Rukn al-Dīn Mas'ūd in Stockport

Over the weekend of 21st/22nd August I played in a 4 game MeG competition held at Element Games in Stockport. The competition was styled "Warriors of the Cross and Crescent" with a list of armies between 1000 CE and 1149 CE available for use. I chose the Sultanate of Rum and thought I'd write about the army and how I did ...

This blog post expands a bit on my description in the latest MeG Players Podcast - mainly by adding pictures to the words.

My army list was:

This is an army I hadn't used for a couple of years, but have kept using similar horse archer based armies so didn't think it would be an issue. Here are some pictures of the figures I used:

The commanders. Army commander is the one with 2 banners and the ally the one without.

The camp - its main role is to be a target for the enemy ...

The two units of mamalik (mamluks) - a solid base for the horse archers to operate around. Are also fairly competent fighters; not too hot when charging but solid in the extended melee.

Frankish mercenaries. Add a bit of shock power to the army. Generally held back and sent into a enemy weakened by archery. Only a single hard charging it but provide a credible threat of being able to break through quickly.

The 4 units of Skilled shooters. How well they shoot can be key to the army performance - if they have a bad day the army probably will.

Arab cavalry. Bit of an odd unit - doesn't have an obvious role, however, I find it can be a useful threat to flanks or just use to slow down the enemy in one part of the field.

The horse archers of the ally. Experienced shooters rather than skilled in this case so not as effective as the others, but still useful and can wear down an isolated unit.

Skirmishing horse archers - with the Cantabrian characteristic allows them to be another 2 files of Skilled shooters.

Competition entries ended up pretty much 50:50 between "Cross" armies and "Crescent" armies and so for each round the draw was made on the basis of the two "sides" playing armies of the other side. Worked well and was different from the more common Swiss Chess format.

My first game saw me defending Anatolia from an Anglo-Danish invasion. The pre-battle set up saw us fighting on a nearly empty open plain - one small piece of rocky ground had no impact - which I was more than happy with as my army was wholly mounted and mostly horse archers of various sorts. I totally outscouted the nearly wholly foot Anglo-Danes (they had a unit of Norman mercenaries as their only cavalry) so had the luxury of knowing exactly where my opponent was. The final set up was:

I had sent a small force on a flank march on my left. The battle panned out as you might expect with my horse archers swarming around his slower moving infantry whilst he tried to push me off the table and take my camp. My flank march arrived quickly and harassed his right. Eventually my shooting on my right broke a number of units and whilst my mamalik were fighting his infantry just in front of my camp by this stage I broke his army.

Second game saw me defending again against an invading Anglo-Norman. Again not much terrain and I also wholly outscouted them despite them having a respectable number of cavalry. I again sent a small force flank marching on my left. The final set up was:

In many ways this was a similar battle to the first, however, because of the numbers of Anglo-Norman cavalry which move faster than the infantry and fight better than my troops I was under more direct pressure more quickly. The flank march again arrived quickly and then took most of the game to actually do anything meaningful. The Anglo-Normans pushed hard and direct towards my camp and it was only due to a last ditch, slightly fortuitous flank charge by mamalik that broke 2 units of knights that I survived. My shooting then took out enough other units to again win the game.

Third game was me invading Byzantium in the form of the Nikeforian flavour. Not an easy matchup at all, and led by a very good player indeed. Again I outscouted the enemy, not wholly but at 80% it was nearly as good as. The Byzantines deployed in a defensive formation protected in some part by terrain with the plan to fight out of that position striking with cavalry from behind an infantry screen (similar to what the Praecepta recommends). Forgot to take a picture of the start position but this is at the start of move 2 where my mamalik have just charged a slightly isolated Byzantine infantry unit.

A very cagey game ensued. I was wary of his infantry shooting power, he was wary of getting fragmented and then ganged up on by my horse archers. My early charge, which took him a bit by surprise, drew out his cavalry which I then defeated through shooting and hand to hand combat. After that it was all about trying to whittle away his tough infantry. In the end we had a draw but I was ahead on points.

Last game saw me defending against invading Normans - a whole wall of hard charging cavalry (both armies were wholly mounted). This time we had more terrain on the board which created channels in which most of the game would take place. I again outscouted my opponent by 80%, however, in all honesty it was fairly clear where both armies were going to be but it did allow to optimise my deployment a bit. After set up it looked like this:

On my left my small contingent fell back and delayed his strong right wing and managed to keep it out of the game for the loss of only 1 unit of mine - I was quite pleased at how I played that. On my right my heavier cavalry advanced and then fell back shooting and drew his cavalry forward onto my best shooters, the Turkmen who occupied rocky ground which would blunt any Norman charge. My shooting was good and forced the Normans to charge me maybe a bit before they would have liked given that their right wing was being slowed down. This weakened his cavalry and allowed me to defeat some with my mamalik whilst a couple of his units succumbed to horse archery without getting to combat. At which point his army broke.

So 3 wins and a draw - good enough to win the competition as it turned out.