The weekend of the 18th/19th October the 2025 edition of the annual Rueil MeG competition was held. I went last year and enjoyed it, so went back again this year. The theme was any army from the MeG lists dated between 3000 BCE and 476 CE and I took Xianbei Kingdoms.
To see how I went on in the first 2 games, read on ...
The list I took was:
I used Xianbei Kingdoms earlier in the year in the Ribble Rumpus competition and the list I used then included the somewhat different "Chained horse archers". Whilst I do like using them I decided not to go with that option this time but to have a few more Heavy cavalry and a couple of units of skirmishing horse archers - this would boost the hitting power and give a few more files of (potential) Skilled shooting.
The first round drew me against Renaud Cordier who was using Graeco-Bactrian, and army with some similarities to mine. The pre-battle sequence went well for me as I defended and thanks to better cards ensured that we had a mostly open table. The only terrain were some woods on the right flank (from my point of view). On top of that I outscouted the Graeco-Bactrians by 80% and so would see the majority of Renaud's army before I had to deploy anything. The Graeco-Bactrian army along with most of the other lists from the competition can be seen HERE.
The Graeco-Bactrians deployed cautiously (and sensibly) because of this with their left flank covered by the woods. They had some thyreoforoi in the woods with pikemen next to them, then the mass of their cavalry deployed in 2 ranks with catafracts leading. Another pike unit and some Saka cavalry covered the right. The catafracts were not part of the 80% initially deployed but it was pretty clear where they were going to be.
I had the opportunity to heavily over-wing the Graeco-Bactrians with their compact deployment, however, in the interests of maximising the chance of getting a win I deployed a reasonable number of troops directly opposite them. This was, however, mainly horse archers including the skirmishers partly as losing the skirmishers would not make my army too vulnerable, but mainly so I could gang up a reasonable amount of Skilled shooting against the catafracts which would hopefully mean I could weaken them before combat despite their armour. The mass of my fighting cavalry was on my left.
It all looked like this:
The first move saw me slightly hindered by cards but only a bit. I (obviously) pushed cavalry around the Graeco-Bactrian left as much as I could. On the right I pushed a Loose formation horse archer unit forward forward but a bit short of its full movement. The Graeco-Bactrian catafracts responded by advancing as close as they could which allowed my Skirmisher cavalry to advance to shooting range whilst forming Cantabrian so to get their Skilled shooting effect as early as possible.
A couple of moves of rather disappointing shooting ensued with just a single base of catafracts removed from the 2 units, oddly from the one being shot at by fewest Skilled shots - dice can be like that 😂 On my left in order to try and open things up a bit as the Graeco-Bactrians had been very disciplined so far, I threw by Superior catafracts into a unit of Bactrian lancers, although this attracted a pike countercharge. This had some effect knocking a couple of bases off the lancers and also 1 off the pikemen, however, the catafracts would be flank charged the following turn - I judged this to be acceptable even though this was my best unit as it could, as mentioned, partly break up the enemy formation. Omelettes and eggs and all that. One useful thing about over-winging the Bactrian line was that their best unit, the Xystoforoi, had been drawn away to be a flank guard - I was happy they were away from the action 😁
As expected my catafracts broke and, annoyingly, a horse archer unit failed to make an evade and was destroyed rather quickly as well. Ho hum. However, my shooting came good on a catafract unit and I knocked a couple of bases off in short order and also badly damaged a small unit of lancers that had come up to support the Graeco-Bactrian left. On top of this there was an interesting looking hole in the centre on the enemy line. One of my Heavy cavalry units followed up where the catafracts had been and would be able to flank charge another small lancer unit as well as the one badly hit by the catafracts. So things were not looking too bad.
The next turn was a bit mixed and, being honest, a tad disappointing. Whilst I shot away the damaged lancers on my right somewhat brutally the Heavy cavalry on the left failed to break either unit they hit - both would have been lucky but I had hoped for one of them in that turn.
Alas, whilst I felt things were moving my way we ran out of time and the game finished before either of us had a chance to land a really decisive blow. The score was 4-6 as I had only broken 1 unit and lost 2.
This left me somewhat down the table and was drawn to play Denis Mercier who was using Early Germans - basically a big "warband" army with, no doubt, a Sarmatian ally as these Early German armies tend to have that and so it proved 😀
Again the pre-battle part of the game went in my favour and the table had a single terrain feature a gentle hill on Denis' side of the table. As in the first game I outscouted my opponent by 80%. A good start for me but not for Denis.
Faced with an uncooperative table Denis deployed sensibly with his warbands in the centre, those on his right being Chatti with a Superior front rank. To the right he had a Sarmatian ally of 2 Average and 1 Superior units and on his left, angled back a bit, were German cavalry. Thus his right was stronger than the left and so I decided to mass to my right to attack his relatively weaker troops. However, I did put 2 units of Heavy cavalry and 2 units of horse archers with them including a Skilled shooting one to take on the Sarmatians - whilst I was expecting to do most damage on my right I thought I could also take the odd Sarmatian unit down as well.
So it looked like this after deployment:
No surprises with the first moves. I pushed as strongly as I could on my right and little less aggressively on the left, although I did get the Skilled horse archers into range to shoot an Average Sarmatian cavalry unit which was nice. The Germans advanced somewhat more cautiously as you'd expect leading with their left as this is where their stronger troops were.
More or less more of the same followed with me pushed my right wing up as close as possible to the German cavalry and brining other cavalry up in support to start to work towards threatening the left most German warbands. I was replying on the Superior catafracts to batter their way through on the right supported by shooting allowing other cavalry to start working on the warbands.
On the left shooting started to damage the Sarmatians and I brought up some Heavy cavalry to support those shooting the Average ones, whilst dropping back in front of the Superior ones to delay them getting into action.
The next couple of turns saw a flurry of quite dramatic action. On my right the catafracts did what I had hoped for and flattened a unit of German cavalry, pursued uphill into a "filler" unit of German "women and children" and ran over them in no time at all. This now left them on the hill after chasing off the second German cavalry unit and rather close to the German (unfortified) camp. Also on the right a charge by a unit of the Heavy cavalry had taken bases off a warband unit and they broke off to charge again and horse archer support moved up.
On the left there was more dramatic action. Whilst the Superior Sarmatian unit was distracted by horse archers the other 2 Sarmatian units charged and fought 2 units of my heavy cavalry. In both fights the troops were identical, the only difference was a base loss on one of the Sarmatians from earlier shooting. However, when it came to the fighting the dice heavily favoured my troops to the extent that I broke both the Sarmatians in 1 turn for the loss of 1 base from 1 of my units and a single wound on the other 😲 To say it was one-sided and unfair on Denis would be an understatement.
After this it was, realistically, just a matter of time. My catafracts charged the camp and Heavy cavalry charged warband units, the on eon the right supported by some effective shooting from a Skilled horse archer unit.
Whilst the remaining Sarmatian cavalry caught a slow evading horse archer unit there was not much else the Germans could do.
After sacking the camp I picked up the one extra unit I needed and so broke the Germans. It was all over with about an hour of gaming time left. The score was 15-2. Whilst I was pretty confident I could get the victory in this game I had expected to lose more along the way and Denis was on the receiving end of some rather good dice on my part and suffered from poor ones on his.
So 19 points after the first day. OK, but not great and well off the pace - I'd need 2 good results on the Sunday to place anywhere near the top. The accounts of those games will follow when I have the time.
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