ADLG Swiss v Hundred Year's War English

Another game at the club, this time with my Swiss taking on Ted's HYW English to give him a practice game for a club competition later in the year.

I went for a simple composition of one large elite pike block with LI to screen it, a small second command of medium foot with polearms and a third command of three knights and a couple of crossbow light horse.

Winning the initiative the Swiss decided to attack in the plains and deployed the polearm command on the left, the pikes in the centre and the knights on the right:

Ted's much wider (but smaller!) army consisted of massed longbow, foot knights and billmen with the addition of a heavy cannon:

Both sides advance quickly, the Swiss are heavily outnumbered on their right but have the crossbow light horse to slow the enemy down:

The Swiss pike charge home! Unsurprisingly the English longbow on the left of the line are wiped out but other than that the English stand firm:

On the left things have gone less well. One Swiss polearm base has been shot to death while two more have been damaged after charging into combat:

The Swiss knights have redeployed to the left of the pike block but have been slow doing so. The pike block itself fights on inflicting more hits on the English and destroying some billmen. It is in danger of being outflanked on it's left though:

The Swiss pike are getting the upper hand in the centre and the knights will soon be able to run over the so far very ineffective English artillery:

On the left in the field the Swiss have lost three elements to the English one. The right flank of the Swiss pike is struggling but holding on:

The English C-in-C has joined in the fight with his foot knights but is about to be overwhelmed:

The English artillery is ridden down while the sole surviving Swiss polearm element battles on:

Having a small break point (19) the English army collapses when it's C-in-C is cut down though a couple of pike elements have fallen for the Swiss as well:

The English army flees, the crossbow light horse having done a valiant job of holding almost 1/3 of the enemy army away from the action:

I'm not sure there was that much skill involved in this game, both sides basically lined up and went for it! There was a bit of variety in the luck, the Swiss polearm command being easily slaughtered while the English facing the Swiss pike men had dismal dice rolls in general. With a slightly bigger army the Swiss could afford more losses though which made a difference in the end.

One thing I'd not tried before was the 'polearm' category newly introduced in V4 of ADLG (previously the Swiss were armed with 2HCW). It is better against mounted but no use at all against infantry and, since you really don't want medium swordsmen to be facing mounted anyway I'd much prefer to have at least the option of sticking with the old 2HCW category!