The tournament that became a nice gamingday

So we tried to get together a second By fire and sword tournament. We had grand planes with five games over two days, but it all whittled down to 3½ players so we decided just to play some games. In hindsight I think the date were the biggest reason to why people didn't commit to this event, this close to Christmas I  guess people has other things to do!

I played a newly painted mounted muscovite force with 12 points.
It had:

• Golova and lieutenant colonel
• 2 Servant cossacks with 4 bases each.
• 5 Boyar sons sotnias of different sizes, a total of 16 bases.
• 3 Reiter rotas, 6 bases.
• 1 Skirmish sotnia, 4 bases.

The first game I played was against Andreas, he played a Elite tartar force, which is a pdf list.  This is a really special force and I think its not that much fun to play against, and I´ll try to explain why without being a douche. This force is build around the premises to avoid close combat and get behind the enemy and kill it with bows. And they do it real good, they got the light cavalry rule so they can flee from charges and be ready to act normal the turn after. They hit with their bows on 5 or less, even  if they don't have skill 5. And they get have the possibility to ride in open formation. Which make them harder to hit and they can very easily sneak through any cap between opponents lines. They play very similar to forces like dark elves and wood elves in warhammer. This makes for a very boring gaming, especially when you are trying to learn the core mechanics of the game. When you have mastered the rules it might be more fun to play against, cause I am sure there is weaknesses to the list. Oh one more thing did I mention that they have four command points? ...

I rolled for my commander and he was from an insignificant noble family, so I got to play with 3+1 command points, until Andreas rolled for additional effect (which he got three), Delayed (one reiter rota), Panic (my large Boyar sons squadron) and bad day (one less command point). The scenario he choose was Ambush. So my large force had been lured in to an ambush by the evil Tartars. My plan was to build a "fort" so that the tartars couldn't get behind my lines and if the possibility would arise, slowly move my forces and push tartars of the battlefield. It´s kind of hard though as the only order your troops are allowed in the beginning Ambush is 'Move'. Slowly though is started to close of a bit of the battlefield from the tartars, but then disaster struck as on unit of boyar sons fled under the hail of arrows straight through half of my army, causing chaos and confusion. As my battle lines got muddled the tartars owned the battlefield and the battle where lost. We didn't calculate points but it was clearly the Tartars that was the winners.

The second game was against Alexanders Gdansk, another pdf list, but a more straight forward list then the tartars. As Alexander had just one point less than me he got to choose the scenario, 'Attack on the village', but without further effects, These time I rolled for my commander and this time he was closer to the Tsar, so I got a additional skirmish sotnia.

Alexander deployed a small unit in the village and the rest in his deployment zone (except some small unit that he could put in ambush). I put my two units servant cossacks close to the village, cause these skirmishers would be best in the confined space of the village. On the left flank I deployed the large squadron of skirmish sotnia supported by a large boyar sons squadron. The right flank was covered by Reiters and Boyar sons.

The servant cossacks fought for the village the entire battle but wasn't able to dislodge the Gdansk defenders entirely from the village, so at the end it was still contested.

On the right flank it went rather spectacular as the skirmish sotnia managed to chase away the reiters they where facing. On the left flank it also went rather good and at the end both Gdansk units on that side was defeated. A victory for the Muscovites.