Battle Report - Baltic Crusades - Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, Historical Mod

Hello Folks, so had another day of Wednesday wargaming. This time I had just enough Rus painted to give a practice game of what I am painting for can games a shot. Always good to try a few things out, and playing games is the best incentive to get painting! Been working on these guys for awhile so good to get them fighting.

Here is the army lists and stats that I was using:

Everyone just has what ever weapon they are holding, so no shield guys have 1 less armor, the Knights have a lance, allot have a spear ect.. I forgot to label the columns but if you are familiar with this game it goes Fight, Strength, Defense, Wounds, Attacks, Courage, Might, Points.

I think based on our results I will change things up a bit, give the commanders more might so they can make more command type actions, and maybe make the Bishop a bit less fighty so he mostly wants to boss guys around.

So unto the games, I took the Rus and Serge tried the Teutonic Knights. I tried to convince him he had to use the unlucky SS dice since but not such luck. Terrain wise we said it was winter so you would have to roll on crossing the river to see if you fell down or were just slowed.

Game 1:

For the first game I gave the Knights the goal of escaping off the board, having just lost the Battle on Lake Peipus they are now trying to escape. I spread my guys out to try and block them in.

The Knights were coming down the West flank so I held me militia back to try and corner them while the heavy hitters went to defend the ford. Meanwhile the plan was for the Levy and the Boss to cross the river and engage the cross bows.

Sadly the crossbows were very effective at putting down my troops, and the Knights out flanked back to the ford splitting my army. A big scrum for the ford thus ensued as you can see. My Varjazi rallied to the banner and gave it their all to keep the knights at bay.

But luck was not really there so my forces were ground down pretty heavily. Eventually leading to a routing Rus force.

I think the main things we learned here are that Crossbows can be really good if they are lucky so have to be careful about giving one side to much advantage that way, and the heavy Teutonic guys are really hard to kill.

Game 2:

Had enough time to give it another go so we decided to try one of the scenarios from the Legions of Middle Earth book. In this one the goal is to kill the other guys commander, so time for the bishop to go down. He had taken a wound at the end of turn 1, so just need to get him a bit more!

The Teutonic guys ended up defending the ruins, with the cross bows placed high up and the Kngihts ready to strike out. I split into 3 groups, with the Levy across the river to fight the Knights, the high quality guy to go down the middle, and the medium infantry to attack across the river.

Right away the Knights charge for the Levy hoping to make the Sinners pay, but they advance and bring one down with their javelins. Meanwhile my elite troops are devastated by the cross bows. No wonder they were outlawed in Europe by the pope!

The Levy then clean up the Knights and my troops advance. Not as much greatness for the Cross bows this time. But the levy are really impressing me.

Now we are getting into a real battle in the ruins. Most of the levy died throwing javelins up at the cross bow guys, and most of my tougher guys are bolt filled corpses. So it's going to be tough.

A few guys climb up the ruins to fight the cross bow guys but not having much luck with that. Down on the bottom floor I have a good battle going. But my guys need a 6 to get through the tough crusader armor, so I am being ground down again. But really just need to trap Herman.

The back and forth presses on until I am ground down. One heroic militia man did manage to get a wound on the bishop thou. I think the Teutonic's had a wound on my boss as well. My force routed here without any of the commanders dieing. At the time I was assuming this was a loss for me, the Teutonic's are almost broken being below half but not quit. But it may be technically a draw due to my leader being alive.

Anyway I found the battle in the ruins to be allot more fun so I probably will set it up similar to that again at Cangames. I am hoping to have allot more Rus so we could have a Teutonic for with the Bishop defending the ruins and a force of Knights trying to rescue him. Then the Rus can either attack with 2 forces or try to block the Knights.

Let me know what you all think, suggestions and comments appreciated.

Thanks;
Mike