Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Yes!

9 (90%)

No!

0 (0%)

I really don't care!

1 (10%)

Total Members Voted: 10

[PewdsRocks]

Agreed. How did you guess I was a girl?

[Patrick Hunt]

Your characters as far as I remember are all women and you use Georgia and Jordan a lot so seems likely your a girl with a name similar to that.

[3man75]

Agreed. How did you guess I was a girl?

Oh, you are? i thought it was just a sarcastic joke.

[PewdsRocks]

Yup I am. Good guess on the name as well it's Georgia.

[Beneviento]

So the final plan is.

Camp for the night with no fire.
Give the men a double ration of food.
1/4 men on guard at all times in 2 hour shifts with 1 officer at all times.
Publicly reward the men who found the bandit camp with 1 crown each and give a speech to praise the whole company.
Break camp 1 hour before dawn to surround the enemy camp in the dark.

Formation wise I think 8 spear and 15 bow with us at the front to make the first move.
4 spear and 10 bow to left , right and rear of the camp who will move in after we draw the enemies attention either to attack on all sides if they fight or trap them if they try to run.

We have number, experience and equipment on our side plus surprise if we sneak in successfully. We don't want any of them to escape with information on us but we should give them the chance to surrender.
They're more useful alive.

Maybe our group moves in and demands surrender then if they refuse we open fire and the other 3 groups do the same from flanks and rear.
Spearmen stay behind us and move in if the enemy attacks to screen our bowmen.

I'd expect them to break the moment our flank units open fire, if not they're surrounded and cut to shreds in minutes anyway.

You decide that your men are too tired to fight immediately, so you order another scouting party ahead to make sure the bandits don't move, and allow your men to set up camp early albeit without fires. After camp is ready, you assemble the men and award each of the 5 scouts who found the bandits 2 shillings each. That night, you order a double ration of food to be served out, though this only amounts to twice as much hardbread and a piece of dried meat for each man. After setting up the order of watches and making it known that you'll be the officer awake for the last watch, you sleep for the night.

You are woken for the predawn watch, and are glad you were able to get uninterrupted sleep, while the other officers were woken in the middle of their rest. The watch passes uneventfully, and an hour before dawn, you order the men woken and brought to assembly. There, you divide up into four groups, each of four spears and ten crossbows, while your group, which will move in first, has 8 spears and 15 crossbows. You then move quietly to surround the source of the smoke. You send two scouts forward to make sure they haven't moved, and they are able to remain undetected and return to you with news that the group is somewhere between 15 and 20 men in size.

You quietly approach the camp, and although your spearmen are new to ambushing, your crossbows keep them quiet enough. However, when you step into a good sized clearing, about 50 feet by 50 feet, you find a group of about 20 scruffy-looking men looking back at you in a close group, armed with a motley collection of spears, clubs, and hunting bows. The clearing has a fire in the middle-left of it, and a ragged canvas fly is rigged on the other side of the bandits from you. It is ringed by You command them to lower their weapons, but your persuasiveness is not up to the task, and the only response you get is a spat curse and an arrow loosed at you, nicking your lower leg, though not severely.Your men respond with a volley of crossbow fire, knocking two bandits down and putting bolts through the extremities of another two. The bandits charge, loosing arrows, and your spears move meet them, though one has taken an arrow between the knee and hip and has fallen out of formation. The battle is pretty even right now, though the other groups will be ready to move in in about three minutes. The next move is yours.

Spoiler: Cedric Stoneye (click to show/hide)

Name: Cedric Stoneye
Age: 32, born Spring, Year 1213 (Currently Summer, Year 1245)
Possessions: Average Crossbow, Forester's hat, Average Clothes, Above Average Observer, Mail hauberk, 200 Crowns(currency)
Health: Good (Slight Leg Wound)
Skills: Good Crossbowman, Good Leader, Above Average Tactician, Fair Siege Engineer, Fair Conversationalist.

Spoiler: The Aldornian Foresters (click to show/hide)

5 officers (1 leader, 2 crossbow vinteners, 2 spear vinteners)

45 Crossbowmen (crossbows, hauberks/coats of plate, maces, forester hats, boots)
Good Crossbowmen
Good Scouts
Above Average Ambushers
Poor Laborers
Pay:45 crowns per month

20 green spearmen (jerkins, spears, maces, boots)
Fair Spearmen
Fair Laborers
Pay: 100 shillings/10 crowns per month

Neither Tired nor Well-Rested
Supplies: Fair
Morale: Good

[/quote]

[PewdsRocks]

So we total 18 crossbows, us and 7 spearmen fighting plus 1 wounded who will fight again given a little time to heal.
The enemy has 16 fighting 2 wounded 2 dead assuming a full 20 enemies.

I suggest we fight defensively, put 5 crossbows on each flank of the spearmen to prevent the enemy from flanking them and us and the other 5 pick off the enemy bowmen. Just hold our line and wait it out we have the advantage so holding for a couple minutes should pose no problem. When our men arrive they surround the enemy and we demand the surrender again. I doubt they'll resist us then but if they do then we just shoot them down and make sure to leave a few of them wounded but alive.
We need the information they have unless we want to spend who knows how long trying to track down another group of bandits.

Question here is are we honorable or not? If we aren't we can torture survivors for information but it will cause fear amongst everyone we meet afterwards as we develop a reputation for cruelty. If we are we can use persuasion and bribery. I'd expect offering them 1 crown and the chance to live to have them spilling everything they know in short order saving us a lot of time and effort.

Also we need to change our rations and maybe hire a couple of cooks and get a wagon so we can carry more supplies and have proper meals for the men.
Start adding vegetables, dried fruit, cheese, coffee, chocolate, porridge, fish and so on to our rations. A diet of bread and dried meat may last a long time but it's not healthy at all and will cause malnutrition if maintained for more then a month or two. If we want the men healthy they need a better diet plus a healthy diet will make them feel happier since it gives variety and is a lot tastier then dried meat and bread and it will make them stronger and fitter.
More adaptable as well, in cold weather you can make broths and stews that are filling and give them warmth, when on the march they have a wider selection of food, in the morning they can have porridge and coffee to give them plenty of energy and get them up and going for the day. It'll cost more but the benefits far outweigh the costs especially in morale and fitness.
As long as we need to head back into town we can look into hiring more men and getting supplies and a small group of camp staff to handle these jobs so the men are free to hunt, train and rest.

[Patrick Hunt]

Well as I see it we have 2 options. Yours , defensive to conserve our fighting strength and bring overwhelming strength to take prisoners.

Or we divide the crossbows left and right to flank the enemy, fire a volley from both flanks then charge in. More likely to lose men and less likely to get priso.ers but it'll end the battle fast.

I support yours for now, we've lost no men to death yet and they're down 4 already so no need for us to push things.

As for rations, Maybe simplify it to just buying the widest possible variety of food rather then specify what foods. But I do agree we need the variety for health reasons and for morale. A small group of camp aides would be useful as well.

[3man75]

As a roleplayer id be pretty angry someone "spat a curse at me" or told me to fuck off, then fired an arrow at my leg after i asked  them to put down their weapons.

This could be denbatably self-defense and quite honestly we need some prisoners to help the Duke come around the idea to help us more/give more support IF need be in the future bandit clean ups. It'll also help get our street rep up to get more Mercenaries to join with us. More Axeman is what i like but i understand if we don't since...well we were fighting guerrillas not an actual foe.

Also we have dogs right? Can we send them out to bite the enemies archers into submission so the crossbows can concentrate on the melee?

[Patrick Hunt]

If you want them to die sure, the duke might not like it though. They're tracking hounds not war dogs and we couldn't protect them well enough.

I can't make sense of what the middle paragraph is meant to say.

[3man75]

If you want them to die sure, the duke might not like it though. They're tracking hounds not war dogs and we couldn't protect them well enough.

I can't make sense of what the middle paragraph is meant to say.

morning sickness im sorry.

Basically IF we capture some dudes lets send them back to the town ASAP to get our street cred up and hire more mercs in the future to replace losses.

An maybe your right about the dogs lets leave them alone and do what Pewd said.

[Patrick Hunt]

Could still persuade them to talk and offer to put in a good word for them. Not our fault then if they still get executed but we need that Intel.

We need shields for the bowmen, better armor for the spearmen and shields for them plus resupply of better food before we hire new men.
But we have plenty of money so should be doable. I have an idea for the kit depending on how things go.

[Worldmaster27]

So we total 18 crossbows, us and 7 spearmen fighting plus 1 wounded who will fight again given a little time to heal.
The enemy has 16 fighting 2 wounded 2 dead assuming a full 20 enemies.

I suggest we fight defensively, put 5 crossbows on each flank of the spearmen to prevent the enemy from flanking them and us and the other 5 pick off the enemy bowmen. Just hold our line and wait it out we have the advantage so holding for a couple minutes should pose no problem. When our men arrive they surround the enemy and we demand the surrender again. I doubt they'll resist us then but if they do then we just shoot them down and make sure to leave a few of them wounded but alive.
We need the information they have unless we want to spend who knows how long trying to track down another group of bandits.

Question here is are we honorable or not? If we aren't we can torture survivors for information but it will cause fear amongst everyone we meet afterwards as we develop a reputation for cruelty. If we are we can use persuasion and bribery. I'd expect offering them 1 crown and the chance to live to have them spilling everything they know in short order saving us a lot of time and effort.

Also we need to change our rations and maybe hire a couple of cooks and get a wagon so we can carry more supplies and have proper meals for the men.
Start adding vegetables, dried fruit, cheese, coffee, chocolate, porridge, fish and so on to our rations. A diet of bread and dried meat may last a long time but it's not healthy at all and will cause malnutrition if maintained for more then a month or two. If we want the men healthy they need a better diet plus a healthy diet will make them feel happier since it gives variety and is a lot tastier then dried meat and bread and it will make them stronger and fitter.
More adaptable as well, in cold weather you can make broths and stews that are filling and give them warmth, when on the march they have a wider selection of food, in the morning they can have porridge and coffee to give them plenty of energy and get them up and going for the day. It'll cost more but the benefits far outweigh the costs especially in morale and fitness.
As long as we need to head back into town we can look into hiring more men and getting supplies and a small group of camp staff to handle these jobs so the men are free to hunt, train and rest.

+1 Sounds good to me. I'd also like to point out that we had fifteen crossbowmen with us, and only four hit. I thought that our guys were good enough to hit targets that were standing still, to the best of my knowledge...

[Patrick Hunt]

Some may have hit the same targets. But yeah that was bad luck.

[Beneviento]

Clearing up ambiguities time!

Food, wagons and camp stuff: The bread and meat ration is because you're traveling fairly light, back in town you'd have more variety, but if you want to spend a little more to get stew/broth fixings, coffee, etc. that would definitely be good both for morale and fitness.

Lots of crossbows missing stuff: There were a lot of factors that made your first volley a little... uninspiring. It was an impulse volley, being a reaction to the bowman shooting at you, so that put a damper on accuracy. Second, I'm currently imagining their formation as about 7 men wide, so there were only really 7 available targets as opposed to 18-20 total men. Those factors, added to multiple shots per target, meant that you only ended up with 4 "hits".

Update tomorrow for sure.

[Patrick Hunt]

How much do our supplies cost right now?