Showing posts with label AoC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AoC. Show all posts

04 January 2009

Burgundian Ordonnance vs. English

I got another 2500 point game in with the Burgundians, this time against Wars of the Roses English -- the Yorkist pretender variant.

The photos are pretty bad, but I just snapped a couple and didn't really look at them to see how they came out, for the sake of not interrupting the game. (Click on the photos to enlarge them.)

So, deployment...







The marshy ground was all considered open terrain. To the left, in the photo above, are a small wood and small hill, on the right are another small hill and some difficult terrain.

The English deployment, from left to right, were some Hobilars, archers and knights. Just to the right of the woods are a small unit of billmen, some more archers, two multi-barrel guns with a unit of mercenary pike and small unit of galloglaichs behind them, more archers with another unit of galloglaichs behind, another gun with more galloglaichs behind it, them another unit of archers with some billment behing them. On the hill was a slightly larger unit of archers, and more hobilars behind the hill.

The cunning Burgundian deployment, again from left to right, consisted of... Coustilliers with gendarmes behind them (two separate untis), handgunners screening dismounted gendarmes and low countries pikemen, and skirmishing archers screening two units of ordonnance archers (with hand + half swords) and ordonnance pikemen (between the archers). To the right of them, more or less behind the rough ground, were a light cannon and a unit of crossbowmen.



So my plan was to hope to carry the left flank, stall on the right, and advance as quickly as possible in the center. I had to resist the temptation of shooting with my longbowmen for fear of being outgunned by the English. This more or less worked. I tied up his hobilars with my coustilliers for a few turns, chased his archers off and smashed into his knights, who crumpled in one turn under the glaring brightness that is the star of Burgundian chivalry. ;)

In the center, I weathered the hail of arrows and multi-barreled guns pretty well. It helped that my opponent rolled like crap for his archers, but I do have to say that now that I've seen the multi-barrel guns in action, they are NASTY.



Rolling up the left flank was helped by a single turn of panicking of the English billmen near the woods which put them in a bad spot and let my cavalry and low countries pike overwhelm the remaining troops on the left side of the English center. On the right half of the center the gun crew were more or less chased off, but at the cost of my rightmost archer unit. (They did survive but took heavy casualties but panicked and then rallied.) The ordonnance pikemen and archers spent a few tense moments locked in combat with the Irish, but eventually my larger units won out.

And I think that's where one of the subtle differences came in. The English had a lot of small units, the Burgundians had fewer but larger units. Due to the clogged English deployment and static nature of the shooting-heavy list, he couldn't bring his advantage of manuever to bear, so I was able to hit individual poitns on his line and win out even when I got bogged down. He was even a bit crowded to react quickly enough. My cavalry on the flanks helped this too.

So this was a total reversal from my game against the Swiss, in which I was more passive & tried to shoot them up before they impacted my line. Similar results -- some heavy casualties on the way in, but once the aggressor hits, the trouble starts for passive army.

Another good game. Both of us again agreed that we're preferring WAB to WFB right now. We're talking about doing some Classical era stuff in the near future, but for now I am more than happy with late medievals, and think that 2500 points is a really decent size but still allows for a very quick game.

26 October 2008

Low Countries Pike





I finished one unit of 25 Low Counties pike. They're Old Glory Flesmish Pikemen from the Wars of the Roses Range. I'm slightly less impressed with them now that they're painted. Before that, I had overlooked some of the strange faces on a few of the figures. For example, one guy's jaw is close to half the height of his face, so he looks really cartoony.

The poses are pretty good. The detail is decent. But a few of those faces... I'm proud of the fact that I normally paint eyes on all my figures (well, barring those that have visors or helmets obscuring their eyes...) but I just had to pass on a few of these, as it would only draw attention to the fact that the faces were that bad.

Still, some of the faces are pretty good, and a few have closed helmets, so it's a mixed bag. Plus there's the bonus you get with all OG figures - they're inexpensive compared to other manufacturers. En masse, I don't know how much you will notice. I still have to finish the bases and add some banners. Once the banners are added, I figure they will obscure a lot of the unit and emphasize the "big picture" rather than the individual figures.

They did paint up rather quickly. I've got another unit plus some extra figures to do.

I do need to find a couple command figures, now. Basically a leader and a musician for each unit. I've got a pile of Front Rank musicians due to an ordering screw-up (on my part), but they look too large in the OG unit.

As usual, click to photos to enlarge them.





edit: Hrm... after taking a look at the photos, I wonder if I overdid the blue just a bit...

19 October 2008

ADD = WAB + AOC!

I've got the attention span of a cat.

Not in the mood to write battle reports today (or yesterday) so I spent a bit of time prepping figures for my Burgundians the the eventual plan to expand their Low Counties allies into an army unto itself.




Pictured are 25 Flemish pikemen from Old Glory, 11 handgunners from Mirliton/Grenadier, 19 more archers from Front Rank, 5 more Front Rank crossbow, and 30 billmen/halberdiers that are a mix of Front Rank and Mirliton/Grenadier. (In the background are about 30 Foundry landsknecht pikemen that I was just too lazy to move. I don't know when I will get to them, they've been hanging around since the range first came out!)

That represents most of the infantry figures I currently have, with the exception of another unit of OG Low Countries pikemen and 30 of their Flemish figures with assorted weapons (about half with plancon & half with axes -- probably more suited to 14th century.)

I've got to check in with some friends, but we may get a big Burgundian vs. Swiss game in at Thanksgiving when an old friend comes into town for the holiday. I'm sure there's a great Charles the Bold joke in there somewhere, relating to carving turkeys, but it's just not coming to me at the moment. ;)

I'll get back to the batttle reports shortly, and still plan on an ancient/classical WAB army. (Waiting on the Wargames Factory figures to see what direction that takes.) So for now, the Burgundians get a few weeks of attention.

If a ball of brightly colored yarn doesn't distract me first.

29 July 2008

Historicon '08 - Part 2

A unit of Ottoman Turks from my first game:



Low Countries pike and plançoniers from my second game:



BEAUTIFUL unit of Hundred Years War English knights:





I will post some battle reports and photos from the rest of the convention in the next few days.

For more information and photos, including results from the WAB tournament:

http://www.wabnews.com
http://web.mac.com/dalydr/iWeb/Site/Historicon%20%2708%20Tournaments.html

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22 July 2008

Burgundian Progress, 2 days remaining

I'm painting like a madman. Or a sane man feeling slightly mad due to sleep deprivation because he's up late painting. Here's some shots of my progress as of 1:30 am last night:


Almost finished with the archers, I think that will have to be good enough. I will give the bases a quick basecoat of color, then go back and finish that and the little details on the figures at a later time. I'll just put these guys in the back ranks, behind the completely finish archers.



Assorted figures. I'll finish these tonight.



The hopeless pikemen. No way I will even get close to finishing these. I think a couple of quick blocks of color on the figures an the bases will be as good as they get. Disappointing, because I think they will look cool when they are done. And everyone knows, well painted figures do better.

Who knows, maybe tonight will be super-productive.

21 July 2008

Historicon '08 Prep

I might not get to finish the Buckeye Battles reports until next week.

This coming weekend I'll be at Historicon in Lancaster, PA.

We're leaving Thursday morning, but I'm busy all week leading up to that because I'm trying to get enough figures painted for the Warhammer Ancients Tournament run by NEWS. The three rounds require 1750, 2000 and 2250 point armies. I'm running a Burgundian Ordonnance army (in the AoC division.) At the moment, I still need to finish:

18 archers (almost done)
25 pikemen (barely started)
4 crossbowmen (barely started)
3 standards
1 army standard bearer + standard

I don't have any of the standards started, which is disappointing because I know I will not be able to finish them. I like to hand-paint them, but I think I will temporarily print something up on paper for the tournament.

Here's a peek at some of what's already finished:

Gendarmes
Archers
Coustilliers
Cannon & Crew
Cannon & Crew
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