Khitan Liao at Burton - was Badcon bad for the Liao, or good, or just mediocre? (Game 3)

 

So after a successful first day at Badcon winning both games it was onto day 2 to see if the winning streak would continue. Did it? ...

Game 3 drew me against Paul Stovell of Bunshop fame who was using Early Arab Conquest - and army that was popular a couple of years ago but gone out of fashion for some reason, but Paul had won 2 games with it so he clearly found it successful. In some ways this army is quite similar to the Kharwaij I fought in game 2, but the infantry is better quality.

I wanted to defend in Plains to try and get as open a field as possible to maximise my chances of getting round one end of the Arab's line, however, I ended up invading the Desert. Fortunately in the PBS phase I was able to move the location to Featureless and we ended up with just one piece of terrain, Sandy Ground which was on my base edge. The choice of sand did suggest that Paul had some camel mounted troops in his army.

Deployment ended up like this:

Paul went with his combat infantry in the centre, but spread out somewhat with small gaps between units. He had some infantry archers mounted on camels and camel mounted scouts (with bows) on his left facing the Sandy Ground (no shock there), and each flank was covered by a unit of Long Spear cavalry and a Long Spear Bedouin Flexible cavalry unit with his right wing having an additional Long Spear unit, this time the Superior City cavalry - sensible as this was his most open flank really.

I loaded my army to my left and intended to use the Sandy Ground as a pivot and delay Paul's left wing. All my Skilled shooters were on my left where I hoped their shooting would help an early break through.

First moves saw Paul hold back on his right where I was attacking and advance on his left where I was weakest. Surprising nobody my moves were to push hard on my left and move more cautiously on my right.

As we had both been paying attention to shooting distances we had no shooting at this stage.

Next move I pushed hard at the Arab left wing and centre, and by threatening a flank attack in one of the gaps between 2 of Paul's units forced him to expand a unit which made it a bigger target to shooting. I did, however, feel that I also had to push one unit of the Unprotected horse archers up close and risk it being shot up.

I also spotted an opportunity for one of my 4 base Ordo cavalry units to get into a Flank Charge position against Paul's left most Long Spear cavalry unit - as I would be the Active Player next turn it was well worth going for as it could well open up that flank. If I had not been the Active Player next turn it would have been a bit of a foolish move (although perhaps not entirely without merit as it would have left my unit behind his lines as I could evade forwards).

Things now looked like this:

Turned out that the risk I took with the Unprotected cavalry was a bad move ...

But luck does run both ways ...

However, on the whole the luck was with Paul at this stage. My flank attack was feeble which meant his pretty much intact unit could turn to face my unit and would beat it over the next couple of turns. I didn't regret making the move as the rewards were well worth the risk, it was a calculated move but just didn't come off in this game.

Further more on my left one of my Superior Ordo cavalry units died rather ignominiously, and quickly when attacked. OK, it was outnumbered a fair bit, but I did feel rather hard done to by that result especially as my shooting with 7 files of Skilled shooters on that wing resulted in pretty much nothing.

However, there were some straws to clutch at as I shot away the heavily damaged infantry unit and the resulting gap did open up opportunities for me - assisted it must be said when Paul turned an infantry unit 90 degrees to take the opportunity of lining up a flank charge, but which also gave me that unit's flank.

With sunlight streaming through the windows the table now looked like this (different angle this time):

With the opportunities falling my way now, my army started a bit of a fight back. OK, so I would now be 3 units down when the unit that tried the flank attack expired as expected, however, a significant number of Paul's units were not in a good way and vulnerable. There were a couple of infantry units down to 4 bases and the City cavalry had my Skilled horse archers all over them.

Paul definitely still had the advantage, but I felt I was still in the game.

So we kept chipping away. The City cavalry were being slowly shot down and 2 of the infantry were reduced to a wound off breaking. However, my remaining horse archer unit on my right was caught by a Long Spear cavalry unit after it rolled short on a Skirmish move and was soon in real trouble.

Alas, the next move saw my army defeated. The horse archers broke, unsurprisingly, and I failed to do anything to the City Cavalry. More annoyingly the infantry units reduced to 3 proved resistant to my attacks and one of them broke a 4 base unit that charged them when it failed to cause a single wound with it's Shoot & Charge and Charge Combat dice.

All in all, despite some frustrations along the way, it was a damned good game and could have gone either way - but on the day it went to Paul. He played a good game and deserved to win.

Game 4 will follow soon, but here are some more pictures from the game.