Low Countries (243) vs Catalan Company (262)
Paul and I gathered at chez moi for a training game. He used his Catalan’s which he was going to use for tournaments in June, and I chose my Low Countries army in preparation for the next round of the Southern league.
The terrain was decidedly different with all of it on Paul’s left flank, less my new coastline on my left. Paul decided to defend which left me with the honour of moving first. I deployed refusing my right and then promptly started a right wheel to try and keep my flank intact. On Paul’s turn his unreliable cavalry commander in the centre decided to not come to the party!
With this welcome news for me, I decided that I was not going to repeat the mistake from previous games when I triggered the activation of unreliable commanders! I was going to hold off on the left and wait for an opportunity, while on the right I deployed my crossbows and lights to delay the enemy flanking movement.
I decided that I was deployed too far forward on my right and decided to retire to align my pikes better. Unfortunately, I think I delayed the move for too long which meant that I had to sacrifice the crossbows to allow the line to reform.
At this stage of the battle it wasn’t looking too bad for me. My line has formed and the left flank looks like it can hold its own. Unfortunately for me the Paul’s Almogavars crushed my pikes and proceeded to start to roll up my flank. At the same time his cavalry commander decided now was the time for battle and launched its own attack. As the battle became general along the line as his left wing destroyed four pike units, his cavalry engaged my knights and his right wing came out of the difficult ground to destroy my halberdiers.
A loss in which I inflicted 12 cohesion hits on the Catalan Company and received 23 of my own.
Lessons Learnt
- The timing of any rearward move for pikes is critical.
- Perhaps it was one of those battles where once I had the line in the correct place it would have been better to wait for the enemy to come onto me.
