It's been a while since I did any gaming over the internet. However, in response to my post where I confessed to doing very little actual wargaming Jon Freitag (He of the excellent Palouse Wargames Journal blog) invited me to take part in an online game of Basic Impetus. This is a version he has adapted to work on a hex gridded tabletop which makes it much easier to deal with via a PC monitor. The game was a refight of the Battle of Zallaqah 1086 CE. As it was a remote game I entirely failed to take any pictures or make any screen grabs...Doh! So I have 'borrowed a couple of images from Jon's write up (found here Palouse Wargaming Journal: Zallaqah, Again). Besides Jon acting as umpire and game manager we had three players all called David being myself, David of the Ragged Soldier Blog and David of the Serener Skies Blog, plus one Chris (Nundunket of the Horse and Musket gaming blog)
I have played basic Impetus a couple of times before and enjoyed the experience. Jon's adaption to a hex grid worked really well and once again I really enjoyed the game. I was cast in the role of one of the two Commanders of King Alphonso VI's army. It was clear from the start that this would be an uphill task as the Almoravid and Andalusian forces outnumbered us. Now this is a period and location which I really don't know a great deal about so I had no idea as to the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two armies. One major issue was that the Muslim Infantry were equipped with long spears which meant that the Spanish Heavy Cavalry couldn't attack them frontally without sacrificing their additional Impetus combat dice and they had bow support behind the rank of spearmen. Offsetting that was the fact that the Muslim infantry were at the same disadvantage against our heavy horse. The second was that even if we were able to beat their first line a second, equally strong infantry force formed a second line behind it and lastly we were deployed with our heavy cavalry as a front line directly facing their heavy Infantry blocks. This would be a tough nut to crack.
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| The initial deployment for the Christian army..... |
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| ... and that of the Muslim army. You can begin to see our issue? |
After a very quick planning session my fellow Spanish commander and I decided to avoid the Muslim centre and try to re deploy our cavalry to the flanks where we would be facing a more favourable set of opponents. All we had to do was pull off redeploying in the face of an aggressive enemy with substantial archery assets! As expected while attempting this we were peppered with arrows, fortunately this caused more disorder than deaths and after two turns we were starting to look like we had managed to reposition at least some of the cavalry. Two units stayed in the centre to deter the enemy (that's my story anyway in reality it felt too dangerous to move them in the face of the enemy infantry as getting hit in the flank often leave a messy pile of bodies). This seemed to give our opponents pause and there was a delay before they decided to advance and engage which gave us time to get stuck in on the flanks.
We had the better of it against the Arab and Moorish cavalry at least initially. But eventually as knights often do they pushed too far and the inevitable counter attack hit them. At the same time the Muslim centre rolled forwards. This was messy one of my Knights held on for far longer than I expected and reduced the attacking infantry to a single stand before being destroyed. This gave me what looked like a fairly easy target but could I roll a decent di roll, of course not! I did eventually destroy it and my light cavalry was pushing down the right but there was still the little matter of what was pretty much a second army to fight and that was starting to push forwards on our left wing.
At this point we were told that both armies were on the cusp of breaking! The enemy decided to go for broke and went after a weakened unit of knights over on the left ....and bounced. The loss was enough to break them leaving us one point away from breaking, so the result was a draw!
After the game was over Jon explained that the historical result was a near annihilation of the Christian army, so I am even more pleased at the outcome. All in all a great game and very well run by Jon.
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