Ice and Fire 2025 - Buyids Day 1
The fourth running of the MeG "Ice and Fire" competition took place over the weekend of 11th/12th January. This kicks off the 2025 MeG competition year and has proved popular each time it has been run. The theme is "open", but with only "eastern-ish" armies allowed - so no date restrictions; but roughly speaking armies based west of Byzantium are not allowed (plus a few eastwards as well if they are deemed "out of character" for the comp).
I took Dailami Dynasties (Buyid) and to find out how they fared read on ...
For a long time I was not sure I could make the event this year, however, things fell such that I could so entered relatively late. Unlike some comps I chose my army quite quickly. I came to a short list of 2 - Xianbei Kingdoms and Dailami Dynasties. I went for the latter.
I chose the army as I decided I wanted to use something like the Bedouin Dynasties I have used successfully before (you can read about it starting HERE), but with a little more infantry heft. The Dailami Dynasties can do an almost identical army but with more Dailami infantry available and so that sorted that.
My list was:
Despite the Parthians having a Legendary general to my Talented I won the initial dice off and got to choose the territory type and so maximise my chances of getting terrain that suited me. I also, rather luckily, outscouted them by 40% despite their 10 scouting cards (but I did have 5). So I was able to tailor my deployment to my advantage. After deployment it was set up thus:
Parthians rather hemmed in and my army poised to rush at them. Not a lot of options for the Parthians to be honest and after the first move my army was up close and personal, ready to charge to hopefully sweep away a lot of horse archers, or at least force them back towards the table edge.
When I charged the Parthian shooting was fairly effective, however, they did rather suffer on the dice rolls for the variable movement when skirmishing and that proved more important than their good shooting. With some prompting Through Fire I caught a lot of the horse archer units with my TUGs which meant they were instantly destroyed. This was the haul:
Thas 7 units 😲 Which left things looking like this:
The writing is already on the wall as I now have a clear lane to the Parthian camp and sacking that will break the army on its own. So in an attempt to get something from the game the Parthian catafracts attacked a unit of my Bedouin armoured cavalry and other units were targeted by the remaining horse archers as best they could.
next move the catafracts broke the Bedouin and 2 other units were shot down, but I sacked the camp and so won the game. A 15-6 win to me.
This set up my second game against Early Northern Song Chinese. This is the army I used at the first Ice and Fire in 2022 (and won the comp) - you can read about it if you want starting HERE.
The Early Northern Song is a handy mix of useful steppe style armoured horse archers and effective infantry; some of the latter are close combat specialists and others are mainly crossbowmen but with a slightly tougher front rank. The crossbow obviously have some advantages if they are charged with any S result being a Wound.
For this game I was looking for a mainly open field as I felt my cavalry would need all the room they could get - I expected to have more cavalry and fewer infantry than the Song. Things panned out well enough and we ended up with a mostly open table with a big chunk of Rough Going in the centre where we would inevitably have an infantry fight. I outscouted the Song by 40% so again could tailor my deployment a bit and we ended up facing off like this:
My plan is to (hopefully) win on my right as I think I have some advantages in the cavalry fight, take out a couple of units with the Dailami (the crossbow ones are the most likely) and distract the Song on my left where I may well lose both my cavalry but that is the price to pay. The Song, I think, were going to try and use their infantry and shooting advantages as their main route to victory.
The initial moves moved things forward reasonably well. I was intending to use the Unprotected Bedouin as front line fighting troops in this game - as long as they can avoid being shot at (much) they are about as good as the Song cavalry in combat (I think some players underestimate how effective they can be when in Loose formation). So whilst they are in Skirmish formation at the start, I will be changing them to Flexible soon.
You may also notice that I am going to use the Ghilman unit on my right to try and tie up one of the Song infantry units to even out the infantry fight in the middle. I also need to try and distract another infantry unit on my left.
A couple of moves on it looks like this:
I feel I have done OK in pressuring the Song left although I will have one Bedouin armoured cavalry unit fighting 2 Song units for a while so I am hoping they can hang on long enough for me to exploit with other troops. As you can see on the right, as planned my Bedouin are now in Loose formation ready to intervene.
The centre is teed up for an infantry clash and on my left my cavalry have drawn off an infantry unit as hoped - I am not wholly convinced that the Song needed to do it, but I can also see why they did.
The following picture jumps ahead a few moves during which many combats are fought; at times it felt that we were getting nowhere, but then things happened.
On my right I have eliminated 2 cavalry units and my unit which I needed to hand on has done so quite successfully - it still needs to hand on a little longer so my victorious cavalry can manoeuvre to the rear of the remaining Song cavalry.
In the centre we have both lost an infantry unit but I have a slight edge in the ongoing combats - partly as one of the Song units (the one in a single line) is Close formation fighting in Rough Going (just one base which had been expanded to get a supporting file, but enough for me to have an advantage in an otherwise even fight).
On my left my 2 cavalry units are in serious trouble and are about to be eliminated. Expected, but you always hope ... 😉
The end of the game came a couple of moves later which was good, as we were getting close to time. My Bedouin hung on nicely and the rest of the cavalry arriving in the rear finished off the last SOng cavalry on that flank. My Ghilman also charged and took out the infantry unit facing them. In the centre where I was fighting the Close formation infantry in the Rough Going the advantage proved enough for me to win there as well and that broke the Song. I did, of course, lose my cavalry on the left but they had done their job.
Another 15-6 victory so the maximum available of 30 points on the day.
Many thanks to Nigel for the first game where he took all the adversity in great humour, and to Richard for the second game which was nip and tuck despite the final score line, and really quite intensive on the brain 😁
The second day's games HERE
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