Dark ages - Saturnalia Slay Ride

This week we took a break from the campaign games for something more festively themed - The Saturnalia Slay Ride. This is based on the Bloodbath scenario but with some seasonal twists. 

Both sides has three warbands of 18 points with their deployment zone and thus side randomly allocated. The side with the highest victory point total at the end of the same was the winner. Points are scored in three ways:

• One point for each point of enemy units routed, destroyed, or forced to retreat from the table. 
• 6 points if your wagon of festive goods exits the table on the opposite side within 6" of the road. The wagon is a allocated s guard who must remain with it throughout the game, it may not enter rough, and is lost if the guards are routed.
• Capturing and holding gifts until the end of the game worth 3 points (1 of), 2 points (3 of) or 1 point (1 of). These are placed face-down so the value is unknown until they are picked up. If the holder is routed they are dropped and may be picked up by another unit.

The game could end in two ways.

• Last moves would begin at 2200.
• When their are less than 10 units in total left roll a D10 at the end of the turn and if the D10 score > the remaining units on the table the game ends.  

Our game had one side with Franks (Roy), Romans (Robin), and Saxons (Paul) vs the other with Franks (Keith), Norse (Adam), and Anglo-Norman (John). The ANs and the Romans ended up with the wagons.   

Franks (Keith)

Frank (Roy)

Anglo-Norman (John)

Norse (Adam)

Romans (Robin)

Saxons (Paul)

The Frankish ended-up opposite each other in the west and Keith decided on an all-out attack to knock his enemy out of the game early. Centrally the ANs advanced towards the Romans with their Skirmishers and Elite Cavalry in the lead.     

In the east the Saxons spied a large hill, which was an irresistible opportunity to form shieldwall on some high ground. The Norse looked to flank their position and bring their archers to  bear.     

 

Back on the west side the Franks clashed but Keith's units suffered heavily against their opposite numbers and were forced to fall back with a captured treasure token. The AN's cavalry and skirmishers proved deadly to the Romans cutting swaths through them and killing their leader.      

The Norse peppered the Saxons with arrows, who retreated behind the crest of the hill into cover.  

As we hit 2200 we played a final turn which saw the ANs agonisingly fall short by just a few inches of getting their wagon off the table. Their side had killed most of the Romans and secured a number of treasure tokens. The Franks / AN's / Norse won 22-13

Game 2 

We also played a smaller parallel game with Saxon's (Mike) vs Byzantines (me) that was the same but with no wagon and only one a side.  

 

The Saxons were upgrade with some Elite cavalry for this game who proved reluctant to move for the first few turns. The Saxons struggled with quite shooty Byzantine units and so it was a win for the Constantinople posse.