Well, next Saturday we finally kick off the Dark Ages campaign at the local game club.  The guy running the campaign has made up a really cool "period" looking map, and apparently has a lot of nifty things planned for us.

It turns out that most of my enemies will be playing either Vikings or Normans of various flavors.  There will be a few Saxons and Celts, and one other Andalusian, but for the most part, the Plains of Spain won't deal out much Pain.  In fact, quite the opposite, I'm afraid.

The down side to all of this is that most people consider the "El Cid" army lists to be somewhat underpowered, and the "Shieldwall" army lists to be somewhat overpowered.  In practical terms, this means the Vikings and Normans are going to clean the battlefield with Andalusian blood.

So I have a number of options:

1. Chicken out and run some other army
2. Use the historical Andalusian tactics of buying off invaders and using lots of allies
3. "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee"

I'm not keen on #1, since I like my Andalusians (poor fighters that they are), and more importantly have a lot of cash tied up in their figures.  #2 seems a little pointless in a WAR game, though I suspect I'll need to resort to some bribery from time to time.  So #3 it is, though the "sting like a bee" part might be hard to pull off.

The advantage I have is cheap troops (in points terms) and lots of missile capable troops.  My cavalry (Jinetes) are fantastic light horse, with probably the best maneuverability of any cavalry in the game.  The down side is that they're mostly just armed with javelins and a shield.  My nobles (basically "medium cavalry" can be counted on to cause some hurt, but I'll only get a relatively small number of them, so I'll need to be careful not to blow them too soon.

My foot soldiers are undermotivated militia spearmen and archers for the most part, though I can have a few crossbows for some armor-punching power.  I can also take half my army's point value in mercenaries, which is where I'll have to get most of my punch.  I'm planning to "hire" some Berber mercenary spearmen to act as an elite foot unit, and I need some Christian Knights to level the playing field against the Normans.

But what I'm up against is pretty impressive.  The Vikings are an all-foot army of very tough, very good fighters with lots of armor.  That means I'll be hard pressed to even hurt them, and they'll cut through my militia like an axe through balsa wood.  They also have an annoying rule called "Fury of the North" that basically means all of my troops are scared sh!tless of them and probably won't stand to fight them anyway.  The disadvantage of Vikings is that they will have around 1/2 as many men on the field as I do, they're not very fast, and they have very few missile weapons beyond javelins.

Normans are a heavy cavalry army par excellence.  They are the biggest, toughest horsemen on the block, and they could "charge through the very gates of Babylon" as one period commentator put it.  Their foot are very heavily armored, and decent fighters, so again will have my lads for lunch.  They're also short on missile weapons, but not mobility.  Their k-niggits can't keep up with my Jinetes, but all it takes is one false step, and they'll cut me down.

Sigh.  We'll see how it goes.