"Saxon Revolt!" Topic

A Danish lord attempts to quell a Saxon uprising on his lands. A battle report using LOTR SBG rules!

link

Looks like a great game!

I like the pic above particularly. Something about the balance and lighting.

Nice battle report….

Nice BatRep.
Danish cavalry? – I am unsure they used them as battle cavalry in this period?

But what do I know!

There is not any evidence that they fought on horseback. They would have ridden to battle and then dismounted to fight. The number of archers I used is also highly supsect. What's the point of playing games if you don't use some imganative license though?

So long as you had fun, who cares! I quite agree!

By the way, I love the cavalry figures, and you have painted them rather well!

Excellent battle report of a cleverly created scenario! The eye-catching terrain enhanced the game too!

There isn't much hard and fast evidence for much of anything in this period that isn't open to vastly different interpretations? In small scale actions who can truly say with 100% certitude that no small group of Vikings ever rode their horses into such a fight?

i really like the consistent content that you are producing.

the only desire that I have is that I wish the battle reports had some army lists attached, so I could easier understand the match up.

Thanks for the compliment Stew. I will keep army lists in mind next time I write report. For this one, I think it he Danes had their lord, 5 hearthguard, 8 warriors, 9 archers and 8 cavalry. The Saxons had a lord, 6 hearthguard, and 40 peasants. Give or take a couple.

"Hearthguard" on the A-S side would properly be called thegns and/or geneats. They may have "rotated", that is to say, some always on hand at the lord's manor or great hall, while the rest are at home on their own holdings.

"Peasants" would be ceorls, cottars, bordars and villiens. Below them all were the outright slaves. And slaves did not muster to fight, ever, that I know of.

Did A-S or A-D mounted troops (the whole fyrd) fight mounted? Yes they did, but not as a rule. omacl.org/Anglo/part5.html The A-S Chronicle makes Earl Ralph, a transplanted Norman, use his fyrdmen as cavalry in a battle at Hereford in 1055. Of course, this reference is usually used to show that A-S did NOT fight on horseback. I see it as evidence that they did, but that they sucked at it. Earl Ralph saw his men on horses and assumed that they might be effective that way.

In my games, if A-S, A-D or Vikings engage in battle on horseback, their drill is extremely limited: they can only throw/shoot in "open order", and they don't charge, or withdraw from combat without falling into disorder, i.e. retreat rather than an orderly withdraw, etc. They are okay at mounted skirmishing, and of course are quite effective at running down routing troops. But a la "earl Ralph's" experience, if they rout they do so swiftly! :)

Household troops were called Hearthweru, or later, Huscarles
Fyrd would be Theigns (ðegn) -- and Ceorls (commoners),led by Gesithas

There were several subdivisions of Ceorls. Gesithas, kotsetla and Gebur.

Below the lowly Gebur, were the ðeow – slaves or bondsmen, who, I imagine, would not be expected to fight except in the direst emergency!

A good description of the Anglo-Saxons is on the Regia Anglorum site-- link

thanks Gjlsnowman, i look forward to the next post.

i'm sure i'm not the first to say this, but these reports have reminded me about using the LoTR rules for skirmishes. i've always liked those rules without the magic. I found my AoT rules guidelines on my computer but also dug out some of my old LOTR sourcebooks as well. maybe at the next convention / club meeting if i'm not too distracted trying to do big battle stuff i'll put on a skirmish game. it'd be easy to do a 4 player, 4 x4 table, each player with a leader type figure and between 15 and 20 models.

Nearly all the discriptions we have of saxon and "viking" warfare are tales of large battles where cavalry would be of little use trying to break into a solid enemy shield wall consisting of sometimes 1000s of warriors(see Hastings).
I am pretty sure that in a lot of small undocumented skirmishes with less than 100 men a side a few mounted warriors who could easily ride round your shieldwall would be very dangerous and it would probably happen regularly.
An expierienced open minded leader would definately not throw away any advantage he had and would probably do whatever was needed to win.