Tuesday 24 September 2013

Normans against Romans. IMpetus Battle Report.

We have an Impetus tournament coming up in a few weaks time, hosted by Falkirk District Wargames Club.  I am not planning on taking part but I offered games to anyone who fancied a wee refresher of the rules.  Dave was the first to take me up on the offer, so a Patrician Roman vs Norman game was arranged using the Impetus tournament rules. 300points, one command blah blah blah.

My army was exactly the same as last time, as I never change my list to suit the opponent.

4 Units of Heavy Infantry Long Spear with supporting Archers
1 Unit of Cataphracts
2 Large unit of Warband (Foedaratti)
2 Units of Foederatti Heavy Cavalry
1 Unit of Foederrati Javelin Skirmishers.

Dave brought:

3 Units of Breton Javelin Light Cavalry
About 5 Units of skirmishers?  (I can't quite remember, there were a lot though!)
6(?) Units of Impetuous Norman Knights.

We deployed using the tournament rules and I really made a mess of things.  With my Long Spear Units on the right, butted up against a hill, my (pretty much useless) warband units in the centre and all the heavy cavalry on my left.   Dave managed to get almost all of his Norman Knights deployed opposite my Left Flank, leaving a few skirmishers and the light cavalry to deal with the warband and Heavy Infantry on my right Flank.
An overview of the table from the Roman side.
 I decided early on that my best chance would be to stall the Norman Knights as long as possible so that I could get the time to deal with the skirmishers and light cavalry. This would allow me to swing my Heavy Infantry round to the Left and try and head of the rampage of the Norman Knights.

That is pretty much what I did. Dave was reluctant to commit his knights too early so I capitalised on this and surged forward to try and deal with his lighter troops and cavalry.  I had some good luck hear and managed to deal his light cavalry and start to shift to my left flank before the Norman Knights struck home.

My right flank advances, while my left Holds and tries to look scary.

The last remaining Breton light cavalry unit about to bite the dust.

Dave finally committed his cavalry but as I was on Opportunity I managed to get the drop in him.  His cavalry were slightly better than mine and he had more of them so despite some good efforts on the part of my cavalry they were eventually overwhelmed.  Luckily this bought me time to bring two unit of Heavy Infantry across the board to help out.

Luckily my unit of warband had managed to survive a frontal charge from the Norman Knights intact and I managed to bring my generals unit of Heavy Infantry into play on the central hill.  After some heroic efforts from my general and his bodyguard they managed to beat off on unit of knights and then destroy the Norman General as well.  Dave managed to roll a 6 fro his cohesion test, destroying the unit outright, but then rolled a double six fro risk to general, which killed him outright, ending the game there and then.

Death of a general. the Norman general snuffs it!
 In the end Dave's army was on the verge of breaking anyway, and he had some rotten luck during the game.  All in all an enjoyable game of Impetus, with no mucking about with the ridiculous light cavalry or interpenetration rules.

Next week is another Impetus game, this time against a medieval army of some sort, so an even bigger gap between the armies.

No comments:

Post a Comment