28mm Dark Ages trying War and Conquest.

I managed to get a few light cavalry painted up ready for this weeks game.  

Charlie invited Ian and me over to his wonderful wargames barn to have a go at the 'War and Conquest' rules using our 28mm Dark Age figures. Charlie had played the rules a few times but Ian and I were new to this set although I had read through my copy before the game. 

This was going to be a big game with around 4,000pts per side. 

For deployment the two forces were offset from each other across the breadth of the table. 

Here is Charlie's deployment, he was in control of the Norman rulers and he tended to use quite large units. 

Ian and I were in charge of the Norman rebels with Anglo-Danish and Viking allies. 

Using the 'double pace' for movement the two armies soon closed on each other. 

Charlie's table is roughly 9 foot x 5 foot. 

Both armies are now within shooting range. 

Charlies suffered from very poor dice throwing early on whilst I scored seven 6's out of ten dice thrown with one of my units!

Charlie's Peuri come round our right flank, fail their charge attempt on Ian's light cavalry and were soon chased off, never to rally. 

Ian's Vikings charge into Charlie's dismounted Milites, the first of several epic melee's. 

Over on the left flank a large cavalry clash was about to happen. 

Chaos in the centre as Charlie caused many of Ian's infantry units to flee, things were not looking good for the Rebel forces. 

Happily, Ian managed to rally his troops and as my Infantry started to enter the melee as well we fought our way back into the game. I forgot to take any more photo's as the game was in it's final frenzy with melee's across the board. On the left my milites just managed to get the edge over Charlies milites. We also seemed to gain the upperhand in the centre, steadily starting to push Charlies Infantry back to where they had come from and Ian finally took control of the right flank. A rebel victory was declared but it was a mighty battle. 

A great game, closely fought but yet another set of rules to learn. 'War and Conquest' are similar in some respects to 'On Bloody Ground' but have more complex 'layers' which can slow the action down a bit but also add more flavour. Units also seemed to flee and then rally rather too often (if we were playing it right). I shall have a good look through the rules to check on a few things to see where we got it right and where we got it wrong.

NOTE: I have spotted in the rules that we were perhaps not throwing as many dice as we should on some of those morale checks.