"El Cid" 11th Century AD

Last night Paul,Brian and I played a game that saw all of us worn out at the end of it!!
I commanded the Moors whilst Paul commanded the Spanish infantry and Brian commanded the Spanish cavalry.

This is a shot of the table before any movement,Spanish on the left and Moors on the right.The objective of the game was for the Spanish to capture the town and hills,and for the Moors to defend both-simple!!

Paul's first attack begins,he swept forward with his armoured infantry,against the "cream" of my army-Ben Yussef's Black Guard-Brian appears to be contemplating his moves,or is it just wind??

This shot is taken from behind the Spanish cavalry,and shows what a formidable task Brian had.I had written a plan that would see a Moorish cavalry unit move to outflank Brian-but he had forseen this move and had written a counter manoeuvre-the man learns too quickly!!!!!

My central infantry have charged forward in an attempt to stop the Spanish infantry from moving-this was,initially, successful,but then Brian helped Paul out by attacking my exposed flank-he definitely learns too quickly!!-This tussle went on for a couple of moves,then I began to win and Push everything back-Hurrah!!
Of course this situation was not to last,and eventually numbers and wonderful dice throws sent me packing!

The inevitable cavalry clash! I gained impetus by charging down hill and Brian was beaten in all of the initial melees-however he fought back with tenacity and the whole affair turned into a swirl of horses,lance against shield,oaths and furious dice throwing by both myself and Brian-thrilling stuff!!

This is another shot of the cavalry battle,both sides putting their reserves-at this point I was in real trouble.Meanwhile in the background Paul's infantry are creeping forward,driving my Guard back,and threatening to assault the town,my only success on this flank was my cavalry beating Paul's-another Hurrah!!

Paul's assault is shown here,my central infantry have all but disappeared,and with only very poor troops in the town,it looks all over-HOWEVER-the empire strikes back,and I somehow managed to keep control of the town-yet another Hurrah!!!

I am piling troops into the town here,and Paul has been repulsed!! We had been playing for nearly three hours,and a count up showed that I had 5 cavalry units still left on the hill,against Brian's 2,and the town still hadn't fallen-so I declared myself the winner-Brian and Paul agreed that I was the winner and that I played much better than they did and also had a better plan-Well,really they whinged and moaned,and said a Draw would be a fair result,and of course I couldn't argue against that,so we called it a draw!!

We won't be playing on Sunday-too cold! but I have another painting project on the go,so has Brian and I will post some photo's of that-and hopefully Dave will send me a photo of his latest "El Cid" offering.

All of the figures used in last night's game were from Warrior Miniatures "El Cid" range.