Alfred the Great - The Great Heathen Army 871 AD, January Turn One

Turn one of our Cyberboard playtest of Alfred the Great - The Great Heathen Army 871 AD by Mark Sheppard.

Alfred the Great-The Great Heathen Army 871 AD - Set Up

So with the set up completed and the Cyberboard game box emailed to Mr Steve, I set about composing a Saxon move in response to the Viking threat.

It occurs to me that the Wessex leaders need to act swiftly to try and deplete the Vikings early before the summer army turns up and better still clear them off the Temes and kill the two kings. However the Vikings and their warriors are formidable fighters and I need to try and choose my ground carefully to offset this advantage.

The obvious choices are a swift advance on Readingum and either an assault on the walls and bloody fight within (risky) or lay siege  (less risky but more time consuming) and in time move on Lundene to prevent the summer army landing. However the royal army can't reach Readingum in under two moves and this assumes the Vikings will stay put on my approach, which I think is unlikely.

The next strategy would be to advance to the hills north of Basengas, collect a portion of the garrison on the way and invite open battle from the larger Viking army, hoping to so damage them that my remaining garrisons can come together and mop up. This option would allow a fall back to Basengas by any survivors should the need to retreat at some stage present.

The other option is to advance to Basengas and respond to the Vikings next move, which would likely be an attack on Welengaford, thus securing their hold on the Temes. I would assume an assault would be the likely attack which might cause enough damage to their main army for Aethelred to take advantage of.

So leaving a garrison of an Earl and ten warriors in Wintanceaster, King Aethelred and the Wessex army marched north to Basengas, to await events.

In true Viking style King Halfdan marched his host up river to Welengaford and attacked the walls. The brave Wessex garrison resisted this first attempt to break into the town and repulsed the pagans with the loss of nine of their warriors.

King Halfdan deciding discretion being the better part of valour and with his army now nine warriors fewer pulls back into the royal forests to regroup, ending turn one.

Viking Comment - Turn One  

It looks like the Saxons have advanced towards me, the army looks smaller than mine but apparently JJ wants:

a) A fight

and

b) To get his King killed.

So let’s do something else,

First, read the rules on movement and terrain costs, I can move '4' speed and it costs two points to cross woods and hills .There’s a smaller army in Welengaford so let’s attack that.

Ouch, that didn't work so rather than continue with this let's move off to the west.