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[Tomcost]

mano o mano

It's mano a mano. It's the same thing as saying hand to hand.

Feel like a grammar nazi

[Talvara]

They did pick a very good place to negate our cavalry it seems. depending on how archer heavy we are (and if they're still axe throwing maniacs) we could perhaps pepper them with arrows to force them out of their position. Either they try to run and we ride them down. or they come at us and meet us on our terms.

then again we're surrounded by more experienced and higher ranked lords. I'm sure their alarm bells are ringing anyway, and maybe that engaging them is a now or never deal.

[Gervassen]

Others seem to think this will be challenging. Hunger is what it is. This will be a massacre because a hill cannot undo the effects of muscle wastage. If I asked you to go without food for three weeks then exerting yourself on a forced march, you'd lose a good 5 kg of muscle.

I say we try the same tactic as William the Bastard. Charge with our cavalry, contact and then pull away before getting bogged down.

If we had tactical control, kahn would be the man with the plan, no doubt. I'll +1 it in hopes that we can influence events somehow.

But let's note as an interesting aside that Hastings was not won by fake retreats. The cavalry had done those several times earlier without winning the battle. Each time it happened, Harold reformed his disordered lines, and he would have done so again. Instead, a lowly archer won that battle with a single arrow to his eye while he was attempting to do so. No one in that age would gladly cede glory to an archer, but the text itself makes it clear enough, while naturally playing up the cavalry's role.

If we do this like Hastings, then fake retreats are cool and much better than grinding away toe-to-toe at their shieldwall, but the clincher is finding a way to deliver that arrow to that eye.

Else, we do like Talvara and force our way to him with Luther on our wing. We've got Luther with new training, and us with decent heroic combat. I will +1 cutting a swath to Gergal with Luther on our wing. +1 that shit into outer space. We will be the arrow to his eye.

Give a message not of valor to our troops but to survive and go home to their families. We need to come back with as many people as we possible can to truly rebuild after all of these unfortunate events. As for mano o mano combat no count stone is not that good with his shield or Armour use for me to confidently say that we can take one gregal

+1 to a battle speech to invigorate our men, but let's not instruct them to be cowards. Let's give them a fiery speech. A decisive push forward that ends the battle quickly saves more lives than preaching caution can. When the infantry is deployed, it needs impetuosity and animal spirits to have the energy to smash the enemy off the hill and down toward the marsh. Being tepid is an awesome way to make sure that a bunch of weak, starving men actually manage to hold their advantageous position. With dash and elan, we can blast them off that hill. Urging caution will not push them off it.

Stone has a lot of Heroic Combatant skill, which modifies the other stats in make-or-break situations. We need to be more willing to utilise this trait, which rarely crops up due to our risk-aversion. Given the various parameters at work, I think single combat would have worked, but Talvara's plan with Luther by our side, watching our six, is definitely sufficient. We can even goad Gergal forward with our insults.

Its better than trying to break a shield wall in hand to hand combat, even against exhausted troops. The exhausted Anglo-Saxon troops at Hastings almost beat the fresh Norman troops even though the Anglo-Saxons had forced-marched all the way down from York in North England, a trip of 267 miles in only a couple of weeks.

The Saxons were marching hard, not starving hard. Huge difference. Harold was marching his army through his own lands, getting supplied as he went. The body is capable of recuperating swiftly when it is being fed. Emphasis on being fed. What the enemy is capable of right now is far less than the average fyrdsman at Hastings.

[tryrar]

How's this for a Rousing Speech?

"Men! This is the day of the final battle with these barbarians from across the sea! This is the day we show them we aren't ripe for easy conquest and plunder, and that all they'll get for their troubles is misery and death! We'll march up that hill and take it from them, and drive them right into the marsh! For our King and country! For our lord! FOR FEROSHIRE!!!!"

[Gervassen]

Good stuff, tryrar. That strikes the right tones. Although we should expand Feroshire to Folesden. We've got to be more inclusive these days, you know.

Since we are spending a bit of time still rallying our men, we can also still give orders to Fin and his captains before we take position in the massed cavalry.

Kahn's plan is good for the King as an overall battle plan for an entire army with cavalry advantages--and while a bit metagamey, I still have to assume that the King and his generals were discussing the same battlefield realities and tactical options and came to a similar conclusion. Urist's plan was also a contender, but the problem is that he said that the enemy would charge down the hill while simultaneously explaining the polearm-impaling and cavalry-flanking slaughter that happens next. If the enemy have the same insight, then in their weakened condition, they'll probably opt to stay in a shieldwall on top the hill as per kahn.

Our own flank, however, has a different set of circumstances, with some light cavalry but mostly infantry. They won't be able to employ the same tactics as the King's horse-centric calculations. Yet to be given a flank is no small distinction and we must bear our duties ably.

Under your command, you have roughly 30 light cavalry, 100 spearmen, 200 halberdiers, 300 archers, 20 peasant billmen, 100 swordsmen, and 100 skirmishers (slings and javelins).

Heavy complement of archers. As Talvara said earlier we can hope to bring them down from hill with an unbearable shower of arrows. Each man should have three sheaves of 24 arrows each--enough to leave a mark, we should hope. Let's dispose our archers and skirmisher on the extreme flank without support appearing behind them. The archers are simply instructed to retreat backward on the path of their advance if charged. The skirmishers are told to retreat into the marsh. The spears and polearms will join the main battle and anchor its ends, the swords will be a reserve behind these, ready to stop a flank but not committed initially. The personal retinue of fifty dragoons and the 30 light cavalry remains behind as the last reserve to exploit what may become an opening.

The orders on our flank proceed as thus...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For this, we need Uther Ren to command his skirmishers and archers into the gap on the flank, skirmishers first, directing the skirmishers that they can retreat into the marsh safely, then leading his archers back the route of advance and reforming them when the enemy is engaged again.

Fin can leave the polearms to an anonymous captain, since anchoring the line requires no finesse. He will command the swords that are to remain in reserve a short while and then tie down the flanking enemy reserves and potentially hurl them into the swamps, where unlike sling-and-dagger skirmishers, their axes and shields will not be a useful combination. (If you've hiked through a swamp, i dare you to get through a calf-deep slorping mess without slipping and getting both hands mucky. I've never managed.)

Oswald will command the retinue and light cavalry, which still have not received orders in the last map pane. They will exploit the tied down reserves to their flank and rear just like the regular archers, only faster and better based on Oswald's judgement.

Let each captain know the importance of his role. In particular, Uther will get a knighthood from this successful manoeuver and the best terms for building his settlement.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Yet try to write the update that describes the growing of crops with compelling vividness.

are you assuming maldevious can't pull that shit off
it would be some serious purple prose but i see it happening

The only reason I doubt this is that I doubt he would.

mano o mano

It's mano a mano. It's the same thing as saying hand to hand.

Feel like a grammar nazi

It is saying hand-to-hand. Or in this case, "hand or hand".
So yes, let us engage the seaweed-sucking scum of the sea in hand-or-hand combat!

I think Gerv's latest plan sounds good. I hope I'm not being seduced by the presence of diagrams...

[Gervassen]

There are different ways it could flow, GWG, but all of them are as good or better. I doubt they brought their hilltop battle lines down the slope of the hill to the very edge of the marsh, because it is not an advantageous position merely to be arrayed down the side of a hill. Instead, they will tuck their lines inward on the crown of the hill. A good enough deployment to secure a flank, until arrows begin raining from the gap and hitting those facing forward. The anchor battalion on the flank will see this, and the skirmisher and archer companies doing it. With those conpanies being very lightly armed and having put their backs boldly to the marsh, it will be tempting to charge down and heave the skirmishers into it. What happens next to the slingers is not terribly concerning. They will rout into the swamp, but the archers will hopefully reform under Ren and support the body of swordsmen. If the swordsmen do it right, the enemy should have been lured downhill close to the same swamps.

But yeah, battle diagrams are always sexy.

[Maldevious]

Clarification: your men are on the left flank, not the right.

[Gervassen]

Ah. There's a button to handle that transform quickly enough, I suppose, but instead of uploading five altered images at nearly bed, hopefully we can just squint and imagine the change! I trust the assumptions are otherwise good. I gave them more swamp than I needed to, the beneft of having nearby reserves, etc. The basic gist is putting skirmishers in a place where only skirmishers can retreat, luring a flank down there and pushing it in after the skirmishers.

And if they don't take the bait, then hey, skirmishers pouring fire into a flank. No complaints there!

[Maldevious]

The images looked good otherwise.

[evilcherry]

If they don't have enough archers we can just lay siege on them. Their supplies are cut, and it is a matter of time before they surrender.

[3man75]

+1 to gervs strategy.

Also FINALLY we finish this month its taken quite some time hasn't it?

Also if possible ask our men if confronted by the enemy commander to call for help
And take him alive. We need him as a prisoner/symbol of what happens when someone tries invade our country.

[tryrar]

+1 to gervs strategy.

Also FINALLY we finish this month its taken quite some time hasn't it?

Also if possible ask our men if confronted by the enemy commander to call for help
And take him alive. We need him as a prisoner/symbol of what happens when someone tries invade our country.

Only if we can, and the opportunity presents itself. Otherwise, his head in a box would do

[3man75]

Of course and a decent oppertunity would be 5 on 1.

[Gervassen]

Also FINALLY we finish this month its taken quite some time hasn't it?

I can't go back! This war has been too long and too dark... I've forgotten how to wage peace. 

Also if possible ask our men if confronted by the enemy commander to call for help

Gergal is near his banner in the middle of the host, and I do believe we'll meet him there long before our troops on the flank finish their business. I doubt whether we can turn him to our uses, and wouldn't mind seeing his severed head; but in general, after the battle, we will need to give a small bounty for each live Baabar if we're to collect enough to work our mines and fields. There'll be an impulse among other lords and their men to give no quarter. As evilcherry points out, this victory could be mostly bloodless now, but the fact that the King chose otherwise points to the vengeful state of his mind. He probably is representative of the people who survived in the affected areas.

Updated the diagrams with horizontal flip, otherwise I think we've completed all our battle preparations...