Beachhead 2025 - Yamato Era Japanese Day 1

 

The 2025 MeG competition circuit moved on to the beachhead competition in Bournemouth on the weekend of the 8th/9th February. The theme was any army up to 1000 CE that could have Coastal as a territory type in its list. After a certain amount of dithering I decided to take my Yamato Era Japanese.

Read on to see how it did ...

The list I chose was:

The troops are an odd mix and a bit unusual and the previous times I have used it they seem to have somewhat confused my opponents - which is never a bad thing. Ideally the army will defend hoping to get a few pieces of terrain for the Loose formation foot to work with, and to have the camp as Fortified thanks to it being Flexible (which means it is Fortified if defending and mobile if invading). I came 3rd at Britcon 2024 with a list similar to this one which I felt was something of an over-performance.

The first game matched me up against Robin Spence with a Later Foederate Roman army with a Tolosan Visigoth ally. This was mainly charging cavalry with supporting "warband" type infantry. You can find his lists HERE along with all the other lists used over the weekend.

I won the initial dice roll and chose to defend and we ended up in Very Dense terrain which was a good start for me. Most of the terrain was patches of Rocky Ground with a couple of Marshes and a Steep Hill. Both flanks had terrain which narrowed the field for the cavalry based Romans and the rest of the terrain mostly fell on my side. Good for me 😁 I was outscouted by 40% which was only to be expected.

I deployed with Uji archers and spearmen on the left to mostly fight in the terrain there and the Korean ally and more Japanese spearmen and archers on my right where fighting would be more in the open. My centre was mostly empty but that is where the marshes were and so the 2 poor quality archer units sat in these.

The Romans put their infantry facing my left and their cavalry extending the line into the open field. I extended rather further across the field and so was placed to squeeze them towards the terrain on my left. It looked like this:

I think it is fair to say that Robin did not fancy his chances.

The Romans advanced strongly on my left and I was happy to do the same to get within shooting distance. Overall the fight here was quite even but I hoped my shooting before melee would tip things my way. As planned I advanced on my right as well and wheeled to start to squeeze the Roman left - although as I have a number of Tribal units this is slower than I might wish - but that some from the army choice. 

The effect of my initial shooting on the left was mostly to slow down the Roman advance rather than casualties, but this would have a benefit as when the Romans charged they proved to be outside the range of their Charge Only Javelins and so I avoided possible casualties here - I think this was a mistake by Robin who was a bit too eager to get to combat and it would have been OK to delay it a move to get in closer and get the shooting.

On my right one Roman cavalry unit was sent to delay my advance as best it could whilst the rest of the cavalry on that wing redeployed away from my advance.

Things stood like this after a couple of moves:

As mentioned the Roman infantry charged in as soon as they could and my shooting did very little. The fighting, as expected, was fairly even and we both soon had a unit each that was teetering on the brink; however, the fact that I had a spear unit in the fight gave be a slight edge.

On the right I continued to push to create pressure forcing some of the Roman cavalry to face me. The marshes in the centre really helped me now as they allowed me a "hollow centre" where my poor troops were hiding and covered the flanks of my wings.

The teetering units on both sides soon broke (at the same time) and the KaB from the Roman unit breaking caused a second to break as well and left the 3rd on the brink.

One Roman cavalry unit tried its chances against one of my Korean catafract units and bounced off having lost 2 bases and causing no damage. The redeployed Roman cavalry finally turned to face my oncoming right wing troops, however, the squeeze was now on from both flanks.

Soon the last Roman infantry unit was despatched as was the damaged cavalry unit which left me needing just 1 more unit to break for victory.

Victory followed soon after this, although the Romans did catch and break my small Japanese cavalry unit. A 15-4 victory to me to start the competition off.

The afternoon game saw me facing off against a Classical Greek army (Athenian and Thebans) led by Nigel Porter. A big chunk of good hoplite infantry is not the sort of match-up that suits my army really but I hoped that I would have the advantage in cavalry which could be useful.

I again defended so got my Fortified Camp. The terrain ended up on the right hand side of the table and somewhat closed things down on that side; I'd have preferred it to be a bit more open but that's the way things fall. Once again I was outscouted, this time by 60%.

As I expected the hoplites to be in the open area (obviously) I weighted the deployment of my infantry to the right and had the Koreans and my cavalry on the left in the hope they could fight the Greek cavalry. The Greeks deployed as expected with the hoplites in the open ground (including a Superior unit) backed by Theban cavalry who were placed to move around my left. The Greeks did have a single "terrain unit", Thracians, who were placed to be able to go and contest an Orchard in the centre of the table.

It looked like this before we started movement:

I must confess I was somewhat at a loss as to how I could engineer a win from this. My bad really for not having thought about this sort of scenario more in advance 😖

Early moves saw the Greek advance more slowly than I had expected (cards probably) and so I pushed forward on both flanks. I hoped to draw out the Theban cavalry and get them into a fight where I may be able to get a catafract unit involved. On the right I was hoping to outwing the Greek left, however, this was, of course, slowed by the Tribal nature of my foot.

The game continued in this somewhat cautious way for a couple of turns as neither side was ready to commit.

One of my Korean catafract units had a nasty tussle with the Superior hoplites after the latter charged them; the catafracts were reduced to 3 bases and the hoplites lost 2 bases and both sides had a general killed in the fight. I had left the catafracts out as a bit of a tempt to try and drag the Greeks forward, however, it had gone a bit wrong - an accepted risk but painful.

My advance on the right had been slowed by a Greek skirmisher unit in a vineyard which refused to die in combat unitil my Emishi charged them in the flank - frustrating but quite funny in a way.

In the centre Nigel decided to see if the Thracians could do anything against my infantry in the central orchard.

On my left the Theban cavalry kept refusing to be drawn and we had something of a standoff between our cavalry.

In the orchard I managed to break the Thracians but only after a flank charge I had set up had been stymied by rubbish cards for their command (hugely frustrating as I only needed 1 colour card out of 4 and drew 2 White and 2 Black - but that's the way things can fall and it can hurt both sides). This meant that my Guard archers got flattened by a hoplite unit that I may otherwise have been able to charge in the flank 😭

My (now) 3 base catafract unit was finally caught and destroyed by the Superior hoplites after falling back as much as they could, but eventually the cards fell so they couldn't get away.

Alas, we timed out after this leaving us with a 5-8 result.

So, overall 20 points from the first 2 games which wasn't a tragedy by any means and both games were enjoyable.

The next 2 games will appear later.