On Bloody Ground in 15mm second game.

 This weeks game was another 15mm Dark Age battle between my slowly growing Viking and Saxon/Anglo Dane forces using the new rule set 'On Bloody Ground' once again. Having enjoyed our first game last week we did have a few questions which happily the authors quickly answered via their Facebook page. So I slightly enlarged both sides (but I need to do a lot of painting for this project as we were still using a few 15mm Barbarians to represent a few of the units). 

Part of the Viking army, mainly Forged in Battle 15mm with a few Splintered Light characters. 

Some of their Anglo-Danish foes, again from Forged in Battle. 

I need to decide whether I expand my 15mm collection or revert to 28mm and rebase all my skirmish based figures. I have far too many of both. 

We used dice to decide that I would lead the Saxons/Anglo-Danes and Ian and Nigel would lead the Vikings. Deploying across fairly open terrain we enjoyed using the Standard Deployment rules as we tried to counter each others opening moves. 

Deployment left the set up as in the photo above. Saxons across the bottom, Vikings above. 

The opening attack saw my scout cavalry destroy Ian's Viking thralls with bows but they themselves were destroyed by the Viking scouts then facing them.

Happily my Gebur with bows then shot enough of the Viking scouts to rout them. 

The two forces were edging warily towards each other. 

The red counters represent un-used orders tokens. These are a clever idea which allow you to try and interrupt the flow of play, hopefully to your advantage. 

Ian's Viking Hirdmen destroy my Thegns.

Look at the difference in casualties caused. 

There were some truly epic dice throwing going on from both sides. 

On the other flank Nigel's troops were involved in a desperate fight with some of my units. This was a real slogging match too with Nigel slowly gaining the advantage. 

Nigel enjoyed destroying a couple more of my units. 

My Thegn's managed to fight off Nigel's Hirdmen but it was too little too late. 

This was a really close fought battle with the Vikings claiming a close fought victory having caused just over 10% more casualties on me than I had on them. 

On Bloody Ground gave us another close fought game with a very exciting finish. We were quicker working our way through the rules today which added to the tension. 

Great fun, but I think I need to do more painting before we play again.