Well, last night my Aitolian Hellenistic Greek army took on Karl's mighty Burgundian Ordonnance army. Karl used the list which David Thompson took to Britcon.

My army consisted of four commands.

C-in-C (LH): 18 Sp, 8 Ps, 1 LH, 1 Art, 1 Art (X), 2 Bg. 33ME

Ally (LH): 12 Ax, 16 Ps, 2 LH, 2 Bg. 30ME

Ally (LH): 6 Ps, 2 LH, 2 Bg. 13ME

Ally (Kn): 16 Pk, 2 Kn, 1 LH, 6 Ps, 1 Art, 2 Bg. 33ME

The Ps were a mix of (O) and (I). The Art (X) was an Incendiary Pig.

Stratagems: Ambush, Unusual troops.

Not surprisingly, Karl was the invader. He selected two 1-size Gentle Hills. I selected 1-size Difficult Hill, Vineyard and Orchard, and two 0.5-size Difficult Hills. I assigned terrain placement number 5 to Karl's table edge, and he put his 6 on my left flank. The terrain all finished on the table. My terrain formed a broad band across the mid-table, with the DH on the left, the O in the centre, the V on my right in my deployment zone, and a small DH on the extreme right. The other small DH was in Karl's deployment zone, filling the gap between the larger DH and O. One of Karl's GH was on the left of his deployment zone, while the other was in the rear of my deployment zone and played no part in the game.

Weather and time of day played no part in the game.

I deployed first. The Ax ally went on the left, with 8 Ax in ambush behind the DH in two columns. The small ally faced the left of the O. The Pk ally was positioned such that the Pk could advance between the O and V, with Kn in reserve and Ps facing the O. The C-in-C deployed the Sp in the V in three ranks, but close enough to the front that a single group move could move them out. There were 6 Ps in ambush behind the small DH on my right. The artillery was grouped between the Pk and Sp.

Karl deployed his artillery park on the GH on his left. Next to them was one of his Kn commands, with some of the Kn dismounted. In the centre was Charles with the massed Bw (X/S). On the right, in column was the second Kn command. Beyond them, roughly facing the O and small DH, was the Yorkist ally. He gave his highest PIP dice to Charles, the second to his left flank, the third to his right flank, and the lowest to the Artillery command.

After this, I deployed the Incendiary Pigs behind the boltshooters, rather than in front of the Sp, as I'd originally intended, for reasons I can only ascribe to a brain-fart.

In my first turn, the two commands on my left were unreliable. I also moved the hoplites straight out of the V - a second brain-fart, as I'd forgotten I'd now need 2 PIPs to hold them. Karl's Yorkists were also unreliable, making the left hand side of the table a fairly inactive place early on.

I twice spent 3 PIPs to activate the Ax command, succeeding at the second attempt. But for the rest of the game I only got one chance to try to activate the small command, not succeeding. Karl never tried to activate his Yorkists with PIPs.

Naturally, once my Sp were out of the V, I rolled a 1 for PIPs, requiring them to lurch forward again. Karl meanwhile waited, his Bw (X) sitting outside artillery range. He slowly advanced the Kn on his left. On his right some of the Kn went forward with the Bw (X), while others moved around behind the Yorkists to threaten any aggressive moves by my Ax. He also sent his two Ps (S) handgunners into the O where they confronted my Pk command's Ps.

Over the next few turns I moved the ambush Ax over the large DH. They linked up on the small DH with the other Ax which hadn't been in ambush, carefully keeping more than 240 paces from the Yorkists. In the centre, the Pk moved through the gap between the O and V. The hoplites continued to advance, and I had to commit the C-in-C and LH to face the Kn sub and 1 Kn which threatened the flank of the Sp. Karl's Art also opened up on the Sp, pushing back one column enough to break the Sp into two groups.

Once I got enough PIPs, I moved the Art forward to shoot at Karl's Bw (X), and Karl responded by moving forward as well to return fire. My artillery fire was generally unimpressive, and both bolt-shooters were silenced once or twice, achieving only one pushback of their own.

As my Sp approached the dismounted Kn, Karl declared a Feigned Flight with the Kn command on his left wing. I held the Sp, but let the LH chase the Kn. Karl attacked the LH, but it survived. The Ps clashed in the O, with Karl getting the early ascendancy, but the handgunners then died under weight of numbers.

Serious combat finally occurred when I let some Sp charge into the Bw (X) impetuously, but they made no headway. In my following turn I charged the remaining Sp into the Bd (S), and the Pk into the Bw (X) and a Kn. I got a couple of push-backs against the Bd and Bw, and killed a Kn. Meanwhile, I'd marched the 12 elements of Ax off the small DH and into the O where they started to threaten the flank of the Bw (X). In the following turn, Karl's Bd killed 4 Sp, but I also managed to kill a Bd (S), thanks to the (S) not counting in Karl's turn - not quite enough of a casualty differential to make the Yorkists reliable. Karl also turned a Kn onto the flank of the Pk, but was recoiled into the O.

At this point we had to finish the game due to lateness. My Pk and Sp commands were both less than half way to becoming disheartened. Both of Karl's Kn commands had lost an element, and each had another element in danger in my next bound. So while the game had ended in a draw, I felt quite confident about the future course of the battle.

Conclusions:

The Sp did their job well, though it was hard to watch four Sp die in one turn to the Bd. The important point, as others have said, was that the loss of a single Bd is vital when there's no reserve. On the other hand, I underestimated the power of the Bw (X/S) in combat against my Pk and Sp - it was going to take a lot of fighting to deal with them. The Bw did shoot down one Pk element, but they weren't likely to get many more shooting opportunities, and, again, Karl didn't have much of a reserve to deal with any breakthrough by my Pk. The other key was that my Ax were within a couple of bounds of advancing out of the O onto the flank of the Bw (X).

My PIPs were generally acceptable, although the C-in-C rarely had enough PIPs to both manage the Sp and browbeat unreliable allies. Karl's PIPs were generally acceptable. In the middle of the game he had two bounds in a row when no PIP dice was lower than 5. But these were followed by two bounds in which no PIP dice was higher than 2 (they were his dice, not mine!).

Karl had assumed that an unreliable command became reliable if the *cumulative* losses reached an advantage of four in that army's favour, but accepted that the correct reading was an advantage of four in any one bound. Otherwise there were no problems which couldn't be sorted out by reference to the rule book, though we still had to check combat outcomes and grading factors carefully.

Karl was fairly unimpressed by his list, saying that he'd have designed it differently and taken fewer Kn. In any case, I hope that readers who've made it this far will agree that this account backs up my assessment that a Burgundian Ordonnance army with Inert Charles and Baggage Park is far from invincible. Yes, I got ideal terrain for my army, Karl was unfamiliar with his list, and he had an unreliable ally. But I also had two unreliable allies, and made a couple of silly mistakes early in the game.