So with the third day of Britcon dawning after a fairly genteel Saturday evening , it was back to the venue for the final 2 games of the MeG competition.
The first game saw me facing Dave Gollop who was using Gupta Indian. To see how this, and the final game went, read on ...
A recap of the Early Shatuo list that I was using:
The Indians defended and aimed to get a fair amount of terrain on table to restrict my cavalry and to aid their infantry and elephants. However, I was lucky with my PBS cards and was able to move the location of the battle to a terrain light option. We ended up with Deep Water on my right flank and a patch of Tall Crops somewhat central and on Dave's side of the table. As Dave noted this was almost identical terrain to a game we played a couple of years ago where he used Classical Indians and I used Sasanids.
I then went on and outscouted the Indians by 80% so they had to nearly wholly deploy first. Dave chose to place most of his army next to the Deep Water angled back towards the base line to avoid me running around the flanks. This line was infantry interspersed with elephants but with a unit of Superior lancers next to the river. There were 2 cavalry units on the right, one of Flexible horse archers and the other another unit of the lancers. Dave did slightly mess up his deployment and ended up with an elephant unit behind the lines on his left where it didn't have much to do.
I deployed with the Mongols on the left to overwhelm the isolated Indian cavalry and then swing inwards, the Chinese facing the Tall Crops and the Shatuo on the right. It looked like this:
First moves saw both armies advance apart from the Indian right where it would have been suicidal to do so and Dave isn't stupid 😁On my left the Mongols were not able to actually get within shooting range but were as far forward as they could be. The only response Dave made here was to position the lancers to be able to ride away towards their own infantry in future moves. On my I had my Shatuo Skilled shooters in front of the Indian lancers with the Shatuo heavy cavalry supporting and other horse archers facing an elephant unit. All good by me. The Chinese were a bit more cautious as I wanted the Indians to come onto me.
On my right the lancers and elephants charged to push me back. I did some damage to the lancers but not the elephants. On the right the Indian horse archers were ganged up on and 2 Mongol cavalry units closed in round the flank of the infantry as the Indian lancers on this flank ran for cover.
The next move on my left the Gupta lancers charged again, got shot up badly and were broken by the Shatuo heavy cavalry in combat whilst failing to do anything useful themselves. The Shatuo heavies then pursued into a unit of Indian javelin men infantry who had been burst through by the routing lancers, and after this charge and melee the cavalry broke off having taken 3 bases of 9 off the javelinmen.
On the left we had a humorous shooting failure where my 5 files of Mongols and the 3 files of Indian horse archers failed to do any damage between them despite all the dice being Green or Yellow ... However, the Mongols shooting at Indian infantry in the crops shot a front rank base off which meant that subsequent shooting could target an Unarmoured file. In the centre the Chinese braced for an attack by elephants but also, very usefully, the small unit of Chinese cavalry got into a position to charge the rear of an advancing elephant unit the next turn.
On the right things continued to go to plan. The Shatuo heavy cavalry charged back into the Indian infantry and broke them. It did mean that they then pursued into the elephants behind the infantry which would not end well, but they had taken out 2 units. The Chinese cavalry charged the elephants in the rear and broke them.
On the left shooting improved with the Indian horse archers reduced to a Wound from breaking and the infantry in the crops further reduced in numbers. However, the Indian lancers returned to threaten the Mongol cavalry so I had to withdraw a unit a bit. I did, however, push up a unit of the Vanguard Swordsmen to be able to charge the infantry which I hoped would finish them off.
The next couple of moves saw a flurry of fighting and units destroyed on both sides. In the centre a combined elephant and infantry charge blew away the 2 Chinese units they hit in a flurry of Skulls with the Indians being almost undamaged. Ouch 😖 However, in compensation the Indian horse archers were also destroyed, but so were my Mongol nobles even after these charged into the rear of the Indian lancers (but didn't do much). That said, the situation was still that the infantry in the crops and the lancers were very vulnerable as was an elephant unit on my right which was being ganged up on by Shatuo horse archer including the Skilled ones.
The following move I picked up the units I needed to break the Indians and the game finished 15-8 to me. This propelled me back up the table and a good result in the last game could see me with a respectable finish, although I'd still be well of the podium pace.
The last game was against Philip Powell who was using Vikings who had a substantial and dangerous French ally of charging cavalry.
The account of this game will be quite brief I'm afraid and a litany of how not to play a game from me - which is not an attempt to take anything away from Philip who exploited all my errors to perfection. The TL:DR is a bad plan, badly executed, ruthlessly exploited by Philip and, spoiler alert, it ends 2-15 in Philip's favour; deservedly so 😊
Philip won the initial dice off with a Skull and chose to invade, he also won the terrain card and we were to start in Standard. For some reason I decided that having more rather than less terrain was a good idea (don't ask ...) and so ended up with a Secure Flank on the left, a Vineyard on the right and some Rough Going in the centre, mostly in my half of the table. To be honest, apart from the Vineyard I could have lived with this; but it was there ...
I slightly outscouted Philip (20% IIRC) but the only real impact this had was for me to foolishly change where I thought I'd put troops - to my detriment of course 😧 What happened was that I was planning to put the Chinese in the terrain in the centre and the cavalry to the right with little on my left. However, when Philip's first 2 units down were on his right I thought I may be able to get some advantage with the Chinese if they went on this flank. This was really stupid as it meant I'd end up defending the centre with cavalry in Rough Going and there was no reason why the Viking infantry shouldn't just push through that - OK, they're Disadvantaged but they had Superior front ranks who have 2HCC. I'll let the reader speculate as to my thought processes here ...
With the right constrained by the Vineyard I deployed my Mongols in Loose formation not Skirmisher as I would need to maximise my shooting - I'd have probably done this anyway, but in the situation I was in it felt like making the best of a bad job. It looked like this:
After a couple of moves the Viking infantry are pushing towards the Rough Going to push my cavalry out and the French ally is within charge and shooting rang of my Mongols. We're not expecting things to take too long really. I need spectacular shooting, Philip just needs to be sensible.
As my shooting was far from spectacular, and Philip was sensible and made all the right choices I'll skip ahead quickly rather than prolong things.
Indifferent shooting plus the odd short evade move saw my Mongols caught by the French cavalry with predictable results. The Viking infantry were pushed at my Shatuo horse archers who also managed to join in this sequence and get caught and, inevitably, butchered whilst doing no appreciable damage back. The best I could manage was the Shatuo heavy cavalry in a position to rear charge a French cavalry unit that was cutting its way through my horse archers with alacrity.
All just rewards for Philip and also for me 😂
The rear change was a miserable failure and the Shatuo heavies were themselves charged in the rear for their troubles. The only success I had was on the far right where the Mongol nobles and skirmishers combined to take out a single French cavalry unit.
So as stated above the game ended up 2-15 in Philip's favour. This is the first time he has beaten me in all the games we have played (I'm sure I've got away with a few over that time) and was well earned.
So far from the hoped for jump up the table I fell down 😂
The final placings were:
Overall I liked the army and thought it had a good tool set - just let down on occasion by the player 😆
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