It is the Russian’s turn to pull a card from their command deck. We pull Lord Vladislav’s activation card. He will get 3 commands. The problem is trying to figure out what to do with these commands. We know the Teuton Lords will continue to attack and raid. We need to find a way to counter the Teutons before they accumulate too many victory points through ravaging. Let’s take a look at the Northern part of the map:
Hermann is active to the South but he levied boats for his transport so it is likely he will stick to the waterways. He is blocked from going North or East from his current location unless he drops his provender. Hermann did not levy carts. Knud & Abel are in the Far west but they have access to ships. Knud & Abel’s play mat shows their muster activity:
Knud & Abel mustered 1 vassal and 2 ships. They have enough ships to sail with all the cavalry units on their mat. Teutons need 1 ship per horse unit and this is exactly what they mustered. Three ships to haul the horses and 1 for the provender. Odds are good they will sail with their first activation. I have this on good authority since I am playing both sides of the game. Sailing takes the whole activation card but would allow Knud & Abel to land at any northern settlement with a port.
It is questionable whether Vladislav has the troops to win a battle against Knud & Abel who have powerful knight units. Vladislav’s levies are less capable:
The triangle pieces are cavalry units and the rectangle pieces are foot units. Here is a chart that shows the capabilities of all the units in the game:
The 4th column shows armor ratings for the various units. Any unit suffering a hit makes an armor roll using these ratings. A dice that comes up in the range listed on the armor table cancels the hit. You can see here that knights cancel hits with a roll of 1-4 making them the most armored unit in the game and very difficult to kill. Vlad cannot go toe-to-toe with the Teutons as things currently stand, the knights are too powerful. Losing a battle would give even more victory points to the Teutons so we need to find another way.
Instead of defending and battling we could focus on counter-raiding the Teutons. We can ravage the west and claim victory points to cancel their effort to raid. To ravage we need to be near Teuton territory so that means we need to move West.
This move puts Vlad on the border where he can use future commands to counter raid. Vlad used all three commands to march. This gives him the dreaded Moved Fought marker so he must feed his troops. He has a provender on his mat and uses it to feed his troops which removes the marker. He is fresh out of provender so finding more will be a priority during his next activation. There are command for this problem.
This ends Vlad’s activation and play returns to the Teutons who may once again draw a card.
The Teuton player draws Knud & Abel. Note that This Lord(s) only gets 2 commands in each activation. They are slightly less capable than Hermann or Vladislav. As anticipated Knud & Abel take the sail command.
This action (as noted in the requirements above) takes the entire command card to execute. Knud & Able sail up the black sea and land deep behind Russian lines at Neva. Sailing gives a unit the moved fought marker so Knud & Able spend their only provender to feed their sea sick troops.
Play moves back to the Russians. We will pick things up in the next post with the Russian response.
Strategic Buffoonery 