Game 6 vs War of the Roses English - Britcon, 10th, 11th and 12th August 2012
Last round, I played with Dave Pallin, using a Tudor English army.
Again I attacked, and again I put down a river. The table was like that
The weather was misty. Dave deployed in a very strong defensive position, and I was worried to have another terrain fortress encounter. But Dave had a different plan.
Tudor sent a flying column of mounted archers to seize the rough going in the center. The position flanked the line of attack of the Serbians, and was a thorn in my side. I had to redeploy the jannissary to fight them, while my original plan was to attack by echelon the enemy right flank.
With my plan messed up by enemy manouver, I stopped the Serbians advance, sent the Sipahis to threaten enemy archer flank, and manouvered to the left the janissary
Tudor readied their line to the combat, starting to shoot to the enemy
A lot of manouvering and countermanouver was made in this stage, with ottoman trying to sandwich the english archers in the rough, and Tudor sending in reserves and joustling for the position
When I attacked the enemy left wing from two sides, the Tudor was ready to face me
I switched again the axis of attck, and went in to the right. The Serbs charged.
After some initial success, the Serbian general was killed and this slowed down the charge. The Janissary enjoying local superiority over the enemy caused a lot of casualties on enemy archers.
Part of the english archers were shooted in the back. The tudor mounted archers losses were high and Dave withdrew what he could to save the corps.
The tough Tudsor defence finally prevailed and the Serbians corps broke. My right Ottoman corps supporting it immediately withdrew out of range. In the meantime the Tudor pulled back the CiC corps tha was one element away from being disheartened.
Ottroman tried to infiltrate through the city to raid enemy baggage but Tudor reserves reacted quickly. With the Serbians broken, there was no way to destroy frontally the BdS line of the english army, and the Tudor would have some problem to engage with an army made mostly of Bd a mounted army, protcting at the same time the hard hit corps. So the battle stopped after some more minor skirmishing. 13-12 for th Ottoman.
An interesting game, with a lot of tactical action. Dave played very well, I think that, being the last game of such a long tournament, I was a bit tired.
With hindsight, it would be better for me to switch the two Ottoman large corps and may be risk more the Sipahis in a frontal charge. A luck stroke could have granted me the victory in the game and in the tournament, but I don't like too much rely exclusively on dice rolls :)
In the meantime the leader lost his last game but mantained the leading position and Mike Bennett scored a big win that granted him the second position: congratulations to both! I ended the tournament third. A very good result. I was happy about the Ottoman performance, I enjoyed a lot using them. They did well both in attack and in defence, and have a combinaton of troops that makes the army a challenge to use well imho.