Khitan Liao at Burton - was Badcon bad for the Liao, or good, or just mediocre? (Game 1)

 

Having spend a lot of time getting a Khitan Liao army that I liked together I finally plucked up the courage to take them to a competition rather than just using them in one off games. Badcon 2022 was their debut. See how they went on ...

The theme for Badcon this year was any army 501AD - 999AD which as my Liao are from around 950 CE meant they were an allowed option. So this is the list I used:

In many ways this army would have fitted in better at the Ice & Fire competition, but I decided to take my Early Northern Song to that (successfully I may add). Given the possible opponents at Badcon the army was likely to be a bit of an iffy choice, but as well as wanting to get it used in a competition it would be a good challenge.

My first opponent was Graham Klaka who was using a Tribal Mongolian army. I felt this was a good matchup for me; although the Mongols would have a lot of Skilled shooters they are nearly all Unprotected and so my shooting would be fairly even and I had the 3 units with ArmHrs which should give me the edge.

We ended up fighting on an open plain between a rover and some rough and difficult going. I slightly outscouted the Mongols but it made very little difference. Both armies deployed in a fairly straightforward manner more or less filling the open plain.

The two armies approached each other:

Initial shooting favoured the Mongols:

The Liao start to push through the centre with their heavier, better protected cavalry:

Shooting starts to even out - as it usually does - but I did lose a unit to a roll of 3 Skulls and a Wound; ouch ...

However, as I kept pushing with my heavy cavalry the Mongol army started to break up.

As you can just see towards the top left of the above picture one of my heavies has run over a Mongol cavalry unit and is now behind the Mongol right wing. In the centre the Superior ArmHrs has nearly pinned 2 units of Mongols against their camp - the horse armour proved well worth the cost here.

I went on to crush the unit I pinned against the camp and damage quite a few units with shooting which were then finished off by the KaB from my sacking of the camp after I had pursued into it.

The final act of the game was Graham's Khan's Guard being charged front and rear by my cavalry (the unit that got behind the Mongol right wing turned and moved behind the guard) - although the combat never occurred as they were broken by my rolling 3 wounds on 3 Black dice. Told you the luck evens out in the end ...

Fundamentally this game was about not being put off by an initial run of good shooting by Graham, and poor shooting by myself, but to keep pressing to be able to use my heavier shooting resistant troops to pile on pressure and trust that the luck would even out. I did occasionally have to pull some units back to ensure I had the time needed for the heavies to do their work, but overall I tried to keep the pressure on.

Game 2 will follow.

Some additional pictures: