Heretical Gaming is my blog about my gaming life, featuring small skirmishes and big battles from many historical periods (and some in the mythic past or the far future too). The focus is on battle reports using a wide variety of rules, with the occasional rules review, book review and odd musing about the gaming and history. Most of the battles use 6mm-sized figures and vehicles, but occasionally 15mm and 28mm figures appear too.

Saturday 16 July 2016

The Battle of Ellendun 825AD

The Battle of Ellendun 825AD:
This battle was based on the Battle of Ellendun scenario written by Guy Halsall in Miniature Wargames 021:



The Scenario:
The West Saxons were outnumbered in this battle, so they were given eight DBA elements against a full 12 elements of the Mercians.  However, the Mercians were at a -1 for being thirsty and -1 for being tired.  They could remove the -1 by spending a turn drinking at the stream if unopposed and (only) then remove the -1 for being tired by spending a turn doing nothing.

Wessex men at the top, Mercians at the bottom, separated by the stream




 The battle lines clash: the Mercians try to clear the stream so they can drink from it, but the Wessexmen have no intention of letting them do it unopposed

The fighting continues.  The Wessex archers defend the village crossing against a group of Mercian warriors

The Mercians begin to fall back, some groups of warriors have been eliminated already

The Mercians collapse utterly!!
Outcome:
A very swift and easy Wessex victory.  The Mercians outnumbered the Wessexmen but the combined effects of thirst and fatigue more than swung the balance in favour of the southerners.  The Mercians lost seven(!) bases, which is massive in the context of these rules.

Game Notes:
The additional factors did seem to simulate the Mercian condition accurately, as the results of the refight seem quite similar to those of the real battle.  The battle took just over 30 minutes to play out on a 3'x2' board.  The DBA 3.0 rules were used, with troops chosen from list III/24a. I wouldn't recommend this scenario as I did it for head-to-head play: it is too difficult for the Mercians to win unless they can get at least some of their troops watered and rested before they get into combat.
Figures from Baccus 6mm.


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