Kushan Civil War Part 2: Wayne's Revenge

Well Wayne didn't want to concede his kingship of the Kushans after just one battle, so one week after the first encounter, the armies clashed again. Once again Wayne was the attacker, and the terrain fell similarly to the previous game, with a BUA on my left, a rocky hill on right, and various inconsequential hills and bits of scrub scattered around.

Position after my first bound. 

We'd both tweaked our armies a little from the previous game, with Wayne cashing in some bows for more auxillia and massing his elephants, and me losing an elephant general and adding 4 elements of cataphracts. The latter may appear to have been a strange choice, but I'm slow painter, and needing to field elements for a game gets them done. I was painting more cataphracts so that's what I fielded.

Wayne's massed elephants

Once again a major concern was how to stop all my lovely cataphracts from being stomped by elephants, particularly as I had to deploy first. Once again I tried to use them on the flanks, with one set being deployed on the left where I hoped they'd support the Chionite ally, and the others on the right on the rocky hill where I hoped they'd be safe from the elephants who'd count it as difficult going (a subsequent closer reading of the rules revealed that elephants quick kill knights anytime, anyplace, anywhere so in retrospect not my most cunning plan). I put my massed elephants in the center, with a line of auxillia next to them, hoping that Wayne would follow the same line of reasoning as me, and not put his cataphracts in the middle.

In this game it turned out that deploying second was a big advantage though, as Wayne was able to line up a line of auxillia against my elephants, cataphracts against my auxillia, and his elephants close enough to the Kn(X) on the rocky hill, that advancing would be dangerous. The situation really didn't look great as I took my first move, so I decided to attack as quickly as possible on the left with my Chionites, and hope they'd do the business before the rest of the line folded. Wayne had an identical Chionite ally opposite mine, but deployed deep, and a single elephant from the adjacent command was deployed to harass my cataphracts. My idea was to advance quickly with the Chionites moving up cataphracts and light horse from the center left command to support them. Wayne's ally came up to meet them though, forcing me to buy a ticket to the light horse lottery before the supports were in place. I got the first hit in, but he had an elephant menancing my flank.

Now Wayne's had persistent problems with the figures he used for his Chionite ally, as they often under-perform, or more usually plain refuse to fight or just change sides. Anyway he consulted the tea leaves at the bottom of his beer bottle and released that what he needed to do to fix things... was to repaint their hats....

Opposing Chionite allies clash

Boy did that fix work. I lost two elements for one in the first hit, and after that things only got worse with my Chionite command being broken by their opposite numbers without inflicting any more casualties in return.

The right hand flank. Wayne's elephants advance, my cataphracts stay on their hill

Elsewhere on the battlefield my line stayed put, and Wayne's elephant horde advanced into the gap between my elephants and the cataphracts on the the rocky hill. I threw some psiloi and numerous light horse at them who disrupted their formation, but the elephants refused to die. I did eventually dishearten the command by killing support elements, but my own losses had been heavy too (LH(F) vs El isn't pretty).

Wayne's elephant attack is broken up, but note lack of dead elephants

The rapid collapse of my Chionites left the column of cataphracts sent to support them hanging in the wind, and only a rapidly dwindling supply of light horse kept the elephant from trampling them. Eventually Wayne's Chionites regrouped from their pursuit, surrounded and killed a general, and thus broke my left center command. The knock on effects took the next command along too, breaking the army.

So I guess that sometime soon we'll have to make it best out of three. The thrust of my plan for the next game will be to roll better on the aggression dice so that I get to deploy second. Failing that, how to deploy as the defender will need some thought. It's a tricky problem as setting your stall out for an attack can leave you getting all the wrong match ups, but if you deploy deep it can be difficult to redeploy the klumsy Kushans and any LH(F) screen is going to be very vulnerable to an aggresive attack by elephants, cataphracts or Chionites.