The bloody 7th Century: four more games of Age of Penda

Finding myself recovering from illness and with a free afternoon, I managed to fix up a game at short notice with erstwhile chum Matt. A full year ago, we jointly invested in Forged in Battle/ Wiglaf Miniatures to put together some 15/18mm armies for the 7th century – my favourite period of the early medieval age.

However, we’d not managed to actually play a game together yet! It was great to get the opportunity to put that right, and a most excellent afternoon was had by both of us. We managed to crack through four games with plenty of time for catching up and eating cake in between.

In case you’ve not encountered it, Age of Penda is one of Dan Mersey’s self-published quick play rules sets. It’s a ‘top down’ battle game played on an offset grid with a Tactics Board that drives the game play, drawing on both traditional miniatures wargame and boardgame mechanics. (I reviewed it in more detail in this earlier blog post).

Today’s armies were 64 points apiece, slightly less than the sample 80 point forces given in the rulebook but absolutely adequate for a good afternoon’s gaming.

The Saxons were based on an elite raiding force composed almost entirely of professional warriors. This force is almost entirely Wiglaf Miniatures, with a handful of Forged in Battle 15mm.

SAXONS:

6 x Armoured Warrior units @10 pts

2 x Skirmisher units @2 points

The Celtic coalition was a more mixed bag, such as may have fought at the Battle of Degsastan 603 CE. The figures were entirely Forged In Battle 15mm.

SCOTS-IRISH/ WELSH:

3 x Armoured Warriors units @10 pts

5 x Unarmoured Warrior units @3 pts

2 x Skirmisher units @2 pts

Although Age of Penda doesn’t have scenarios as such (just some guidelines in the book), I decided to set up a couple of classic situations based around (1) a hill and (2) a river crossing. First up was the hill – maybe an abandoned hillfort? – set across two grid squares in the centre of the table. Matt took the Celts, I took the Saxons, we rolled for initiative and kicked off.

Having played several times before, I knew two things: (1) get the Armoured Warriors stuck in and (2) if there was defensible terrain, get there first. Fortunately, I won the initiative and was able to get Penda and his chums into pole position on the hill.

There was a stiff fight when the Celts arrived, but their skirmishers on the flanks did little, and the Saxons were able to break up the main attack and hang on to win, aided by some fortunate Rally rolls. (There are two opportunities to rally off damage, but both require a random roll to pull it off, and the Celts were certainly out of luck this time around). Victory conditions are simple – your side breaks and loses when reduced to 3 or less Warrior units (or 2 in the case of forces with 6 or less Warrior units, like the Saxons in this scenario).

For game 2, we swapped forces and replayed the scenario. Matt was learning fast and pulled off some clever moves using the Tactics Board, including stealing the initiative off me on several occasions. (The player with initiative takes the first action each turn, which can be decisive). This was a much more even battle, as Matt got his Saxons to the hill first. However, I’d concentrated on bringing up as many Celts as possible so that I had options to reinforce the line. What I managed to get right in this game was swapping out damaged units using two Move actions, as well as successfully making Rally tests. With a little luck, my Scots-Irish king hung in there and broke the Saxons!

For the third game, I stuck with the Celts and Matt with the Saxons. We laid out a river across the centre of the board; following the rules exactly as written, the river created four squares of impassable terrain with a single ford in the centre box (marked by the tree in the pic above).

Reading up on the impassable terrain rule, we realised that this meant no unit could enter the 4 boxes on the river banks, which meant that Skirmishers could not shoot from one side to the other (missile range being a maximum of one box). We decided that it must be a very wide river and played on, but the Skirmishers stayed at the back! Effectively, this was going to be a scrap over a very tight choke point, which would probably favour the Saxons with their greater number of Armoured warriors.

This game wasn’t a long one! We both surged forwards, leading with our best units and taking as many Move orders as possible (Matt also discovered the the ‘Charge’ special activation didn’t have to result in combat, so he used that to get more of his Warriors up in support). Having prioritised getting my three Armoured units to the ford first, I enjoyed a couple of excellent rounds of combat where the attacking Saxons took quite a drubbing (defending some terrain means that your opponent has to roll 5+ rather than 4+ when attacking), but eventually ran out of steam. My king was reduced to a single unit with no-one left in close support, as I had spent all my activations on the combat in the ford! Another Celtic loss.

After a civilised round of tea and cake – closely based on Asterix in Britain – we swapped forces again and plunged into the bloodstained waters of the ford for the final time.

It had been a great afternoon’s gaming, and the dining room table size of the game (my mat has a playing area of 90 x 90 cm) meant that we rattled through the battles. With a similar level of detail to DBA and a very clever decision-making system, I’m enjoying Age of Penda more with every game. As we were playing, discussion turned to a possible mini-campaign, some new ideas for terrain and Special Tactics, and how I definitely need to get some horsemen (still sat in their bag) painted up for the next game. As soon as this blog post is up, I’m going to get to work on that…

PS It has just been announced that Wiglaf Miniatures came in third place in the ‘top indie companies’ category in the On Tabletop awards 2022 – well done chaps!