Vikings

As promised, some shots of the Warhammer ancients game I ran to show a chap the rules in the week.

2000 points of Danish mainland Vikings worked out as follows:

General and Army standard accompanied by a unit of 30 Hirdmen with mixed weapons and 2 hidden Besirkir

32 Bondi with mixed weapons

32 Bondi with mixed weapons

18 Bondi with Bows

12 Ulfhendhar with Mixed weapons

24 Jomsvikings with Hand weapons

Here you can see their opening dispositions; a solid mass in the centre, with the Hird on the commanders' right, next to the bowmen and the Jomsvikings in the rear.





I neglected to get a shot of my own deployment, not least because the figures for my Frankish army were largely pooled from my selection of old saxon models and rear rank vikings. Figures painted some 20 years ago as a kid (and many homecasts too to boot!) and boy did it show; at least to me. I think the audience (this club always seems to have a good number of spectators, and I'm of the opinion that 28mm is a mysterious new scale to most of them...) must have been being polite when they praised the sombre and realistic colour schemes of my troops. Sounds like a polite way to say 'they're badly painted, aren't they!'

Anyhow, the Ottonian Frankish army was based as the vikings on one of the Shieldwall sublists - in this case the Flemish list:

General and Army standard with a unit of 7 Milite horse

9 Milite horse

9 Milite horse

24 Milites, dismounted Representing the Thuringians, who though armed and armoured as milites, tended to fight on foot.

24 Liberi foot

24 Liberi foot

8 Coloni bowmen

8 Coloni bowmen



At first the Vikings were tied down by the narrow field of deployment they had; Their advance was reduced to a crawl, except for the Ulfhendhar on the left. However I was more concerned with crashing my cavalry into his flanks and, to ensure all the possibilities of the rules were investigated, a frankly insane frontal charge against his massed line.

About the same time his Ulfhendhar tried to smash a unit of Liberi on the hill, but their shieldwall held and the remants of the wolf warriors were caught and wiped out. Although in the centre I delivered a juddering blow to the Vikings they held, and the double handed axes in the line sent horse and man to the ground; the cavalry broke like a wave on the prow of a longship. Worse still on the flank my charge against the Viking bowmen was lost before it even made contact; shot asunder on the way in.



However, with my right flank cleared, I was able to come down from the hill, and got my infantry to the fore. Here the spears sung a song of blood (ooh, getting very warhammer here now aint it!) the Vikings could not raise a voice to. One bondi unit scattered, the other was killed where it stood, but it was a high water mark for me. Momentarily it looked as if the Vikings were lost, but their Jarl ruled his hirdmen with spirit and skill and drove the Thuringians into the ground.

At the end the vikings had their best two units holding the field with their valiant bowmen still peppering my surviving cavalry, and one unit they could at least hope would rally. I could only count on my lords' cavalry, one unit of Liberi and one scattered band of coloni, trying to trade shots with the Danish bows.

For a change I had time to grab a couple of shots of the other games on that night too. There seemed to be a reasonably healthy turnout on the night, 16-20 players and hangers on. Below is some sort of computer moderated napoleonics game, not my personal cup of tea (15mm, needs a laptop to play, didn't see anything move or any dice get thrown) but seemed to support a number of players.



Two other guys were doing Warhammer skirmish, Orcs trying to capture a Brettonian watchtower.



All in all another good evening.

Next time, I think I'll roll out the 28mm WW2 and the Operation Overlord rules, by Alto Zero. I think I've done enough ancients of late.