TTS AAR: Aghlabids versus Italo-Normans
/I had to take Mother to Huddersfield (well, she’d managed to find her way back from Nottingham…) and faced the prospect of a long day with nothing to do whilst I waited for her event to finish. Luckily, in a post-match chat after the recent Doubles, fellow TTS-player, Geoff, mentioned that Huddersfield was his neck of the woods and, moments later, a game was arranged.
I liked Huddersfield: from Greggs on the main drag at six-thirty in the morning for a ‘sausage and bacon bap with red’ right through to Travelodge late at night, everyone was very pleasant. Lots of places to charge your car as well. Geoff and I met at Cafe Valencia, just around the corner from Gemini Games, the venue for our battle, where they bring you a proper pot of tea, with an egg-timer to make sure you let it mash for long enough.
Geoff wanted to get his Anglo-Normans onto the tabletop, which suited me just fine as I could then field the Aghlabid version of the Early Muslim, North Africa and Sicily army list, meaning that what I would transport to Huddersfield was a 15mm 3D printed resin army rather than a ton-weighing metal one. This proved to be a good decision, as the nearest carpark to Gemini Games was closed for repairs, which meant parking on the other side of town and using the Roman Baggage Train (my camping trolley) to wheel the Aghlabids to where the action was.
Gemini Games were very accomodating: providing a large table at the back of the shop’s gaming area free of charge, even though their main business seemed to be collectable/strategy card games such as Magic: the Gathering.
I won the scouting, and weighted my army on the left, intending to quickly wipe out the three units of horse in front of me using a four-formed-plus-two-lights verses three-formed advantage in numbers, with a couple more infantry units in reserve if needed. The rest of the army sat back and waited for the Anglo-Normans to advance, confident that they could bow them to death as they did so.
Unfortunately, that plan didn’t quite work out as I had intended.
On the left, Geoff’s three cavalry units made mincemeat of my more numerous Arabs, and I soon found myself down half my coins and very much unable to contemplate any kind of outflanking manoeuvre there.
Worse, on the right, the Anglo-Norman horse managed to burst through the end of my line, and proceed to do to me exactly what I had been hoping to do to them!
Some of the Italo-Norman cavalry that had broken through then kept pursuing my light horse, curling around towards my camp in another threatening manouevre.
I needed to stabilise my line, but only had a unit of disordered Bowmen to do so. They did have a good position on the flank of enemy cavalry, but their attack failed, with the Italo-Norman horse then turning to face them.
This was not good, but I did have a moment of hope when the enemy horse faltered for a second and I used my Someone Has Blundered stratagem, but unfortunately the enemy cavalry didn’t succumb to this attack either - very unsporting of them - and they soon turned back again and disposed of the unfortunate archers.
The death of the bowmen let the enemy cavalry through onto my flank and, despite the fact that the Black Guard had some success to their front, it was only a matter of time before I lost my last few coins and the battle…helped by the cards letting Geoff’s final attack go in.
It had been an excellent game, full of successes and reverses for both sides (I had killed one of Geoff’s generals on the left flank in just about the first combat). A significant victory for the Italo-Norman cavalry, with their infantry hardly involved at all!
