloped up to the Welsh line… and stopped…
Perhaps they were waiting for the contingent from Wessex that arrived.
(The Irish arrived too!)
As the Wessex and Irish contingent rushed to the front line, some Norman knights galloped around the Welsh flank.
As the Knights on the flank began to roll it up, the main line of Norman Knights charged the main Welsh line.
The results were to be expected- punching a hole right through the center of the Wlesh line. Well… except for that one Warband destroying the Knights that charged against them…
Having made such a hole the Normans turned out and stared making their way toward the flanks rolling up the line from the center!?
The battle was over in a jiffy…
The Welsh lost four Warband and a Psiloi, The Normans two Knights. The Normans netted 3 Victory Points. London remained part of Wessex.
This being the second Welsh loss in a row, Mercia was able to shrug off the shackles of vassaldom and once again became a free independent state of their own…
SUMMER
The Welsh were obliged to retire to Caer Gurricon and the Irish were bumped back to Deganwy. The Mercians remained in (Welsh!) Nottingham and the Scotts held in York but sent a contingent to aid in the defense of Wales.
The Army of Wessex passed through London on their way to Caer Gurricon, picking up a contingent of Normans to aid them in the Invasion of Wales.
The Danes continued their siege of Oslo… and continued to see their army shrink away as the days got long and hot…
The Battle of Caer Gurricon
Setting up a peaceful stretch of the Welsh countryside.
Finally a game downstairs!
Cory even got out some of his camp followers – including his wooly Highland cattle.
And here the whining began in earnest… “OooOOOoooh.. Those hills look so steeeeeeep… Do we really have to go up them….? Can’t you come down?”
The Welsh mountain stronghold looked strangely similar to a Dwarven stronghold…?
I think on the very first bound the Norman contingent arrived – the Cavalry come to save the day…
The view from the Welsh side.
The the Army of Wessex begins it’s advance…
Shortly after the Scots and then the Mercians arrived! The board started looking rather crowded!
A glorious battle…
Can you tell I'm getting tired of this...
Groups of Saxon spear stood at the bottom of the hill and just outside the forest to encourage the Welsh to stay within or upon while the rest went off to fight the Newly arrived Mercians. Meanwhile the Scots and the Normans had a little cavalry battle on the flank.
What a mess…
It looked really cool though…
My mind was shutting down at this point… Luckily I wrote down that the Welsh (and friends) won. Wessex lost an element of Spear and an element of Psiloi, while the Normans lost two Knights and their bow. The only losses on the defending side was an Element of Scottish Cavalry. The Welsh scored a victory point, as did the Mercians, and the Scots scored TWO! Pretty good for an allied contingent of three stands!
AUTUMN
The Norse, worried the Danes might take Oslo this season, sailed back and tried to relieve the siege. They sailed through some rough seas along the way and lost two elements of Blade in the process.
The Irish marched through Caer Gurricon to London hot on the heels of the Retiring Army of Wessex. At London they found the remains ofhte Norman army waiting there for them, while the Army of Wessex continued on to Winchester.
The Scots marched south to Cambridge and laid siege to the Wessex garrison
The Second Battle of London
The remains of the Norman army lines up to defend London.
I was barely even taking pictures at this point… The Irish charged and managed to overwhelm the Normans by sheer numbers. The Normans were swept away before the green tide and London was captured by the Irish! (Two victory points to the Irish!)
The Relief of Oslo
By the time the Norse arrived at Oslo the Danes were down to a single element of Blade…
Seriously… he gave battle… You never know…
The Danes were wiped out again and Oslo remained in the possession of the Norse.
So here’s how it all looked at the end of times…
Cory - Wessex (Orange) Capital: Winchester, Other Cities: Exeter, Canterbury, Cambridge
12VP for cities + 3 VP for battles = 15 total Victory Points
Jackson - Mercia (Yellow) Capital: Lincoln? Other Cities: York
6VP for cities + 1 VP for battles = 7 total Victory Points
Rick- Norway (White) Capital: Nidaros, Other Cities: Oslo, Shetlands, Burghead
12VP for cities + 4VP for tributaries cities + 7 VP for battles = 23 total Victory Points
Gary - Denmark (Purple) Capital: Roskilde, Other Cities: Aarhus
6VP for cities + 0 VP for battles = 6 total Victory Points
Rowan - Normandy (Grey) Capital: Rouen, Other Cities: Cherbourg, Dieppa, Ribe
12VP for cities + 4VP for tributaries cities + 7 VP for battles = 23 total Victory Points
John - Ireland (Green) Capital: Duiblinn, Other Cities: Lind Duachaill, Loch Garman, London,
12VP for cities + 2 VP for battles = 14 total Victory Points
Terry - Scotland (Blue) Capital: Scone, Other Cities: Dumbarton
6VP for cities + 2 VP for battles = 8 total Victory Points
Christian - Wales (Red) Capital: Dinefur, Other Cities: Deganwy, Caer Guricon, Nottingham
12VP for cities + 6 VP for battles = 18 total Victory Points
So Rowan and Rick were exactly tied at 23 Victory Points!
Thanks to all that participated. I need to go to bed now…
Really enjoyed the reports. A great looking campaign and I will shamelessly copy some of these ideas as I pull my samurai campaign together.
ReplyDeletePhil, I think this was the campaign that worked the best in terms of campaign rules, even if we do need to nerf the sea losses rule (for this map, anyways - maybe feudal Japan won't have as big an issue, depending on what part of the islands you focus on). If you look WAY back thru Tim's blog, you will see that this is probably the 4th or 5th campaign that has been run based off the DBx campaign rules philosophy, and there has definitely been a process of evolution. Map design is huge.
ReplyDeleteI was going to do another post about lessons learned and analysis... but yeah, I'd change the sea losses and add a few more routes and a couple other things... I'll get to that in a day or two.
ReplyDeleteA samurai campaign sounds totally fun! (must not get distracted... must not get distracted...)
Apart from running this again (and possibly adding East and West Franks (MORE knights!?) and some HOTT campaigns... I think I'd like to do a few Greek Hoplite Armies and do a city-state warfare campaign.
Like a Samurai campaign, in a Greek city-state/Peloponesian war campaign, all the players would have more or less the armies - which would take care of one of the big problems with this campaign - the overpowerful knight-heavy Normans (and Franks, if I were to add them)...
I should save this for the next post...