Billhooks #2: The Battle of Woking

 I managed to get in another game Never Mind the Billhooks this week (from here on referred to as Billhooks).  Pessimistically I think face to face gaming might soon be back on hold as Covid restrictions tighten again so it was good to catch up with Anthony and have game number 2 of Billhooks.

I'd drawn up 2 similar but slightly different armies for the game.  50% of each army has to be Archers and Billmen anyway but one army was slightly larger with extra Archer and Skirmisher units and the other, although outnumbered, had a couple of Veteran units.

 

Our game pitted a Northern clash between Percy and Clifford... usually allies but one must have spilled the others pint or something.  We allocated the forces randomly so Anthony had the smaller force commanded by Clifford while I had the larger army under Lord Percy.

The omens weren't great when, before the battle started, Lord Percy was forced to duel with Lord Leonard the Furry... he survived (just!) but it obviously rattled him as he performed poorly for the rest of the game (or that's my excuse!)

The game begins with a manoeuvre phase with units alternating movement until someone fires or charges.  This mainly consisted of our skirmishers dancing around each other behind some hedgerows before deciding to ignore each other in favour of the larger and more valuable blocks of troops.

Once the opening shots happened activation switched to the card deck.  Knowing he was outgunned in terms of Archers Anthony decided to aggressively head straight for my centre with his Men at Arms backed by some Scots mercenary Spearmen.

My archers were doing their best to slow him down and to take out his troops on my left flank where I had the advantage of numbers but the cat attack had clearly upset the men and their shooting was pretty poor.  Clifford's archers on the other hand were proving to be very effective whittling down my troops and causing an archer unit to retire.

Lord Clifford's attack in the centre forced my Archers to evade, leaving my Men at Arms alone to face the enemy knights.  It was a very one sided fight with Percy's men at arms losing badly and routing.

I was now running out of Army tokens (you give one up when a unit is Daunted or Routs) and then lost more as more of my units reacted badly to seeing their Lords and Masters legging it off the table.

A well deserved win for Anthony/Clifford and his feline henchman.  There was definitely some learning for me... I should have thought more carefully about the combination of units in block formation.  Veteran units also make quite a difference (they can reroll 1s in melee and morale throws).  Anthony did what I'd failed to do in my last game: I'd dithered in the face of superior numbers where Anthony demonstrated that a fast aggressive attack can sometimes succeed before the numbers can be brought to bear.

 Oh, and don't let giant cats attack your army... no matter how cute they are!!!