ADLG Teutonic Knights v Communal Italian

A rare outing for my Eastern European medieval collection this week with the Teutonic Knights taking on Sean's beautifully painted Communal Italian.

I hadn't looked at the list before and, from what I remember, it has had a major change in that you can now have six Baltic medium swordsmen (the previous version had very few infantry at all). On the assumption that Sean's Italians would be infantry based and not that manoeuvrable I went for one command of the Balts with a couple of skirmishers and two identical commands of knights and light horse giving a decent sized army of 24 elements. The vague plan was to dominate any terrain with the Balts, hold up most of the Italian army with some light horse and smash the rest with the two knight groups.

The terrain fell nicely for the Teutons who deployed the two mounted commands on the left and centre with the Balts on the right:

Following the plan the knights begin to redeploy to the right leaving a couple of Turcopoles and Hungarian horse archers to delay the Italians. The Balts move forward towards the fields:

Sensing an opportunity the Turcopoles charge home against an Italian crossbow horse. They inflict a hit and give the Italian knights something to think about:

In the Italian's turn the Turcopoles finish off the Crossbowman forcing the Italians to detach some knights to deal with them:

Elsewhere Italian infantry advance while the Teutons continue to redeploy and push forward into the fields:

One Turcopole valiantly holds off the knights while the other makes a run for the Italian baggage, only lack of command points will stop him now: 

Remarkably the Turcopole survived the first contact but falls to a flank charge from another knight. The Turcopoles have certainly done their job well:

The lines are closing in the centre and on the right:

Shooting casualties mount for the Teutons and they have a bit of a traffic jam on the right by the fields:

Further shooting goes more in favour of the Teutons though and the first knight is into action on the far right:

The situation between the two fields is rather complex!:

The Italian mounted crossbowman falls to the Teutonic crusader knight:

The Italians commit to an attack with the odds in their favour, at least if they win quickly:

One Teutonic knight has fallen and one Crusader is down with the second almost joining him. However, the Teutons still have uncommitted units available:

The impressive looking but undefended Italian holy standard falls to the Turcopoles. Being worth 6 hits this is a blow to Italian morale:

The Italians demonstrate that they too can loot camps as two knights hit the unprotected Teutonic camp. The second knight command is going to be forced to charge soon. A couple of the Italian spearmen have been weakened by shooting but they do have the advantage of their mad man-propelled carts with spikes which are bad news for any mounted:

Numbers are starting to count for the Teutons in the battle for the fields:

Teutonic and Crusader knights crash into the Italian spear line!:

The Teutons are quickly gaining the upper hand between the fields:

One Italian spearmen is ridden down with a second almost gone. Against the spikey carts and mixed spear/crossbow things go less well though:

The Italian army is almost broken, a few more hits suffice for the Teutons and victory goes to the Germans:

A close fought game with the Italians breaking exactly and the Teutons being only four off breaking themselves, it was closer but I managed to rally a couple of units at the end. Could easily have gone the other way.

The plan worked reasonably well I think and the Turcopoles on the left did a great job, taking out one Italian element to equal their own loss of one and sacking the valuable Italian camp. I think I could have used the Balts better, if I'd split them up they could have attacked the field on the Italian baseline without being in danger from the Italian knights but in the end numbers counted. 

The spikey cart things seemed much more useful than regular war wagons, being able to charge home and having a ZOC really helps them and makes charging into lines of infantry considerably more risky for knights.

Not having seen Sean for a long time (over a year!) was great to meet up again and get one of my favourite DBM armies that is rarely used under ADLG into action!