Kent Clash 2025 - Vijayanagar Day 1

 

The weekend of the 1st/2nd March saw 12 players gather for the Kent Clash. The theme for the competition was to field any army but that it must contain at least 1 unit of elephants. So this would allow a wide range of quite diverse armies. Also there was a special "Elephant King" prize for the Commander whose army killed the most Elephants.

I decided to take an Indian army, Vijayanagar. To see how it fared, read on ...

Vijayanagar is an army I have, although to be fair the figures are mainly generic "Indian" types that can do for a period of about 2000 years 😂 However, it can have somewhat better cavalry than many Indian armies. I built this army after a friend had tried it and declared it to be rubbish - so I decided to run it as a challenge and see if I could prove him wrong.

The list I chose was:

So a core of the usual Indian troops of Elephants, swordsmen and archers, but with a couple of units of armoured horse archers and some useful skirmishers. Quite large as my armies go, and not an army type that I use much (it might have shown in how I used it ... 😉).

The first game saw me drawn against Dave Turner using one of the 3 Seleukid armies in the competition. Dave is pretty new to MeG so learning how things work.

I won the initial dice roll and chose to defend. We ended with a mainly open table with a few pieces of Rough Going on my left and a big steep hill on my base edge in the middle. I was happy with this. I slightly outscouted Dave (just 10% I think) which was to my advantage.

The Seleukids deployed with their mounted, including elephants and scythed chariots on their left, pikemen and thyreoforoi in the centre and their left covered by Thracians facing some rough terrain. I massed my swordsmen and Skilled archers on my left, held my centre fairly weakly with some horse archers, skirmishers and archers hiding on the hill, and put all my elephants, the better cavalry and skirmishing archers on my right. It looked like this:

The Seleukids advanced the chariots supported by a 4 base Galatian cavalry unit on my right but held back their catafracts and Companions being nervous of the elephants (unsurprisingly). I think Dave's newness showed here as the chariots can be easily disposed of given my shooting and a 4 base unit is really vulnerable to the same.

The Seleukid centre advanced cautiously and the Thracians pushed into the terrain to slow up my massed swordsmen who were advancing towards them planning on crushing them with superior numbers. I advanced my horse archers in my centre towards the thyreoforoi and also brought my Skilled shooters to bear on them.

The chariots were quickly disposed of and the Galatian cavalry reduced to just 1 wound off breaking. To avoid my advancing elephants the Companions charged at my Muslim mercenaries but these skirmished out of the way and allowed me to mass more shooting against the Seleukids. My Superior elephants teed themselves up to fight the Seleukid elephants whilst my other elephants came within range of the catafracts. Elsewhere I was starting to whittle the thyreoforoi away with shooting as well. All going to plan.

The catafracts did not last long against my elephants but the Seleukid elephants held on a bit. The Companions managed to run down my skirmishing archers but suffered very badly against all the shooting I could mass - which included the skirmishing horse archers after they had disposed of the Galatian cavalry. The thyreoforoi were also being taken apart by the shooting massed against them.

On my left the Thracians and swordsmen got stuck in and despite my numbers advantage the Thracians were getting the upper hand. However, as the Companions, elephants and thyreoforoi all broke the army collapsed into defeat.

A 15-1 win to kick things off with. Dave certainly struggled against an army containing troops he was unfamiliar with being so new to the game. However, he did say he learned things which helped him in his other games which was good to know - we had been discussing things as we went along.

The afternoon game matched me against another Seleukid, this time run by Stephen Stead. It had been a while since we last played so it was nice to play him again.

I again defended and we had a fair amount of terrain, mostly Rough Going but also a Steep Hill, most of which was in my half of the table, the Seleukid half being pretty much terrain free. This meant that we would play in the left 2/3 of the table (from my point of view).

I was outscouted by, IIRC, 40% so had to start deploying first. I ended up massing my elephants and better cavalry on my left, the infantry in the centre and a weaker right wing of the lesser armoured horse archers and skirmishing archers. Stephen had his mounted including elephants facing my left and his infantry facing my centre and right. It looked like this:

I felt that Stephen had a bit of an advantage on my left, but that it was not so much as to be too worrying. I hoped to be able to wheely my line to the left and cut down his opportunity to manoeuvre around my flank. Alas, my cards rather restricted this and I more or less had to advance straight ahead. I could have sat back, but felt I needed a bit of space for my mercenary cavalry and skirmishing cavalry to operate in; this may have been an error. 

As expected, Stephen manoeuvred his good cavalry to avoid my elephants and move to get round my left flank. Otherwise it was a fairly straight forward advance across the board. I did wheel a bit on my right to line up more as I wanted to in the face of the pikemen advancing.

Things developed along these lines during the next move and we both teed up charges for the following move.

My elephants rather quickly saw off their Seleukid counterparts, helped by my "Elephant Kings" general who could fight in the front rank - something most generals cannot do with elephant units. My superior elephants were driving off the Seleukid Galatian cavalry who would keep evading away for the rest of the game successfully keeping my best elephants out of the game; not much I could do about that although at the end if we had had another turn I think I would have pinned them against the rear table edge and killed them.

My best cavalry got caught by the catafracts when they skirmished short and got rather battered for it. They will break next move. Also in what was a reasonably equal fight a unit of my swordsmen was getting massacred by the Seleukid Thracians - I expect to lose this but was hoping to damage the Thracians enough that they could be taken out fairly easily after that. Ho hum 😖

In fact, the Thracians, after beating the swordsmen, then ran straight through my Skilled archers in no time at all. Not going to plan at all. Sometimes it goes like that.

The Seleukid cavalry had also turned my flank after the mercenary cavalry were destroyed, the one saving grace was, however, that the elephants who had beaten their opposite number were in a position to threaten the Seleukid cavalry who would not want to fight them. On my right my shooting has been a bit ineffective against the pikemen and it is all looking a bit iffy.

I did, just, manage to break the Thracians when they attacked some of my ordinary archers who were uphill - but only just.

We ran out of time just after this and the game ended up 6-9 in favour of Stephen. Good fun as ever, and Stephen played a good game and exploited his advantages and my errors; I'm sure he would have broken my army if we had enough time.

So 21 points after 2 games which due to the scoring elsewhere still left me well up the table with all to play for on day 2.

The games on the Sunday will follow later.