Heavenfield 634

And so, the mighty army of Welsh scum crept from their sheep excrement filled lairs and came to fair Northumbria……

King Oswald’s vastly outnumbered met them on the field of Heavenfield, with Oswald on the right, briother Oswy holding the centre and Eanfrith the allegedly dead on the right. Something definitely didn’t look right with Eanfrith…..

All knew that this would be a hard battle of attrition, with the bulk of both armies being the hard-to-turn deep units of shieldwall and god knows what the Welsh were……warriors, spear or something else.  The liberal use of incorrect figures types was not helping…..

On the right Oswald’s cavalry seemed reluctant to do anything…..but then Saxons weren’t renowned for their use of cavalry. The Welsh sub-king code-named “Tony” manged to slip his light cavalry round the flank and even help kill a unit of Oswald’s cavalry. On the Northumbrian left Eanfrith “went defensive” whilst Oswy began to smite the Welsh centre commanded by Cadwallon. Light troops died but most deep units just absorbed their losses. Having slipped round Oswald’s flank Tony changed from his usual tactic of taking the camps to trying to attack in the rea. How Tony! How Welsh! I think he was scared of the Northumbrian peasants holding the camps.

Eventually deep units died on both sides, and Eanfrith was wounded. No problem for a semi-zombie. However the Welsh numbers began to tell. But as darkness began to fall the Welsh had not achieved their objective and they slunk off back to their dens of iniquity. Northumbria was saved and Oswald proved to be a mighty king!

Thanks to Phil for putting together an excellent historical scenario. It was nice to get my Saxons out on the table plus my Grand Manner hernia-inducing piece of terrain.

I am still highly dubious about the counters in play. It was appalling of Tony not to bring his sets so that we had to ask Colin to get his. And once again Tony had to borrow someone else’s fast play sheet!!!!