Former Yan Rumble in Stockport

 

Over the weekend of 22nd/23rd October I took my Former Yan Xianbei army to the Ribble Rumble held at Element Games in Stockport. Four excellent games ensued. Read on to see what happened ...

The return of the Ribble club's "Ribble Rumble" competition saw MeG included with a theme of any army dated between 666 BCE and 666 CE - it was The Rumble of the Beast.

This gave me an excuse to run a Former Yan army from the Xianbei Kingdoms list in the Three Kingdoms PDF. It is an army I knocked a list up for ages ago, and built using Lurkio figures, but this is the first time I've used it in competition. This was the list:

The Best cavalry and Heavy cavalry catafracts provide the punch with a supporting cast of horse archers. The Chained horse archers are a bit unusual and, being Tribal, nowhere near as manoeuvrable as the other horse archers, but a pretty resilient and more combat capable. The Chinese infantry are there to provide bulk and are not expected to do anything. Overall, it is a quite balanced army.

The opening game matched me up against a Hunnic army which had a Legendary C-in-C. Unsurprisingly I was invaded, but the PBS sequence did allow me to get a reasonable amount of terrain on table. I wanted this as my army is "heavier" than the Huns but potentially a bit slower, and so terrain would mean the Huns advantages there would be mitigated.

The armies looked like this when we had finished deployment.

I have placed my ally on my left to push hard at the Hunnic right flank and their camp. My right expects to fight the best of the Hunnic cavalry as there are 2 units of Hun nobles on this flank and the Legendary C-in-C. The Huns have 2 units of Frankish infantry, one of which is in ambush - they are potentially quite vulnerable in this game. I was pretty happy with this set up.

It needs to be said right at the start that my opponent (Matt) had the most appalling luck with his command cards throughout the game. The Legendary general with 5 cards only had 1 colour card most turns and only had 1 turn with more than that, and that was only 2. To say this stymied his plans is an understatement and he was on the back foot most of the game really.

I pushed on as planned and a few moves later things looked like this.

Not great, but still OK cards on my left mean I have not quite pushed on as far as I had hoped, but as mentioned above, as Matt had rubbish cards on his left this didn't really hinder me. The Hunnic right is falling back before my advance but will inevitably run out of room.

In the centre the unit of Franks has moved forward to try and cause some trouble, but has attracted a lot of horse archers including my Skilled shooters. On the right my catafracts are deployed to hold up as much of the Hunnic army as possible - the Superior unit especially as it can realistically fight 2 Hunnic units on its own.

A move or so later and the Hunnic right is in trouble and the left is struggling with the catafracts.

The Hunnic units in the second line on their left are pretty much immobile due to the card issue mentioned earlier. Soon Hun units start to die and on my left my allied catafracts reach the Hunnic camp.

Shortly after this picture the Hun units in combat both rout and the camp is sacked resulting in the defeat of the army. 15-0 to me. Did feel a somewhat undeserved score, certainly Matt not getting any points.

Round 2 pitched me up against Pete Entwistle's Qin Chinese - an army he has had a lot of success with.

I again lose the PBS dice roll, but Pete choses to defend so that he can have more say in the terrain we will play over. This is definitely the right choice as he is a wholly foot army and mine is almost wholly mounted and so he really needs some terrain to stop me just riding all around him. Things worked out pretty well for him in this respect, and as he has a lot of crossbow armed infantry this meant it would be rather tricky for me. I did, however, outscout the Qin by 100% meaning that I would see their entire deployment and could choose my point of attack.

The Qin left is protected by a steep hill (difficult going) and the right by tall crops (rough going). There are 2 units of crossbowmen in the crops, one of which is Skilled shooters, and the rest of the army pretty much fills the space to the hill and can mostly shoot.

I mass my best shooters on my left - I decided that my best best was to try and shoot down the crossbowmen, hope not to be too badly shot up whilst doing so and then be able to concentrate on the now exposed end of the Qin infantry line. My horse archers deployed as Skirmishers so as to be a bit less vulnerable to being shot at by the crossbows. The heavier cavalry extended my line and I had 1 unit of horse archers on my right whose role was to try and slow down the inevitable Qin advance on that flank. My catafracts would have to fight the Qin infantry but at least they were not too vulnerable to the shooting due to having horse armour.

After a couple of moves it looked like this.

On the left I am managing to gang up reasonably well on the crossbowmen, however, I was coming off 2nd best in the shooting exchange. One of my catafract units is blocking the advance of some of the better Qin infantry whilst the other 2 units, including the Superior one, are lining up to fight the slightly worse Qin infantry.

Shortly after this I get really lucky with my shooting and despatch both units of crossbowmen in fairly short order, and suffer not too much damage in return. Likewise in combat my catafracts do the business, with the Superior unit well on its way to taking out 2 Qin infantry units/

However, I am having to sacrifice one of my Chained horse archer units to try and slow other Qin infantry and the way to my camp is pretty much undefended.

Much chaos then ensued as I tried to work my horse archers round the left of the Qin whilst I lost a unit of catafracts quite quickly which allowed the Qin to charge the flank of my Superior unit, although it did manage to survive that. My camp was, as expected, well and truly sacked.

However, at this point we ran out of time with the score 12-10 to me. Not sure how it would have finished if we had been able to play another turn or two, but feel I could have shaded it. Still, 27 points from a possible 30 is not a bad day's work.

Sunday morning saw me playing a Tang Northern army; a good army choice IMO and one that Richard Jeffrey-Cook has used to good effect previously.

We ended up in Plains with only a single piece of terrain. Key though, was that I outscouted the Tang and this was a useful advantage.

The Tang deployment had a Khitan ally (nomad horse types) on their right flank which I felt were a target and so I weighted my army to attack their right.

In a similar way to the game against the Qin I had my best shooters on my left then the heavier cavalry and 2 units of horse archers on the right to play around and try and delay. The Tang have a lot of shooting so once again the catafract's horse armour would be especially useful.

Given I saw an advantage on my left I pushed hard and fast there and also pushed catafracts towards the Tang centre. Once again I was planning on fighting 2 enemy units with the Superior catafracts as they were strong enough to do that. This would be the one unit of Charging Lancer cavalry in the Tang army (which couldn't evade) and a unit of infantry - initially I aimed to mainly fight the cavalry and then feed bases into fighting the infantry.

The plan worked. The allied Khitan on the Tang right collapsed rapidly, helped by one unit rolling a 1 on an evade move and being caught by a catafract unit which swiftly despatched them. The Superior catafracts chewed through the lancers equally quickly and turned their attention to the infantry unit who would then not last long. My other catafract unit pushed a further Tang cavalry unit towards the base edge.

That said, the Tang right was approaching at speed - and as with the game against the Qin was aiming for my camp ...

The camp did fall and I did lose one cavalry unit, however, elsewhere I was mopping up the units I needed to defeat the Tang and the game ended up 15-4 to me.

So I was now on top table playing Pete Reilly's Ancient British army that had won all 3 of its games. A victory in this game would see that player win the competition, but scoring low could let Pete Entwistle leapfrog both of us as he was lying 3rd only a couple points behind me. All to play for.

The terrain did not fall to well for me, with woods scattered across the table. I did, however, outscout the British by 50% so could plan after seeing a good chunk of the enemy. I decided that I would mass my army in the open terrain on my right and fight there. Because of the way the score were I knew that Pete would have to come and fight me and that he would not expect me to commit suicide by sending my cavalry into the wood - however, I would have to give him some targets as well as I could not expect him to recklessly advance.

After we had deployed and made our first move things looked like this.

The British have a Roman ally and that is directly in front of me. Their right wing is going to advance as rapidly as it can towards my left which is fairly weak and where my camp is. We were both moving towards fighting where we both would have opportunities. I have my best shooters on the right and hope to be able to take out one Roman unit with them - despite the Roman Shield Cover and being Superior, if I can mass enough shooting I have a chance.

Things continue to develop along these lines. I try to tempt the Romans a bit further forward whilst Pete tries to get me to overcommit in my centre near the woods.

In the end we meet about half way. Of course, this has given the British right flank another move or so of advancing.

I'm afraid after this taking pictures wasn't a high priority as we were both looking to get through as many moves as we could in order to maximise the chances of a result or at leats as high a score as possible. We were incentivised by Pete Entwistle winning his final game to become the virtual leader of the competition.

Fighting started to break out. I charged Roman auxilia with catafracts, a fight I hoped to win as I was advantaged in combat after the charge phase. At roughly the same time I threw in the Superior catafracts on the same basis against a legionary unit, although they were disadvantaged in the charge phase. My shooting also started to whittle away another Roman unit. This resulted in us each losing a unit.

However, my left was getting overrun and for the third game in a row my camp was sacked. However, the resulting KaB tests were not too bad but some attrition was caused.

Shortly after this picture I lost another couple of units and my army is starting to get surrounded, and all I manage to break is a unit of light infantry slingers. Writing is on the wall.

In what would be the final turn of the game I manage to fail to break 2 units where I only needed to get a wound on each. Always a frustrating experience. However, the final dice rolls of the game, as we ran out of time before either of us could break the other (which would have been the British breaking me in all likelihood) were to be of great importance. There was a fight between my skirmisher horse archers and a unit of British light cavalry. We were both reduced to 4 bases and thus 1 wound from breaking. On literally the last dice rolls we both broke, and this gave Pete the extra point he needed to sneak ahead of Pete Entwistle and win the competition.

The game ended 6-11 and I finished 3rd.

The full results were:

A tremendous weekend's gaming and many thanks to all involved.