Dark Age Skirmish Battle Report

Last night Conscripts Brian, Perry, Mike F. and Greg came over for a game - I had decided to stage a Dark Ages skirmish battle between Viking raiders and Normans.

Here's the table layout. We used Games Workshop's "Lord of the Rings" skirmish rules and played a scenario from the "Return of the King" book. Basically, the main Norman force deploys around the keep at right. The Normans are led by Roland, a Norman duke, who has been wounded in a battle that occurred before the current action picks up (although he is a mighty warrior, he only has one Wound and no Fate points). With him is a captain, Gaston, and a retinue of foot knights and bowmen. Riding to their relief is a lieutenant, Edouard, accompanied by a group of mounted knights. The objective of the Norman players is to exit Roland from the left table edge.
 

The Vikings deploy in the right half of the table, anywhere more than 6" from the Normans. Their goal is to prevent Roland's escape.

Edouard and his knights ride to the rescue!

Normans of Roland's retinue, including "Brian", the bowman at right, who will figure prominently in the later story...

Grim Vikings, led by their chieftain, Bergthor and his wolfhound, and accompanied by Osvald, bearer of the Raven Standard. For Osvald we used the stats for "Gamling", the Rohan Royal Standard-bearer.

As the battle begins, the Normans surge off the hill and engage the Vikings, trying to punch a hole for Roland to escape through. Unfortunately Greg's die rolling was appalling and Perry's was red-hot, resulting in a steadily growing pile of Norman dead, until...

...Brian's cavalry arrived on the scene! These guys were monsters and Brian's lucky die rolling helped, as he rolled up the ginger speedbump that Mike threw in front of him.

The scrum in front of the hill started to thin out as casualties mounted, and Roland seized the opportunity to make like a running back and swing wide towards the hole...

"Brian the Bowman" was key to this strategem as he ran interference for Roland, even bringing down a heavily armoured Viking. In the meantime, the knights were hacking away and increasing the Viking bodycount. Eventually it got to the point where the Vikings needed to make Courage checks as 50% of their force was out of action.

Epic fail! Torsten, the Viking second-in-command, fails his Courage check, turns tail and runs...

...which was unfortunate, as he was the last man in the backfield able to intercept Roland sprinting for the endzone. After a rough start, the Normans appeared to have the game in the bag, until...

...the Normans lost Priority, and Perry moved Bergthor into combat with Roland... which did not end well for the Norman duke. Bergthor won the combat and with a roll of "6" to wound, Roland fell valiantly on the field of honour (let's not dwell too much on the fact that he was legging it).

An excellent game with some real tension and momentum swings back and forth. At first it appeared that the Normans were sunk as the Vikings really were overpowering them at the foot of the hill. Then the knights arrived and made mincemeat of the Vikings facing them, taking some pressure off Roland's group, who then made a break for it. Rollie took a pretty good shot at escape, too, winning some key Priority rolls and using Heroic Moves when he didn't. Unfortunately his luck finally ran out in a rather cinematic fashion!

Thanks to the lads for coming out for the game, I had a great time!