I umpired another game of Sword and Spear as a demo last week, with Alex taking on the role of the French and Thorsteinn taking on the role of the English. As with the other games I’ve played or umpired, it was a close run thing (most have come down to both sides being in danger of a complete rout with the loss of one more unit), with the English ascendant again. This game involved more terrain than usual (some high dice rolls for terrain), including a river across the English line of defence.
Initial positions.
The French were outscouted, and ended up with two knights on their right flank, one behind their main line of dismounted knights and crossbowmen, and their artillery on their left flank, with some brigans ready to support the knights. The English set up their camp on their left flank, guarded by Welsh spear, followed by two units of longbowmen, billmen and dismounted knights, and three more units of longbowmen on their right flank.
The French charge down the English left flank.
There were quite a few 5-2 activation dice draws in this game, which mean more co-ordination than usual, with the French knights charging down the flank towards the English camp, and the English longbowmen uprooting their stakes to manoeuvre around to deal with them as they came. They managed to destroy the second unit in the end with concerted fire over several rounds, while the heavy armour of the knights, the river and activation dice not coming up for Alex when he needed them allowed Thorsteinn to get into a better position for the melee that ensued.
The Welsh trap them at the ford.
With an advantage in activation dice, Thorsteinn had his Welsh spear meet the knights at the river, denying the French the ability to use the considerable and rather fearsome advantages that fresh cavalry in the open tend to have. In return, Alex attempted to get his brigans into the fight to support the beleaguered French knights, but they travelled slowly – though not as slowly as the dismounted knights, who with their heavy armour were reduced to travelling only 1 DU per move.
The artillery finally moves into range!
Over on the other flank, Alex (after many mis-starts) managed to get his artillery moving forward into range of the longbowmen opposite, and they soon took out one unit. Those knights on the other flank were getting desperate though, thanks to some really bad rolls, the Welsh spear weren’t just holding their won, they were winning the melee!
And there go the French knights.
And just like that, with another bad set of rolls, the French knights turned and fled, and as things went from bad to worse, took the French general with them too, requiring every French unit to make a discipline roll. Things were not looking great for the French.
The artillery starts to pour fire on the longbowmen.
The artillery were really coming into their own now though, taking out a second unit of longbowmen. Could the French save the day after all? The French crossbowmen were moving into range alongside the dismounted knights and brigans, with only one unit of longbowmen and some billmen standing against them.
The French infantry advance into range.
As before, however, the French advance was slow, though they would have a superiority in numbers when they did clash, since the English left flank was all over the place and quite far from the action now – the Welsh spear might have saved the camp, and the longbowmen there did their job cutting the French knights down to size as they charged, but now it would take them several turns to get back into the action.
And there go the crossbowmen, and with them, the game.
Alex also reached his morale total, and so had to make another discipline roll for every unit in his army, but even with that, he had superiority in the centre, with dismounted knights versus billmen, 2 units of crossbowmen versus one unit of longbowmen, and more French knights on the flank preparing to charge in. It was still possible for the French to save the day, since if the English lost one unit of heavy foot or two other units, they’d rout. Sadly for Alex, Thorsteinn got a good set of activation dice (again! Even when Alex got 5-2 dice, he’d roll 2 1s and a 2 as part of them), got a bonus on his shooting, and his remaining longbowmen blew the second unit of crossbowmen off the field thanks to yet more crap rolling from Alex. With the loss of that unit, the game was over, the English decisive in their victory.
We had several spectators for the game again, and it seemed to be well-received as with previous matches. There are a good number of people at the club who have now bought the rules (and at the price of the pdf, why wouldn’t you?), so I think we’ll see more games played in the future, especially when we get our War and Empire kickstarter forces painted up. It’ll be interesting to take on Jeff’s Mongol Horde sometime soon too.
