Art De La Guerre

[madaxeman]

One of the great beauties about L'Art de la Guerre is the way the shorter game time (about 2.5 hours) means you can fit 3 games into a day. It sounds fairly minor, but a 3-round Swiss Draw tournament is just, well, a lot, lot more "meaty" than a 2-round one would be - but without imposing so many games on you that a poor army design could leave you cursing the protracted pain of facing a series of lengthy drawn out defeats either.



The recent Reading-based 1-dayer ticked all of those boxes with a theme of "the World of the Rus and Vikings" - armies with a connection to either of these peoples, in the form of a historical antipathy or conflict, a mention in the army list notes, or an allied contingent of either of the two.



I however went full Zelensky on this one, and chose a Rus army with no allies at all, a simple list chosen mainly as it was as close as I could get to using all of the lockdown-rebased Rus spearmen I owned all on table together whilst not totally ignoring the "good" options in the overall design.



That did mean a lot of spearmen - an often-unloved troop type who are nevertheless superb in the right circumstances. And, of course, how could I forget, a chance yet again to deploy the age-old groan-inducing Rus Abbot punchline against three unwary opponents!

[img]https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2018/01/26/13/russ-abbot-bella-emberg.jpg?quality=50&width=640&auto=webp[/img]

All three Bella Emberg-free reports from this event are now online as the Rus take on the Carolingians, the Vikings and the Thematic Byzantine Empire in these fully illustrated and statistic rich reports.

https://www.madaxeman.com/reports/Southern_League_r4_2022_1.php
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[KevinD]

Love your battle reports.

Congrats!

That Thematic army looks interesting….

“ L'Art de la Guerre hint - Rallying off hits for a unit in combat costs a Pip, and needs a 5 or 6. This is reduced down to a 4,5 or 6 if a General is also present

In reality, these odds usually pan out in game with you never managing to rally any of your units, and your opponent rallying the most vital unit they dice for 100% of the time.”

I thought it was 2 CPs to rally troops in combat…

In the 3rd game I don’t understand why the Thematics would charge (except when hoping to ride down bowmen). Couldn't they just sit their shooting until the Sp charged at which point it is +1:+1 with the Cv having a furious charge as the Sp don’t get the +1 vs charging mounted if they move into contact and don’t cancel Impact if they charge the mounted. Then if it goes bad for the mounted break, they break off/disengage immediately and do it all over again….No? Or am I missing somthing here?

[madaxeman]

You’re right on the 2 pip thing - my bad 

I was the one charging with the spears more often than not as I was happy to take the risk of Furious Charge if it allowed me to get into contact with mediocre unarmored opponents, often with an overlap in my favour too. 

At some point the Byzantines also decided they needed to charge into spears in order to take off overlaps against the Bowmen they were also fighting, sacrificing a unit to try and force a breakthrough.  It usually didnt work…

Other times they had just run out of table or will to keep going 
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[Pyrrhus17]

I have enjoyed reading these all infantry battle reports but it seems to me to be revealing some concerns .
I find myself asking do combined armies have a chance (in the game turns available) against an army that covers from one side of the board to the other .
I am not so sure , all mounted armies might have the speed but covering such a wide area you surely would soon be impeding their ability to march move , not having enough time to finish off such a large army. Any way thanks for the reports.

[madaxeman]

Oh god they do. This was a very tightly themed event and I also caught my opponents wrong footed with an unusual army choice which I suspect they also all underestimated - if we played these three games again I’d either lose all of them or at the very least have a harder time, or face very Different  choices 
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