Thud and Blunder

Miserable game with the Seljuks last night against Mediaeval Germans (actually a fairly historical match up, if I had been Rum Seljuks rather than Merv, and the Germans had been third crusade rather than a century later).

Not really used to the army, got the PIP allocation wrong, allowed myself to be over-stretched, wasted time reforming my Cv(S) and Cv(O) from the optimum formation to a completely rubbish formation – really it was a disaster from start to finish.

The Seljuk list, for what it is worth should have been:

C-in-C as Reg Cv(S), 7 Reg Cv(S), 6 Reg Cv(O).

Sub General as Reg Cv(S), 12 Irr LH(S).

Sub General as Reg Cv(S), 1 Reg Cv(S), 6 mounted Reg Ax(S).

Ally General as Irr LH(S), 12 Irr LH(S).

Feigned Flight and Scouting.

Instead I swapped the C-in-C into the LH command so that he could move them with his free PIP (which he rarely did since he was too slow) and gave the low PIP to the cavalry command which meant they couldn’t reform. Even with the middle dice, the Ax command didn’t sweep through the difficult hill but got bogged down killing 3 Ps(O).

Oh, and the ally was unreliable, which didn’t help. And meant that when I wanted to Feign Flight with the Cv command, I couldn’t as they were too close to the rear of the table, because my advance had been held up trying to persuade the ally general to come out and play.

Got another battle in this week with the Late Imperial Romans and I think I am finally happy with iteration 6 of the roster. Three very different commands, and even with some poor PIP dice I never felt that I had PIPs in the wrong place.

Tried two more games of Saga while on holiday up in Wales (my second and third) and really enjoying it as a skirmish game that really fits with its period. Bit worried about the forthcoming Byzantine list and also the heroes of the Viking age – would Athelstan have really trolled around with a 40 strong army? And certainly you shouldn’t be trying to model an Imperial Byzantine army with it. But it looks and feels right as a European Dark Age skirmish game for a period where many of the battles were just skirmishes. Hopefully they extend it bsck to the Volksvanderung era and Arthur, because it would fit that perfectly.
Anyway, I decided that trying to use normal dice as Saga dice wss adding another level of confusion to my overloaded brain, so I made some myself with the symbols from the Saga forum and some blank dice from blankdice.co.uk. 32 Saga dice for about a tenner in total. And they don’t look too bad?

This year’s battle for the Society of Ancients Battle Day is the Battle of the Catalunian Fields, aka the Battle of Chalons, in 453AD. It is regarded as a pivotal battle of late antiquity, stopping Attila’s Huns in their tracks and saving western Europe from them, although actually it doesn’t seem to have really had such an effect, and western Europe was saved more by his marital over-exertion and the inability of his successors to control their German vassals.

Anyway, next post will deal with the two armies. This one will be about where it was fought. It is one of those battles where we just have a few fragmentary accounts of what is going on, all of which seem rather unreliable. The primary source is Jordanes, a Romanized Goth writing in the 6th century. The consensus seems to be that Attila, on a up-til-then successful plundering expedition through Gaul, was besieging Orleans. Aetius, the Magister Militum of the West, came north from Ravenna, assumed command of the relic field army of Gaul and forged an alliance between the various Germanic tribes that had carved up most of Gaul between them by this stage, and who therefore actually had more to lose to Attila than Aetius did.

This combined army then moved on Orleans, forcing Attila to raise the siege. Attila then appears to start retreating back towards the Rhine, presumably happy with the plunder gathered so far and unwilling to risk his men in an unnecessary battle. At some point along this line of retreat, Aetius catches him and forces him to give battle. We are told that the site of the battle is somewhere near Chalons, and the only two physical details we are given about the battle are that there is an important ridge that is fought over at the beginning of the battle, and that after the battle the streams ran red with blood. Given that these streams are not mentioned during the battle, they cannot be one of the major rivers that cross the area though.

Most authorities place the site of the battle on the open plain between Troyes (on the Seine) and Chalons (on the Marne). Retreating from Orleans (on the Loire) to the Rhine involves crossing both of these rivers at some point. I think we can probably also assume that Attila, probably encumbered by considerable baggage, used the Roman road network to move his army around. The obvious initial route is Orleans-Sens-Troyes. At this point you reach the Seine which is the first significant obstacle and which is going to slow down your army as you cross it, probably by a single bridge. If Aetius is hard behind Attila then this is the first place that he can catch up, and Attila might end up in the awkward position of being caught with half his army on the far side of the river and out of action.

This line of enquiry was sparked by an article that Duncan found in an old French journal that outlined a possible battlefield to the west of Troyes. The road from Sens passes through a range of hills before debouching onto a plain in front of Troyes. On the north side of the plain, there is a prominent ridge, with the village of Montgueux on top of it. This seems to be a prime candidate for Jordanes’ ridge. There is also a small stream that appears to rise in the plain, near the modern village of Torvilliers, which would be the stream of blood. A snapshot of the battlefield from Google maps, annotated by me, is shown below, with the potential site for the battle that we have decided to use.

 

Tried out iteration 3 of the Late Imperial Romans last night. Not a great performance by me, but I think the command structure is getting better and I am slowly learning how to use the army. More thoughts here.

This week’s rather poor efforts on the figure painting front. Two elements of Gothic Kn(F) for my Late Imperial Romans. Not inked or based yet either. And I can’t get the shields to look right on the guys with the cloaks. The figures are Legio Heroica.