Happy Canada Day Gaming

It’s Canada Day, and this image pretty much says it all, eh?

What better way to celebrate Canada Day than to push massive armies around the table?   My old friend Mike M was the host.  Readers of this blog may remember me singing the praises of my eccentric and resourceful friend Mike before.  He’s a good chap and his house is a wonderland of wargaming.   His basement features two gaming rooms, and two tables, with enough unpainted stock to make most hobby stores look barren by comparison.   Some people talk about lead mountains.  Mike has a plastic Himalayas, yet I have no doubt he’ll get them all painted and then some.

Mike supplied us with a game set somewhere in the 13th century Baltics, and the freedom loving peoples there have massed to drive the Tuetonic oppressors away before the can complete their castle, shown bottom right.

Mike and I played the freedom-loving locals, and Kirk Mad Dog Docherty played the Teutonic Knights.  TK wasn’t going to sit behind this stream with a cavalry heavy army, and deployed the bulk of his horse on our side of the fordable stream.

The TKs come on.   Besides this chaps, Mike has painted several units of German guest knights in their individual heraldry, which he has carefully researched.   Apparently if you were a knight in the 1300s and wanted a bit of a fighting holiday, you went and hung out with the Tuetonic Knights.   Chaucer’s Knight in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales  is one of these martial tourists.

First blood to the TKs as they crash through our archers on our left flank.

 

 

More TKs lead by one of those fighting bishops that the Middle Ages produced in large numbers.  A sword and a mace are surefire ways to spread the gospel.  Notice the very fine work on the heraldry, no mean feat for a 20mm model.

The battle raged for several hours.  We held where we wanted to hold, on our left and centre, and the casualties piled up on both sides.  

The last desperate charge of the TKs looks promising, but they will be sent reeling back down the hill. At the end of play, Kirk had broken our right flank, but we had held where we planned to make our stand in the centre and left, and Kirk’s best units were spent or routed, while the Grand Master of the Tueotinic Knights lay dead under a pile of dead horses and men,

 

I hope these grainy photos taken with my iPad do some justice to this big and very intense game, it was a nailbiter down the final turn.  For rules we used Might of Arms by Bob Bryant, which has been around since 1996. You can find a review here, though I don’t think it is currently in print.  Very easy to pick up and pleasantly fast moving, I would rate it similar to Dan Mersey’s Lion Rampant in complexity.

Thank you Mike for your gracious hospitality and for a good game, and thank you Kirk for making it an epic and enjoyable fight!

Blessings to your die rolls,

MP+