Hastings October 14, 1066

[MengJiao]

This is the third version of Hastings that I have played over the years and by far the best.  It's a very complicated battle.  It went on from mid-morning until well after dark and things looked bad for William once or twice.  One thing that this game brings out that is otherwise not clear is that those supposed moments when Harold's army broke ranks and rushed out after the Bretons or the Norman's or Eustace's forces, were probably coordinated attacks from unengaged parts of the line to stop penetrations on engaged parts of the line.  Those are tricky moments, but given Harold's need to defend a fixed position, probably better than retreating to restore the coherence of the shield wall line.  On the other hand, venturing out of shield wall formation definitely leads to higher losses for both sides and it seems like Harold was probably critically outnumbered in terms of fully equipped troops in chainmail, maybe something like 2000 to 1000 and with say 500 of those out on each side things got worse (say 1500 to 500 when the Anglo-Saxons began to retreat and things collapsed).

[MengJiao]

This is the third version of Hastings that I have played over the years and by far the best.

 It's also the only time I've seen Harold capture William.  Things were going pretty well for William.  He was scoring the usual 2:1 in inflicting casualties.  Harold had nearly been killed once, but Gryth, his little brother and probably historically the smartest of the Godwin brothers (Sywein, Harold, Tostig, Leofwine and Gryth) had broken ranks and rushed out to get him back in the shield wall.  Harold was staying out of trouble reassembling his housecarls after repelling Eustace while William was close to killing Gryth when a rare and very lucky bowshot unhorsed him and his crew.  Harold took the risk of charging out with his housecarls and routed Williams unhorsed knights and took William prisoner.
That's one for the history books.
Technically, the Normans and company could still win, but I'm too demoralized to go on.
End of battle.