FoGII Medieval AAR Tripoli (Irish) v. Bardolph (Anglo-Irish)

[Tripoli]

With Bardolph's permission, I'm going to post a quick AAR of our recent tournament game.  I'm playing the Irish, and Bardolph is the Anglo-Irish.  Our armies are fairly evenly matched.  As some of the later screenshots will show, my infantry is superior, but Bardolph has knights, which I have little to no defense against.  There is a low ridge running along the a large portion of my front, with a small saddle/valley between the high points of the ridge in my center.  This ridge is bounded by woods on my right, and a steeper hill to my left.  My plan is to anchor my flanks against both of these obstacles, and to use my superior infantry to quickly break the Anglo-Irish line where ever Bardolph's knights are not, and leveraging the defensive advantage presented by the hill  to either absorb attacks when I am disadvantaged, or launch attacks from when my troops are superior.  I am guessing he will place his knights on my left, as the ground is more suitable for them there.  I have purchased the maximum amount of Noble Cavalry, and divided them on each of my flanks.  Although they are not capable of dealing with his knights, I'm hoping to be able to use their mobility  to flank his troops and quickly collapse a flank.  I put some additional skirmishers on my left to try to attrite the knights I suspect will be on that flank.  I put my "Picked Irish Foot" in the center.  While I consider putting them on the right to help stop the knights, I opt instead for the center, in the hope of collapsing it quickly.  Also, from the center they  they may be able to shift  left or right before the armies collide if needed. 

The Noble Cavalry far to the rear in my deployment?  That is me being an idiot.  I forgot to put him in the line, and he remained there until halfway through the game.
Set Up Irish Right Flank



Set Up Irish Right Flank

[Tripoli]

Bardolph has invested heavily in knights, placing a strong force on both my left and center.  He has a smaller force of sargents cavalry on my right.  While they are armored and Lancers, they are only of average quality.  I had positioned my superior quality Noble cavalry on the right in the woods to hopefully get a cheap flank shot on any unsuspecting English.  They, along with my infantry on the hill should be able to handle his force on my right.


Turn 3 Irish Right Flank


In the center, Bardolph has infantry backed by 3 knights.  If those knights charge forward, they will be a problem.  In that event, I can only hope, my archers will be able to disrupt some them before they hit the infantry.

Turn 3 Irish Center


And on my left, Bardolph has placed a heavy force of knights.  My only hope is to possibly get a flank shot on one or two of them,  More likely, they will simply dissolve my left flank.  In that event, I will have to shift my picked Irish foot to the left,  which will open up my center to his knights there. 

Turn 3 Irish Left Flank

[Tripoli]

I take a defensive posture, moving forward to take defensive high ground. On my right, the English moved forward with some longbowman, which I will attack with some cavalry.  My Noble Cavalry remain concealed in the woods.

Turn 5 Right Flank


In the center, my archers attempt to attrite the advancing English

Turn 5 Center



On the left, the English knights are not advancing.  I'm not going to poke that bear.
Turn 5 Left Flank


The Irish cavalry charge disrupts several English units on the right.

Turn 5 Right Flank at end of the turn

[Tripoli]

My cavalry charge the previous turn that disrupted the English units in subsequent combat rounds  fragments and routs several English units.  This gives an opportunity for my Nobel cavalry to get behind his lines.

Turn 6 Right Flank



In the center my skirmishers have pulled behind my lines.  I don't want to attack here just yet, as I want to take defensive advantage of the hill

Turn 6 Center



On the left, the English remain quiet

Turn 6 Left Flank

[Tripoli]

Turn 7
On the right, the English skirmishers have driven off my skirmishers, and I begin to move my cavalry out of the woods.  The English attack up the hill, and are disrupted, making them vulnerable to a counterattack.

Turn 7 Right Flank


In the center, the English are about to attack my line.  One English unit was distupted (I believe by the Irish skirmishers) before getting to the hill crest, but otherwise, they English arrive relatively unscathed.

Turn 7 Center


On the left, the English knights begin to advance.  I have to quickly collapse the English center or left flank quickly.  One of my skirmishers gets caught by the English and fragmented.  They won't last long.

Turn 7 Left Flank

[Tripoli]

Turn 8

On turn 8, a English charge disrupts one of my cavalry.  Worse, it has one of my leaders.  His loss could result in disruptions to my units on that side of the line.  Unfortunately, he is on his own for right now, as no units can reach him.  Fortunately, several English units disrupt or rout, so as long as he can hold on for a turn, I should be able to stabilize the situation and get him out of there.

Turn 8 Right Flank


In the center-right, the English army has dissolved, with multiple cascading English routers leaving a gaping hole in the line.  Only one knight and some Ostment led by a general remain.  This will be unable to prevent the Irish from moving forward, but the knight will make it slow and expensive.

Turn 8 Center Right


In the Center Left, a charge by a unit of English knights immediately disrupts the Irish Kerns facing them.  I start to move forces towards the hole that is about to be created.
Turn 8 Center Left


And on the left, the English Knights are beginning developing their attack.  My skirmishers will try to attrite this attack, but their efforts will be for naught.

Turn 8 Left Flank

[Tripoli]

Turn 9 Right Flank


My Noble Cavalry unit is still hanging on, but barely.  The English have put together a defensive line on the right that, combined with the unmaneuverability of my units, will likely delay me for a turn. This delay may be enough for the English to bag my leader. 


On the center right, my unmanuverable troops, combined with the English knight and Ostman and leader units are preventing me from exploiting the breach.  I try to change facing and get the troops in position for flank attacks the next turn, but this turn will not see much decisive combat here

Turn 9 Center Right



On the left, the English knights charge, and immediately drive off one of my Noble cavalry units, who wisely evades rather than engage.  I try to surround the pursuing Knight with the idea that skirmishers and a possible flank attack may damage him enough to reduce his threat. 

Turn 9 Left Flank

[Tripoli]

Turn 10

Turn 10 finds my General led Nobel cavalry fragmented, but still hanging on on the right. 

Turn 10 Right Flank


However, in the Center Right, the English general leading the fragmented Ostman remain defiant.  And the English knights?  They are unfazed by my Irish troops.

Turn 10 Center Right


On the far right, the English knight charges, my Nobel cavalry evades, and the English knight pursues, trailing three otherwise unemployed Irish skirmishers, gamely trying to do something useful against the heavily armored knight.  In any case, the knight has been drawn out of the battle, and will no longer be a factor for at least four turns.   As an aside, the tendency for knights to go charging after fleeing peasants (and away from the battle) in search of glory is one of the nice play balance features of the game.  Knights are really like tanks in the game, but this tendency makes them both  unpredictable and fun.
 
Turn 10 Left Flank


Elsewhere on the left flank, the English knights are getting serious about trashing my line, disrupting one of my infantry, and about to to the same to the remainder.

Turn 10 Left Flank

[Bardolph]

Thanks for recording my defeat in so much detail 

Another excellent AAR, and a good learning experience as well.
I was relying on a more or less historical battle plan I learned from Chivalry and Sorcery back in the day:

You gathered up your peasants and yeomen from the fields, sent word to your vassals to meet in a predetermined place. That was "mobilization".
The assembled army marched off in the general direction of the enemy. That was "strategy". When the opposing armies finally managed to find each other everyone got in a more or less straight line and charged the enemy. That was "tactics".

Tripoli on the other hand turned out to have some sort of actual plan.  You can tell by the number of my troops looking for someplace else to be which was more effective.

[Tripoli]

Thank you for your kind comments, Bardolph,  but you overstate the quality of my play.  For what it is worth, any skill I have at the FoG II system is due entirely to the fact that I have my head handed to me on a regular basis in the Sliterine tournaments, regularly finishing in the bottom third of a  tournament with 150+ players.    The guys who play in that are good. I just went 0-2 in the first round of the Sliterine Medieval tournament this week.  The good news is that there are four rounds left, and I can only improve my standing    

If anyone interested,  Christopher Webber has some pretty good FoGII instruction videos over at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_rh6B24GosHy_lkMZQ7cxA/videos.  The one on ZOCs is particularly good.

[Bardolph]

Funny, I just went 0-2 in that tourney as well. Though in my defense the results were a little closer than this one 

I will check out the videos, ZOC in this game is still a bit of a mystery to me. I used to be quite good at DBA (De Bellis Antiquitatis miniatures rules), winning the vast majority of my games in the local scene (my LA Persians are still undefeated after 30+ battles) and understanding DBA's ZOC rules was a big part of doing well, along with knowing what matchups you wanted to try and engineer. Richard Bodley Scott helped write DBA as well as having written the FoG rules so...

[Tripoli]

Understanding the ZOCs in the FoGII system is crucial.  I doubled my win/loss numbers after simply getting a semi-competent understanding of ZOCs.  My biggest handicap now is picking my army.  I'm not good at understanding how the various combinations of armor/morale/weapons relate to the opposing army, and my pregame unit selection strategy is based on "that would be cool to play with, I'll get four of those".