The Il-khan's Disappointment - Part 1

 

The first UK MeG competition of 2023 took place at Battlefield Hobbies and was a repeat of the popular "Ice & Fire" theme from January last year. Basically it was armies outside of Europe (sort of).

I went with my 2020 lockdown army build of Ilkhanate. As the title may suggest it didn't go as well as maybe hoped, but was still a great weekend with fun games. Read on for details ... 

So after surprising myself and winning Ice & Fire in 2022 I decided to leave my winning Later Zhou & Early Northern Song list and instead run with an Ilkhanate army. This is an army I bought and painted in the first pandemic lockdown way back in 2020, and as it has not yet been used in a full competition I thought it was about time.

The list I used was this one:

A combination of lots of Skilled horse archers - 16 files worth in fact - plus the punch of the Armenian allied cavalry is a useful combination. Even the skirmisher archers in the ally are useful as they add 3 more files of shooting. A tweak I introduced to my list this time was the Fortified camp - in a theme where there could be a of of cavalry, and my army is not large, this seemed to be a useful addition as it meant it could be left to its own devices more often than if Unfortified.

The first game was against Matt Haywood using a nearly wholly foot Qin army. As we'd been discussing lists before the comp there were no surprises in army composition for either of us - like me Matt had a Fortified camp. Oddly, since we have both been playing MeG for a few years now and are competition regulars, we had never actually played each other before. Now corrected 😁

I invaded into Mountains terrain with Matt aiming to close down the table as much as possible, however, we actually ended up with a fairly open table. There were a couple of Forest pieces in the centre-left (as I looked at the table) and we both decided that fighting in the open area was the way to go. I outscouted Matt by 30% as I recall - hoped for more, but my PBS and Scouting cards were poor.

After deployment things looked like this:

Matt went with his chunky Polearm, Devastating Chargers in a big strong block with units poised to swing out and cover his flanks from my cavalry. He deployed most of his crossbowmen in front of this, including a Skilled shooting unit. He was using these as a sort of forlorn hope to weaken me before committing his close fighters I think.

I deployed most of my Mongols on my right with a couple of units on the left to threaten around the Forest. My Armenian cavalry and Franks were deployed a bit back to be able to manoeuvre to a suitable place to charge.

I chose to send the units I had on my left round the Forest whilst advancing my horse archers elsewhere to shoot. Matt went full in on his "forlorn hope" approach to his crossbows with one unit ending up quite a way ahead after a couple of moves. He also pushed through the Forest with other units. This exposed a mistake I had made - by sending both units on my left round the flank it mean that I was short of TUGs to counter his push through the Forest. Not fatal in my view, but did mean I going to lose my camp.

The position after a couple of moves was as shown below. Shooting is about to start and I will charge the exposed crossbowmen with my Franks.

Shooting started well - 6 Green dice produced this. Other shooting that turn was also quite good. Matt was not impressed.

Of course this doesn't last forever, and over the course of the game I think it all evened out more or less - as it usually does.

My Franks, aided by horse archer shooting, quickly disposed of the crossbowmen, losing only 1 base on the way, and after pursuit were joined by the Armenians to tee up a charge on the Skilled shooting crossbowmen. Elsewhere, as noted, the shooting was not as good as at first and Matt pushed his infantry forward.

The Skilled crossbowmen hardly did better than the Experienced ones and were soon ridden down. After the game Matt said that he should have used his third crossbowmen unit, a Tribal one, as the "forlorn hope" as they were more expendable; I think he was right. I also shot down the badly damaged infantry unit.

However, Matt was closing in on my camp. This is where my mistake with the cavalry going round the Forest really came into focus. I have 2 units doing more or less nothing to win me the game, and one could be used elsewhere to good effect. Ah, well ...

After destroying 2 units pretty much single-handed, the Franks were overcome and themselves destroyed. With good cards I kept the Armenians under control and they fell back in front of a unit of advancing infantry. Meanwhile, as expected, may camp is sacked. Fortunately, the KaB tests aren't too damaging as most of my units are still pretty healthy.

The game timed out shortly after the above picture, although I did shoot down the Qin infantry advancing on my right flank.

The game score was 10-9 to me. I think both Matt and I made some mistakes and they probably cancelled each other out in terms of the score. Either of us could have won the game from where we were given a bit more time.

Good game and a good start to the competition.

Following this I drew Ian Newell who was using the Bantu Kingdoms army that had placed 2nd behind me in the 2022 Ice & Fire competition. We didn't face each other that weekend, but did now.

Ian's army is a huge mass of rapid moving (Fleet of Foot) hard charging infantry who have Shield Cover - although they are Unarmoured so not that bad for my horse archers in reality; I'll still shoot on Green dice a lot of the time.

I again invaded and Ian tried to get as much terrain as he could. Fortunately for me a lot wouldn't fit on table and it ended up mainly upen - good horse country. I think I outscouted Ian by 40%, which was a bit disappointing given the advantage I had in scouting, but thems the breaks.

After we had both deployed it looked like this - and I must confess to being a bit daunted.

The Bantu pretty much filled the table from edge to edge - no way round for me. I deployed with my tough cavalry alternated with the less tough and did not try to match the Bantu width. As they are Tribal they cannot get round my right flank too easily, but given time they will do. My left wing was a bit weak in order to tempt Ian to advance through the Woods on that flank where I also had my camp as a bit of bait. Potentially a risk, but one I was happy with.

The tempt worked and Ian did advance quickly there - and indeed on the other flank as well. I pushed up my cavalry to shoot or in the case of the Armenians and Franks act as bastions for the horse archers to operate around - the Bantu would not like charging them. As planned I pulled back the cavalry on my left wing - I had deployed them as Skirmishers to facilitate this and this turned out to be a good decision as my cards for the first couple of turns were not great and if they had been in Loose formation I think I could have been in trouble.

The game then looked like this:

This continued for another couple of moves, however, my shooting was starting to take chunks out of the Bantu - lots of Green dice can cause a lot of damage. However, the one unit that seemed to be missile proof was the one advancing on my camp ... It was only going to be a matter of time before it was lost for the second time in two games.

In the centre some units were getting up close and personal and fighting was imminent.

Not wholly unexpectedly the Armenians and Franks caused a lot of damage with the Armenians breaking through the Bantu line. Other Bantu units succumbed to shooting. However, as predicted my camp was sacked in short order - however, by shooting away a unit I did get a unit into the rear of the Bantu who sacked the camp; their days were numbered.

On my right things are getting a little pressured, although I was happy that I had it under control - the Armenians can come back and attack enemy from flank and/or rear.

No doubt to compensate for earlier good dice I did hit a bit of a period of poor dice and the Franks were destroyed, at the same time I was failing to kill two of Ian's units that were just one wound from breaking. Frustrating. That said, I don't think ian's dice were doing him many favours either.

As with the first game we ran out of game time before either of us could win. However, I did feel that I was in the slightly better position. The game ended 12-7 to me.

So at the end of the first day I was on 22 points. Not great, but a good second day could propel me up the table.

Part 2 to follow shortly ...