Big men in Armour on Horses squish little men without Horses

Another Monday night, another practice game of Impetus.  This time it was Andy who wanted to polish up on his rules before the clubs tournament at the end of the month.

Same arrangement as last time. 300 points, one command.  

I used my Patrician Romans, with no changes and Andy bought his Early Feudal English.

His army had several units of Longbowmen, several units of knights, some light foot, some light cavalry and a large unit of heavy infantry.  

I won the roll off for deployment and forced Andy to deploy first.  He deployed with his archers on my right flank, with a unit of knights deployed behind each one, on opportunity.  His centre was more archers backed by knights, and his left were all his light troops.

The English right. Lots of Knights!

I answered by deploying my two large units of warband on my right flank, well away from his knights as they would be an easy target.  My heavy infantry with long spear and supporting archers held the centre and I out my three units of heavy horse on my left flank, on opportunity.

My tactics would be similar to last weeks games against the Normans.  Avoid fighting his knights for as long as possible, while trying to deal with the rest of his army. This should minimise the amount of knight units I should have to kill before he broke.  It seemed like a good plan at the time.

Early game seemed to go quite well. I advanced quickly on my right flank, while holding on my left.   Andy basically did the same, no doubt hoping that I would advance across the table allowing him to shoot at my troops before trampling them into the ground with his knights. 

The Roman left holds, while the centre advances.

The right flank advances.

Left flank holds.

I managed to remove two units of light foot fairly quickly and started chasing off his light cavalry before Andy decided to change tactics and come out to play with his knights.  His initial attacks were blunted but against his VBU7 I4 units it was only a matter of time.  The mid game consisted of me trying to actually do enough damage to his knights to break his army, but it was an uphill struggle to be honest.  On my right flank my Impetuous warband were trying to chase down his light cavalry, but were suffering very heavy casualties in the process.  

In the late stages of the game I was starting to run out of troops, but I had an opportunity to end the game after I had managed to eliminate a couple of units of his knights.  I had held all of my heavy cavalry in reserve, waiting for the right time to attack, and I launched them forward into one unit of Knights.  It is at this point in the game that it all went completely wrong.  While my infantry had done an excellent job the cavalry let me down badly, with first one and then a second bouncing of the single knight unit without managing to inflict enough casualties to break his army.  In the final turn of the game i managed to get a rear charge on a unit of knights and all I needed to do was cause him to fail a cohesion test by one point to lose the unit of knights, and then the game, but it was not to be, and I failed to do so on two attempts giving Andy a deserved victory.

A lengthy stalemate developed at this combat.

More flippin' knights!

We have them cornered now!

Brace for Impact!

Final fight of the game, and the Romans fluff it.

Another great game, with a narrow loss to my Romans. The only thing I would say is that I need to try and get some games in period.  My last game there were 600 years between the armies, and this time there were 800 years!  That is OK, but not really why I started playing Impetus, plus these periods seem to see the heavy knights dominating, and large parts of my army are a liability in these situations. If this persists I will need to have a re-think about army composition.

Another thing I have noticed is that my heavy cavalry persistently perform under par. My last game against Andy was also lost when the cavalry had a great chance to win a combat, with a serious advantage and they again fluffed it. I need to hurry up and get the rest of my Romans finished so that I have a bit more flexibility.