Normans against Saxons - A game with the Armati II-rules

Manufacturers:  various

Scale:  15mm

Hi,

it has been a few weeks since my last post.

So I thought it was time to tell you something about the Armati-game, Franz and I played yesterday in my man cave.

It was a duel between Norman knights and Saxons. 

Very interesting for the Normans almost only had cavalry with only two stands of archers while the Saxons had a lot of heavy infantry, able to form shieldwall to deny the Impetus of the knights, three stands of archers and four stands of skirmishers with javelins.

Franz and I took our armies in position secretly and as the blind had been lifted we both were able to have a look at the order of battle.

A thin line of cavalry against massive blocks of infantry. 

Can you hear the sound of the stamping horse shoes?

The Saxon hordes awaiting the clash with the knights.

Franz was the leader of the Normans while the Saxons had been taken under my command.

My order of battle was not lucky. 

I mentioned that Franz would also try to attack from the left flank and so I decided to position a heavy unit there in an angle of 90 degrees to to front. 

A big mistake for it took me very long to wheel these guys into the right position.

While doing this a part of Franz´ cavalry was able to break through the gap and to attack the unit on its flank. 

Horrible.

The left flank of the Saxons.

The first wave of cavalry gets into melee on the left flank. On the left side you can see the part of the cavalry breaking through. This is the unit that was able to use the gap.

The melee also starts on the right flank. The shield documents that the first line of Saxons is in shieldwall.

The second wave of cavalry is attacking to support their comrades.

The fight gets harder and harder.

Just to explain: the yellow markers show the state of exhaustion.
Cavalry is allowed to get three markers before it starts to fight less brilliant.
Heavy infantry is allowed to get four markers before it gets a malus of 2 on the dice rolls.
The red ones are for showing the breakpoints.

Norman knights being able to use a gap to charge into the flank of a Saxon horde. 

The Normans just threw the first Fyrdmen from the battlefield. Being exhausted by the fierce fight they now had to fight against the fresh huscarls.

The first unit of Saxons had been killed by the attack on its flank. But now the Normans had to fight the second unit to the front.

The Fyrdmen had gone to Walhalla. The huscarls stroke back heavily but couldn´t help to win the battle.

On the last picture you can see that the Normans had been able to kill the first rank of Saxons. 

Now the huscarls had been their next opponents.

Bad for the cavalry: the Fyrdmen already exhausted the knights very much and they also got some breakpoints (the red markers).

The Norman knights normally fight with a front value of 5 but now had a malus of 2 bringing them down to a 3 plus the dice roll while the huscarls were able to use their front value of 7.

But the Saxon Commander was not lucky. 

Not only his order of battle was wrong, he also rolled the dice bad.

So the Normans were able to win the battle.
Again a great game with the rules of Armati.

Cheers
Mike