Seljuqs of Rum at Skullrollers 2021 - Round 3

 

So we now move onto the third game in the 2021 "Skullrollers" competition. The third game in a day can be the hardest due to a bit of mental fatigue setting in, so to find out if it got to me read on ...

Again a reminder of my army:

This round pitched me up against the beautifully painted Later Swiss of Steve Charlton.

Another small and very tough army. I have absolutely nothing that has a chance against the Swiss keils frontally or, indeed, in their flanks as the Keil characteristic means they essentially ignore flank attacks and treat them as frontal attacks. The rear is the only soft spot.

Obviously I needed as open a battlefield as possible whilst Steve would be looking to get terrain down to prevent me manoeuvring, shooting and skirmishing.

Fortunately for me I won the PBS dice off and defended in Plains; third time in a row which suited me. We ended up with a single piece of terrain on the table, a marsh. Scouting was a bit one sided although I don't think Steve was surprised at being wholly outscouted:

So after deployment things looked like this:

Steve had deployed his Average keil 2 deep to get extra frontage and so I felt that this would be a nice target for most of my Skilled shooters. The rest of the Skilled would go round the marsh on the right; I also chose to flank march my ally on that flank so as to get round and behind the Swiss. On the left a mamalik unit and the skirmisher horse archers were planned to "go around the outside" as the song says and cause mischief. The Christian mercenaries stood at the back expecting to do very little.

The ally drew 2 Reds on the first move (lucky again) - reliable and able to arrive straight away ...

Some pictures of Steve's lovely paint job on his army; unsurprisingly it won the best painted army prize:

I brought on my flank march and Steve moved a unit of his halberdiers to face them off. I also pushed up my right hand Turkmen unit to add their Skilled shooting in a move or two's time. You can just see them lurking at the bottom right of this picture:

On the left the mamalik started their long journey around the outside which forced one of the keils to move to try and cover it.

Whilst centrally the Swiss advance rapidly thanks to their Fleet of Foot and I move up to shoot at the extended keil - 6 Skilled and 3 Experienced shooting dice in the offing here.

So overall things looked like this:

Afraid there is a bit of a hiatus in the pictures now - that 3rd game mental fatigue.

Over the next two moves the spread out keil takes a bit of an arrow storm and is reduced to 7 bases from its original 12.

However, my flank march and supporting friends are not really making any progress against the halberdiers, and the second Swiss unit has arrived to help out.

On the other hand the mamalik on the right have gone around the outside and are now within charge reach of the Swiss camp.

Overall the battlefield looks like this:

Much to their surprise the Christian mercenaries have advanced tempted by the splitting of the two keils and hoping that a rear may well present itself - it also helps stop one of the keil's haring off to threaten the mamalik.

Next move the battered Average keil succumbs to the inevitable - although I'm sure Steve was a bit disappointed that it only lasted 3 shooting rounds before breaking. My Turkmen then moved onto the next keil whilst the mamalik headed off towards the halberdier's tempting flanks/rear.

The long distance raiding mamalik destroy the Swiss camp after a slow start, which is useful as a keil has raced up to within charge distance of their rear ...

The flank marching Turkmen are trying to make heavy work of dealing with the halberdiers as 2 units of them fail to evade far enough and get caught; muppets ...

Fortunately for me they will actually stand up fairly well in combat; one unit breaks but the other ends the turn with just a single wound and the halberdiers have lost 3 bases and carry a wound.

What is more, the mamalik who sacked the camp ran away to their front when charged by the oncoming keil and with the 2 BW move allowed to them after that were now within charge reach of the rear of one halberdier unit.

The next move was the now inevitable collapse of the Swiss as the two mamalik units charged the halberdiers although I did lose another Turkmen unit along the way.

This resulted in a 15-4 to me.

The 4th game can be found here.