After an 8-8 draw against Cid's Nikeforian Byzantine the second game of the Warriors of the Silk Road competition saw my Yamato Japanese facing Peter Reilly's Ghaznavids.
Whilst there is a clue in the blog title, read on to see what happened ...
I have known Peter since we were both at Manchester University a long long time ago (I was even married to his sister for a while), but we haven't played each other at MeG that often. However, we did play at the Ribble Rumble in 2022 where his Ancient British beat my Former Yan to win the competition (read about it HERE).
My army to recap:
I knew that Peter's army had 2 units of Fully Armoured elephants (partly because I had lent him some armoured elephant models) which would be very tough. However, the rest of the army is not so worrying. His list, along with the others used at the competition can be found HERE.
I again won the initial dice and chose to defend. We ended up in Dense terrain with a Deep Water flank (my left), 3 marshes on my side of the table and a large Wood on Pete's side. This was constricting enough to hamper cavalry manoeuvre and the elephants as they';d not want to go into the marshes, and give me some terrain to work with. Peter deployed Ambush markers in the woods which I suspected would be his elephants aiming to get into the open field quickly.
I deployed with archer units in or behind the marshes on either flank, the ones on the left being the Guard as I felt that they would be able to use their better manoeuvre on this flank. The Koreans were on the right again in the open space, this being better for their cavalry (obviously). The spearmen were to their left with the remaining archers lurking in marshland. Once again I held the Japanese cavalry back as reserves behind the centre and left.
Peter initially deployed no elephants on table which confirmed that his Ambushes were where they were. His cavalry were either side of the wood and the group on my left also included a unit of Dailami.
It looked like this. (See the end for more deployment pictures)
The first moves saw a fairly general advance by my army. I detailed the Korean infantry and a unit of Japanese spearmen to aim for the elephants - very much a hold them up as long as possible approach a bit like my approach to the Varangians in game 1. With the elephants being only 3 base units I hoped to cause some damage even if I lost the infantry. To aid the infantry the Korean Nomad cavalry and a unit of Japanese cavalry advanced to shoot at the elephants as well - again, just looking for steady if low level attrition on small units as they were Fully Armoured. On my left the Guard advanced more boldly thanks to the useful position of the marsh in front of them.
Whilst Peter pushed hard with the elephants he was more circumspect with the cavalry as my archers were safely ensconced in terrain. Ghilman advanced on either side of the elephant block to make sure their flanks were safe.
I pushed my infantry up to ensure the elephants would have to fight them whilst also ensuring one elephant unit would be shot at. As the elephants also advanced I was able to push the Korean cavalry into the face of the Ghilman unit on my right - both the Long Spear types and the Nomads. I felt this was very much to my advantage as the Long Spear cavalry should beat the Ghilman in a fight and the Nomads could get a bit of shooting in as well.
On my left I moved very little, but Peter advanced his cavalry to threaten my spearmen. As I had Shield Cover I was not overly bothered by this, and to be fair Peter was mainly pinning them in place for an elephant attack.
The following move we started combats. Very little preliminary shooting despite quite a lot of archery on both sides.
One unit of elephants charged and drove off my Nomad cavalry, whose shooting was ineffectual. At the same time the other elephant unit charged into the spearmen they were (partly) facing also driving off some Japanese cavalry. My Korean Long Spear cavalry charged the Ghilman who chose to stand rather than try and evade.
With the elephants and some Ghilman committed I was emboldened to make infantry advances on my left - including my other spearman unit preparing to fight the Dailami with some archers poised to support them. The Guard continued to advance around the Ghaznavid right flank.
The combat with the elephants was highly satisfactory. I suffered no casualties whilst Peter lost an elephant. My Korean cavalry also took a base off the Ghilman they were fighting.
In the next move my Korean cavalry broke the Ghiman and pursued as far as the wood. I had actually expanded by a file to make sure the woods stopped my pursuit as I wanted them to be able to intervene in the centre.
The Korean infantry were charged by the second elephant unit. They lost a base but that was all. The spearmen fighting the other elephants also lost a base but Peter had charged them with Ghilman as well to try and speed up combat resolution which just resulted in a base loss fo the Ghilman.
The Dailami charged my other spearmen and we both lost a base. I was happy to exchange here as I was the larger unit.
As best I could my left continued to try and envelope Peter's right.
Next move was mixed in terms of combats but ended up in a good position for me.
The Korean infantry kept the elephants busy, neither side really suffering casualties, but the Korean cavalry turned and moved to where they could charge the elephants in the rear in the following turn.
The damaged elephants continued to be unable to hurt the spearmen they were fighting to any great extent and the spearmen broke the Ghilman who had joined in and as a bonus killed the general who was with them 😁
The Dailami, however, caused losses to the spearmen they were fighting. However, an archer unit had advanced behind their flank to where they could charge them next turn so it was not too bad really.
The next turn was the last. The 2 flank attacks went in which broke both the elephants and the Dailami. The other elephant unit was then promptly broken by the spearmen in the combat phase.At this point time was called and the score was 12-2 to me.
It must be said that Peter's combat dice were, apart from one turn with the Dailami, rubbish. Despite being up in all phases his 2 elephant units only killed 2 bases between them 😟 Whilst I like to think I played the game well, Peter certainly didn't deserve that score line.
The third game report will follow shortly.
Finally, some pictures of the armies as deployed.
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