James' Wargaming Weirdness: May 2023

So for the next crusades game I decided to do the battle of Antioch.

Antioch is a really interesting game due to the disparity in numbers and the discovery of the Holy Lance which is a key feature of the battle.

In 1098 The Crusaders had captured the city of Antioch, they then found themselves besieged by a much superior enemy force. The crusader army fell into despair.

However a certain Peter Bartholomew had a vision of a holy relic buried in the floor of a church in the city. Following two days of excavations an ancient spearhead was found. This was identified as the spear with which the centurion Longinus pierced the body of Christ on the cross and therefore a holy relic of immense power and significance.

The discovery was made amidst huge rejoicing and morale in the Christian camp soared to fanatical levels. The Crusaders made a further attempt to negotiate with their Saracen besiegers, and when these negotiations failed the Christian forces sallied out of the city to give battle.

Knights, peasants, noble ladies, camp followers picked up whatever weapons they could find and followed the Holy Lance into battle. With the Holy Lance at their head The Crusaders were filled with fanatical zeal and the Saracen army despite being a much larger force was routed.

So for this game we obviously needed for some special rules. I decided that all of the crusader force would benefit from the morale classification of fanatic. They would have only one unit of cavalry of which the Crusaders were very short in this engagement.

Victory conditions as usual would be that the side which lost over 50% of its bases first would be the loser. In addition if The Crusaders succeeded in killing the Saracen commander they would automatically win the game. If the Saracens captured the Holy Lance, then a dice roll would determine whether the Christians were demoralised or became immune to any moral test whatsoever.

In terms of forces the Christians had 10 units totalling 40 bases, the Saracens had 15 units totalling 60 bases. I also gave the Christians 2 catapults located in the city itself to provide off table artillery support. This was not historical but intended to ensure that the Saracens did not just hang back and shoot.

The Christians formed up in a compact block whereas the Saracens were in a long line which looked very formidable compared with the small number of westerners opposed to them. The Crusaders move forward as quickly as they could as the Saracens predictably peppered them with arrows and began to threaten the flanks of their formation.

In response the Christians opened out their formation to form a kind of crescent to guard their flanks as the Saracens moved in to threaten with their cavalry.

Stung by the Saracen archery fire the Christian flanks were first to engage charging the Saracen cavalry. In the centre the Saracens hung back for a couple of terms loosing arrows before throwing caution to the winds and charging the holy order Knights.

The whole battle had deteriorated into a huge melee and ford the first couple of turns the Christians were very much having the best of it knocking over Saracen units left right and centre. Cross versus Crescent, broadsword versus scimitar, east versus West, sound of the eternal struggle between cultures could be heard as far away as Baghdad.

However as in previous battles it was the crusader light troops which proved to be their weakness. In order to try to prevent the Saracens surrounding them they were forced to put crossbowmen and peasants on the flanks, and despite the fanatic morale light armour of these troops made them very vulnerable. The Saracens seems knocked over the peasants like nine pins and broke through the right flank of the crusader army

By this stage in the game The Crusaders were winning on the left flank where their cavalry had driven everything before them, the Knights in the centre had taken significant casualties but were nevertheless victorious, it was only on the right flank that the crusader army was in danger of collapse.

At this point we carry out a count of bases, finding that the crusaders had lost 20 bases out of 40, the Saracen had lost 32 out of 60. The Crusaders had won! Hurrah! Deus Vult! Tired and bloodied crusaders raised their weapons to the skies in exaltation!

History had been repeated and inspired by the Holy Lance the Crusaders had defeated a numerically superior force.

Round 2

The Neil Thomas rules produced a quick game and we had only been playing for a couple of hours.

We had both enjoyed the game so much that we agreed to play on for another hour and see what happened.

As the crusader general I was feeling pretty confident at this point, but as is often the case my confidence exceeded my ability!

I was not surprised to see the right flank of the crusader army now collapse under attacks of Saracen cavalry and infantry, the crossbowmen faltered and the last unit of knights went down gloriously.

On the left flank the single crusader cavalry unit, which definitely won the title of man of the match, on this occasion continued to carry everything before it.

However in the centre, disaster!

A series of unlucky dice rolls led to the crusader centre collapsing and the Holy Lance fell into the hands of the Saracens! Oh the shame of it!

We duly rolled the dice to see how this would affect the morale of the crusader army and found that they were dispirited and reverted to their normal morale status.

I was feeling quite dispirited as well and turned the left flank of the crusader army to try to recover the Holy Lance. The Saracen commander led his last cavalry reserve to prevent this move and the cavalry of both sides clashed in melee. The crusader commander-in-chief joined in this struggle to try to strike down the Saracen leader.

Very chivalrously the Saracen leader, who could have withdrawn from the melee, refused to do so, and on the second turn of combat he and his bodyguard were defeated and killed by the mounted holy order Knights under the crusader commander-in-chief.

This meant that the Saracens automatically lost the battle, but they had captured the Holy Lance.

What happened to the holy relic, did the fleeing Saracens carry it off, or in a panic did they cast it down to be recovered by the Christians? None could say.

It had been a tremendously exciting battle.

The mark of a good game to me is when the outcome is unpredictable throughout the game and this was certainly the case on this occasion as the advantage see sawed from one side to the other.

Having a smaller army with fanatical morale facing a much larger army was a really interesting challenge, and the presence of the Holy Lance which is a holy relic of legendary status added extra flavour to the game.

Finally, you might notice that the Saracen army includes some British naval brigade mounted on camels. This is because I only had 6 figures in each of my Supreme camelry units and could not source any more to make the units up to 8 figures each. So the idea was to buy 4 AIP British camelry and convert or replace the riders. However the figures only arrived an hour before the battle so I pressed them into service as they were.

This led to many wry comments from other members of the club as to how having British naval brigade with Martini Henrys would give the Saracens an unfair advantage!

Pics below, not all have captions