Lion Rampant: Defending the Indefensible (scenario 3).

 For today's game we decided to give scenario 3, 'Defending the Indefensible' a go. Placing a small church in the table centre to be the main target of the attack we let the dice decide who would be the Attacker and who would be the Defender (who is allowed to deploy up to 10 points of troops in contact with the church as an initial defence force). 

With Ian and his Irish as the attacker, I became the defender and you can see my 10 points of troops defending the church and the Irish advancing towards it.  

Right at the top you can see my leader, Wulfgar the Slayer and his heavy infantry units rushing to help the defenders. A lucky Dice throw has awarded him the very useful 'Strong' trait (may re-roll 1 missed hit) which proved critical at least 3 times. Ian was rather less impressed with his leader, Donacha O'Leary's 'Insipid' trait which robbed him of his +1 Leadership Courage bonus. This also played quite a big part in the game. 

With one of the locals leading his mule cart to safety, Ian tried to make good use of the stream to create a defensive line. Sadly for him his two units of bow armed skirmishers often failed to activate so their shooting into my shieldwall troops was less effective than I feared. 

Anglo-Danes to the left, Irish to the right.

One of my veteran heavy infantry units of huscarls charged over the stream into Ian's leaders unit. After a couple of rounds of closely fought combat Ian's leader and his unit became battered and retreated over the hedge behind them. On his next turn when trying to rally his unit, Donacha the Insipid failed miserably and routed from the battle causing Courage tests all round on his other units. This caused chaos for the Irish and really swung the battle my way. 

Over on my far left my skirmishing bowmen managed to see off the Irish light cavalry who also became battered and eventually fled the battle as well. 

Wulfgar the Slayer took up an heroic pose on the bridge having helped see off some of the Irish.

With half of the Irish units now destroyed victory was awarded to Wulfgar and his Anglo-Danes, their church was safe. This was another fun game that could of gone either way. 

We will play again very soon.