The Rus in ADLG action from Reading

[madaxeman]

One of the great beauties about L'Art de la Guerre is the way the shorter game time (about 2.5 hours) means you can fit 3 games into a day. It sounds fairly minor, but a 3-round Swiss Draw tournament is just, well, a lot, lot more "meaty" than a 2-round one would be - but without imposing so many games on you that a poor army design could leave you cursing the protracted pain of facing a series of lengthy drawn out defeats either.



The recent Reading-based 1-dayer ticked all of those boxes with a theme of "the World of the Rus and Vikings" - armies with a connection to either of these peoples, in the form of a historical antipathy or conflict, a mention in the army list notes, or an allied contingent of either of the two.



I however went full Zelensky on this one, and chose a Rus army with no allies at all, a simple list chosen mainly as it was as close as I could get to using all of the lockdown-rebased Rus spearmen I owned all on table together whilst not totally ignoring the "good" options in the overall design.



That did mean a lot of spearmen - an often-unloved troop type who are nevertheless superb in the right circumstances. And, of course, how could I forget, a chance yet again to deploy the age-old groan-inducing Rus Abbot punchline against three unwary opponents!



All three Bella Emberg-free reports from this event are now online as the Rus take on the Carolingians, the Vikings and the Thematic Byzantine Empire in these fully illustrated and statistic rich reports.

https://www.madaxeman.com/reports/Southern_League_r4_2022_1.php

[Kiwidave]

Well done on winning the tournament! Gives my Rus some hope.... I tend to have my Druzhina as HC, but it looks like the Elite HF is a better option?

[Big Insect]

I also agree with that comment Dave - having 4 x HF spearmen, armoured elite + 4 x Huscarls is a significant level of 'punch' to the v.4 Rus army.

Tim resisting taking all the mounted options (other than a single Pechneg LC bow) was a brave move (show of faith), but it certainly paid off.

Just going to prove that old Russian saying (from Lenin but often quoted by Stalin) that "quantity has a quality all of its own".