Rolling Skulls With the Angkor Empire

 

Being an account of how my Angkor Empire army did at the Skullrollers 2022 competition. Read on to find out what happened ...

The annual MeG "Skullrollers" competition, also billed as the MeG World Championships, was held on 1st and 2nd October as part of the London GT - a mainly Warhammer and related event and the Lee Valley Athletics Centre.

Skullrollers is an "open" competition and so any army from the list PDFs can be played. I must confess that open is not my favourite format, but it can still be fun. The bid decision was what army to take as any of the armies I have could be used. This choice can lead to much dithering as might be imagined. In the end, for a variety of reasons, I decided to use my Angkor Empire army, although I felt it would have some difficulties against a number of troops types that could be expected in an open competition. I have blogged on this army recently with pictures of the figures - read that here.

The army composition was:

The list of runners and riders for the competition was:

An eclectic mix of armies, and containing fewer of the usual open tournament armies than I had expected. Perhaps a lot of us went "what the heck, I'll use ...". For those interested the lists can be found here.

I had no great expectations for my army choice going into the competition, in many ways I was challenging myself to see how well I could do with an army I consider sub-optimal for an open competition. I felt that "mid-table mediocrity" would be a good result/

The first round draw matched me against Laurence Donohoe aka Cid (currently top of the MeG rankings) using Frisian. Tough start, but always a good game against Cid.

As I recall Cid won the initial dice roll - he had a Legendary general - and chose to defend. However, I slightly outscouted him; more a moral victory as Cid was the defender and was likely to be deploying first anyway. We ended up on a table with a significant amount of terrain, most of it in my half of the table. To my right were forests whilst on my centre/left were patches of rocky ground.

Cid placed 2 ambush markers in the forest to his left. Now these could have been a bluff, however, given the table I expected them to be actual units and that turned out to be correct. Cid deployed his infantry from the forest and had his (mostly allied) cavalry on his right. I held my left with my skirmisher infantry, cavalry (who can skirmish) and the archer units in the rocky ground. My right had the best of my infantry with the elephants extending the line towards the table centre. It looked like this:

I pushed forward on my right whilst holding back on the left - I couldn't really go out into the open as Cid's cavalry would ride me down in quick time. On the right the plan was to use the Ph'kak-men to break through and turn into Cid's centre; this unit is significantly better than Cid's infantry, but these is only 1 of it. One thing I was intending to do was minimise the number of bases contact in the charge to, hopefully, remove the potential Shatter effects rolling down my line from Cid's infantry. My elephants also advanced but a bit more cautiously; I was hoping that as they shoot it would force Cid to charge them with his infantry which would give me a plus.

After a couple of moves it looked like this - as you can see the ambushes were real as I guessed.

Mt Ph'kak-men have started to chew through one of Cid's infantry units and would end up breaking 2 of them for minimal losses themselves. Their general fought in the front rank after the charge phase to really maximise their advantages - I rolled a pleasing number of Red dice with this unit.

A few moves later things had developed to be:

The Ph'kak-men have now despatched their second unit, however, just off shot to the right I have lost one infantry unit myself. This was expected though and without spectacular dice somewhat unavoidable.

I have withdrawn my cavalry from the left flank, but I have somewhat messed up my defence of the large piece of rocky going and Cid has punced on my archer units - in this case it was perfectly sensible for him to send his cavalry into the disordering terrain as my troops were weak. However, in a display of poor dice from Cid he only broke one of the units by the end of the game.

We both have holes in our lines in the centre as we have exchanges some units. However, we were to run out of time before we could reach a conclusion. The game could have gone either way at this point and ended up scored 12-12.

A really good game to kick off the weekend.

Second game matched me against John Munro, last year's winner, who was reprising his victorious James IV Scots.

John won the initial dice off and chose to defend in Coastal. I decided that I wanted minimal terrain for this game and things fell well for me; we ended up with no deep water and just a single piece of rough ground on my right. I had gone for a big open table despite having troops to fight in terrain as I knew John's army was mainly close formation foot and so if I wanted to have a chance of a result I'd end up fighting in the open.

After we had deployed things looked thus:

Having a narrow army John has sensibly deployed over to one side with his cavalry poised to sweep out and threaten my right flank. I have deployed with my left detached from the rest of the army aiming to draw John's left wing away from where I think the main fight will be. I have my elephants lined up to fight his pikemen and aim to expand out to my right with my Superior infantry supported by other infantry. To the left of my elephants I have another infantry unit to cover their flank - with the expectation that they would die quickly if forced to fight pikemen, but them's the breaks.

My plan is to draw out John's cavalry with what appears to be a weakish flank, however, I feel that the combination of missiles and the Superior infantry means I have a reasonable chance of actually beating them. This would then allow me to turn into the pikemen and/or attack the archers John had supporting his cavalry. This would then force John to charge the pikemen into my elephants giving me a charge combat plus.

A couple of moves in and things are going to plan.

John's cavalry are faced by my skirmishers to hopefully wear them down, the Superior infantry are in position to fight them when the skirmishers have gone supported by my better archers, and I have a unit of infantry positioned to come up and counter any unfortunate breakthrough John may get (probably by beating the archers). On my left John has peeled away 3 units to ensure his flank is safe. I'm feeling pretty good here.

I now fall back with the elephants and my shooting does some rather useful damage - all for the cost of 1 unit of the skirmishers who get ridden over. Meh, its what they're there for. John charges the archers on the end of my line but the archers reduce his unit to just 1 wound from breaking. I the plan working?

You may also notice on that on my far left I am slipping a small infantry unit round the end of John's line aiming for his camp. Bonus ...

Everything then happened very quickly.

As I had hoped John now felt he had to charge his pikemen into my elephants. He would be relying on sheer numbers to win a battle of attrition - which is a perfectly reasonably approach as my elephants are only in 3 and 4 base units whilst his pikes are 12s.

Alas for John I rolled a large number of Skulls and thus gained Shatter (in the charge phase) or Shove (melee) and he was removing bases by the handful. To compound the pain he rolled almost exclusively blanks. With my Superior infantry making short work of his second cavalry unit is was all over in a couple of turns.

I didn't even need to charge the camp. 15-1 to me with plenty of time to spare.

Last game on Saturday saw me facing Mark Hargrave and his Sengoku Japanese - an army he has had success with and not one I felt was a good match for me. Could be a case of seeing how many points I could extract rather than getting a win.

Mark defended and we deployed like this:

Our deployments are offset as I wanted to have time to try and work some advantage on my left by over-winging Mark's right. Mark has a hill in his deployment area and these is a vineyard between us on my left. My cavalry unit is thrown out on the right to slow down Mark's advance, it certainly isn't expected to do any fighting. Unlike John's army the game before, Mark's infantry is not particularly vulnerable to the elephants - they might get lucky, but the odds are against them

Some moves later we have both wheeled our armies towards each other. On my left I have taken a couple of bases off Mark with shooting and he has done the same to me, however he has played well and I cannot manufacture any real advantage. I was reduced to brining up the elephants for a bit of a punt against his infantry.

Alas this turned out much as I had feared, although just for a moment it looked as though the elephants might just buck the odds and break through, but reality reasserted itself and soon all my elephants were back in the box for only 1 of Mark's units being destroyed - and that was by infantry getting into their flank.

After that it was a bit of a scramble by Mark to get the rest of the units he needed to break my army, however, a bit harshly for Mark we ran out of time. I picked up another unit of his and so the score was 6-12. Really tough match-up for me, but another good game. Left me on 33 points after day 1 which was at least in the top half of the draw.

Sunday comprised of 2 games, not 3 like Saturday, and the first put my Khmer up against Ian Newell's Huns - a very useful army and one I won a competition with earlier this hear (read about that here). This could be tricky.

Ian won the initial dice off and, unsurprisingly, chose to defend - as Huns only have Plains as their terrain that is a very sensible decision for a horse archer army. However, the terrain fell kindly for me and I ended up being able to deploy between a village and a marsh that was itself beside a deep water river. Now I would no doubt have to come out of this nice defendable area, but it was a very good start point. We deployed thus:

I have interspersed my elephants with the infantry and also included the cavalry in the line. My elephants with artillery are behind the good archers and can shoot over them - the aim here is to have an area of concentrated shooting which can, hopefully, develop an advantage. The deployment is also set up to give Ian some points where he can attack so as to draw him in - could be risky as I have practically no second line, but it seemed a reasonable risk.

Ian had some Frankish infantry pointed at the marsh and the rest of his army deployed to advance and shoot me. He had 2 units of Skilled shooters on his right as well. This was where his main attack would be I felt.

After a couple of moves of careful advancing by both sides we were set up like this.

Importantly I have got my good archers and the artillery elephants into range of a unit of Ian's Skilled shooters, along with one of the units of skirmishing bowmen. As Ian's cavalry are Unprotected all the archers will get a colour upgrade shooting in the next move - I will have 5 Green and 3 White dice.

The result was, as you can see, painful for Ian. His unit lost 3 bases and was slowed by 3. At  a stroke he was on the back foot as that unit was to all intents out of the game. I was, of course, pretty pleased by this shooting.

I think at this point Ian had to choose between pressing on his attack or pulling back for a short while and regrouping. Sounds a bit extreme for just one shot, but I think it would have been reasonable to regroup. Ian chose to press on - he did have some good units almost in position to charge after all. I think this was a perfectly reasonable approach.

However, the dice gods decided that they disagreed. Ian's charges were to say the least underwhelming, and the units he charged shot and fought like demons. Basically I had all the good luck and Ian all the bad. The combats resulted in a lost unit and the subsequent KaB broke another and damaged nearly every unit that had to test.

We  wrapped up the game shortly afterward 15-4 to me. The dice can be brutal sometimes; I felt ian did nothing wrong really.

The 5th and last game saw me facing Richard Jeffrey-Cook on the top table. Most unexpectedly I was in a position to win the competition - although I would have to beat Richard to do it. Richard was using a Middle Sasanid Persian army which is a favourite of mine and one I have done well with in the past. Richard was obviously doing well with it at this competition as well.

As I recall Richard won the initial dice (think I lost all 5 over the weekend) and chose to defend. We had a deep water river down my right flank, some bits of rocky ground, a hill and a marsh as our terrain - the marsh partly covering my left so cutting down the risk of my being quickly outflanked on that side. I slightly outscouted Richard, but it made little difference. Our deployments were like this:

Richard's centre was massed "warband" of a Sabir ally with his cavalry to either side. His best unit of cavalry, Superior catafracts, was on his right. Somewhat like my first game I deployed to delay on my left although this time just with the skirmish infantry and the cavalry. The rest of the army was infantry and elephants interspersed - the elephant artillery were on the right by the river. I must confess I was really unsure about how to deploy in this game and it may well have shown.

Both sides advanced towards each other, although not too rapidly. I was hoping to be able to use the elephants on my right to pressure Richard's left and wit luck catch his catafracts there. On my left I sent my cavalry towards the flank where Richard had advanced his archers quite aggressively. By being able to advance close enough to threaten to charge the archers in the open I drew his Superior catafracts into a response. I was happy with this as I felt I could avoid them thereafter and so take a powerful unit out of play. I'm not sure Richard was concerned about this though.

As I felt I had to keep things moving I pushed forward and set up my elephants to attack the Sabir. I may have been pushing things a bit to much here and a tad more caution would have been more prudent, but the elephants had been doing well so why not have a punt.

I had also got the artillery elephants into a position to be able to charge towards catafracts on my right which was pleasing.

Alas the warband numbers proved to be more than enough for my elephants, and unlike the game against the Scots I failed to get Shatters and Shoves although I was doing damage reasonably well. Two units of elephants were soon in trouble and would break.

However, onwards and upwards (maybe) and I now had to keep pressing. On my right my elephants did get to fight the catafracts, but in a clever move Richard actually charged me in order that he could also fight an infantry unit I had in support. Thankfully the infantry didn't suffer too much and the catafracts were broken.

On the other side of the battlefield my Superior infantry ended up being charged by another unit of catafracts. However, these catafracts turned out to be pretty useless in combat and despite breaking off and charging a second time pretty much failed to do any material damage. In fact, after this I charged the catafracts with the infantry (Richard had been reduced to holding them from charging so badly had they fought), partly as it took my infantry into contact with a damaged unit of Sabir which they broke.

Unfortunately the game ran out of time shortly after this, although we both picked up extra units along the way for extra points. We ended up 7-12.

This was enough to give Richard the competition win whilst I finished 7th.

All in all it was a great weekend's gaming. Really enjoyed all of the games and finishing where I did exceeded my expectations for the army by some way. The fact that I was in with a shout of winning it was a great surprise.

Many thank to all of my opponents and everyone involved. Looking forward to the next one now.