Ribble Rumpus 2025 - Former Yan, day 2
On 26th and 27th April 12 players attended the Ribble Rumpus MeG competition in Preston. The theme was "From the Euphrates to the Yangtze" and so was armies of a more eastern nature. Additionally they were restricted to be dated between 200 BCE and 1250 CE.
I took a Former Yan army from the MeG Xianbei Kingdoms army list and after the first two games was leading the field with two big wins.
To find out how day two went, read on ...
To recap my army list was:
My opponent was Matt Haywood using Late Classical Indians, the Rashtrakutras. Matt and I are currently making a habit of playing each other on day two of comps, usually in the first game. This would be the third time this year and Matt has used Indian armies on all occasions and I had come off second best the last two times ...
I decisively won the PBS and scouting and we fought on a table with just one piece of terrain, a Rough hill in Matt's left corner and I outscouted him by 100% (actually, 130% I think 😂). Matt deployed with archers on his left mostly on the hill, fierce Rajput cavalry next (including a unit of Fanatics) screened by skirmishing archers, then elephants and Indian infantry intermixed with a cavalry unit on his right held back. His Superior elephants were on his right. A very sound deployment IMO.
I basically had to decide which flank to attack on and decided the way to win would be through the flank with the Rajputs. This was attacking where the Indians were a bit stronger, but I calculated that to win big it was the way to go. (FWIW Matt felt this was the right choice as well despite the risks). So I loaded the right with the catafracts, a couple of lancer cavalry, the Skilled shooting horse archers and a unit of the Chained horse archers. The rest of the army faced the Indian right. It looked like this:
My plan had a bit of a setback in the first turn as I had poor cards on my right. This meant that I was unable to get my troops where I felt they were needed quickly enough to put pressure on the Indians. As Matt pointed out, this had also happened in one of our other games earlier in the year. Ah well, it happens 😖 The Indians advanced boldly across their line to pressure my centre which was not really up to fighting them straight up. I did get my Skilled horse archers facing Average elephants though which is a good match IMO.
Matt chose to make a couple of charges quite early on which had the advantage that he removed the skirmish infantry screen from in front of his troops allowing me to shoot at his battle troops a bit quicker. Not that I did much ... My right was still suffering from poorer cards that I would like. Matt also started to bring his Superior elephants towards the centre.
On each flank we soon had a couple of 50:50 combats between equal units of lancers, although my catafracts could affect the one on the right - a result of the poor cards as I had not been able to get them away from being contacted by Rajput cavalry who were looking to take them out of the game for a move or so even they were beaten themselves. I did get a unit of lancers into a unit of the Indian archers on my right, however, as I failed to break them quickly enough the Rajput Fanatic cavalry could come up to threaten their flank. In the centre the Indian advance continued and my shooting was less effective than I needed it to be, although I was whittling down the Indian guard infantry (this also seems to be a regular thing in my games against Matt).
Although I beat the Rajput lancers on my right, I lost the 50:50 fight on my left and also the lancers on my right along with a unit of the Chained horse archers who had sacrificially charged to try and buy them enough time to at least break the Indian archers before the lancers broke. I also lost the other Chained horse archer unit to the Indian guard spearmen.
At this point Matt and I were surprised to find that we had run out of time; we seemed to have lost track of about 45 minutes along the way as we both thought we had time for a couple more moves - and we hadn't been playing too slowly. Result at that point was 4-10 in favour of Matt which meant he had leap-frogged me going into the last round.
The final game saw me facing Andy Catlow using a Sasanid Persian army. First time we have ever played - always nice to play somebody new, and Andy is a good player.
As with the morning game the PBS and scouting went heavily in my favour (not that it had done me much good in the morning 😜). The table was empty of terrain apart from a piece of Rough going on my right and I outscouted the Persians by 100% (140% actually; pretty outrageous).
Andy had a Dailami ally which he deployed on his left beside the Rough terrain with a unit of Persian cavalry between some of the Dailami infantry and an archer unit on the end of the line. He had two elephant units with a Superior cavalry unit between them in his centre and his right was two units of Armenian lancers and a catafract unit.
I deployed to attack on my left with two units of lancers, catafracts and Skilled horse archers. The Chained horse archers, Experienced horse archers and the ally faced off against the Persian centre and left with the aim of occupying them whilst I won on my left and turned in to win the game. It looked like this:
I meant to ask Andy why he didn't deploy his units in contact with each other, but forgot at the end of the game. Whilst you may end up moving them separately by not having them touching you do remove the option of block moving. I'm sure he had his reasons.
The game started badly for Andy as his Dailami ally was Hesitant.
As these would have been used to help pressure my right flank this essentially meant that until they joined in that this wasn't going to happen. This restricted Andy to a fairly cautious advance by his centre and right. Obviously with this happening I pushed rather more aggressively on the left.
The following move the Dailami refused to commit and I pushed to get within charge range of a couple of units on the left whilst also getting horse archers into useful shooting positions - importantly two units effectively screening off the Persian elephants.
The next move with the Dailami stubbornly remaining Hesitant Andy chose to initiate a number of charges where he was within range. This included both Armenian cavalry units which I felt was a mistake as it allowed my Skilled horse archers to shoot at the chargers - in one of the cases I was almost certainly going to charge him anyway which would have meant the horse archers there would not have shot.
We had two combats which went decisively my way. I think I'd have won both, however, they went more quickly than expected - not that I was complaining 😎 This left the Persian right flank completely open to me. Elsewhere I faced off the two Persian asvaran cavalry units with a unit of the Chained horse archers and the allied lancers.
With the Dailami still staying out of the battle my horse archers and lancers combined to destroy the other Armenian cavalry unit whilst other horse archers continued to distract the elephants. However, one of my Chained horse archer units did end up somewhat trapped facing the Superior asvaran with one of the elephant units in a position to charge them in the flank. On the right my allied lancers were failing to beat the Average asvaran despite being better in all phases of combat.
Bit of a photography gap now, however, with the Dailami still Hesitant my catafracts marched onto their flank and charged one of the units. They didn't quite break them in one move, but needed just one more Wound to do so and then pursue into the next Dailami unit.
As expected the Chained horse archers were flattened by the elephant/cavalry combination. However, despite pursuing towards my right the elephants ended up with a unit of lancers within charge reach of their rear as the Persians basically had nothing to prevent them getting there. My lancers from the left flank marched up to within charge reach of the Persian camp.
On my right the allied lancers continued to fail to beat the asvaran, however, when they were charged in the flank by the Persian infantry archers they cut them down with alacrity.
Of course it was at this point when it was all too late, the Dailami decided to commit ...
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