Joe Breton Has Some New Friends

Average Joe and his new friends Olaf the Ordinary and brother Ieric the Inept have a great day in the field.  

After another dismal performance where the Franks, general excepted, were more interested in apple picking than in fighting, they have had their contract terminated.  This week saw the arrival of the much anticipated Viking ally.  Finally the configuration that was always envisaged for the all average Bretons was useable.

Originally I always wanted to play them with the maximum iLhO and this was possible using an Frankish ally.  It was also possible with the Vikings but it restricted the Vikings to a smaller than ideal 18ME size.  After a previous exchange of messages with Benny in the old country who has recently spent many months perfecting a Breton fighting force, and in line with his experiences, I decided, at very late notice (that is 3hrs before heading to the game), to modify the Order of Battle and expand the Vikings involvement.
This was achieved by dropping the maximum iLhO criteria and dropping the CinC back to 24ME.  Now I had three 24ME commands including the Vikings and a Lh command at 16ME.  All magic numbers!!

However the toys were already in the truck, packed by the old command levels and with a few spare elements added in the baggage drawer along with the secret Viking weapon – technology.  This pre-packing lead to a later oversight.

Game on and the Greco Bactrian’s, following a new eastward nation tradition, invaded Brittany.  Terrain and deployment were without drama.  It is worth noting that this was the first Bactrian outing with the full pike complement and as such were as untried from Bob’s side of the table as the Breton + Viking configuration was untried on mine.  The unexpected Viking technology – palisades – caused some consternation from the opposite side of the table when the finger counting gave the uphill blade defended palisade a combat factor of +9.

We didn’t mess up the deployment this week, Vikings front and centre, the BdI on a hill (with local HdO supports sharing the TF) and the BdO in a area of boggy ground so that they were unaffected but the enemy mounted would be at a disadvantage.  As the right wing looked a bit terrain difficult it got a holding command with plenty of HdO and PsS as terrain slowing options.  The more open left wing got two commands including plenty of outflanking iLhO.  Bob’s heavy KnX elements were on the right (his left) so I was okay with maintaining the holding pattern on that side where our numbers made up for his quality killing power.  On the left we also had both numbers and a quality advantage in a Lh vs Lh lottery plus we had CvO support where the Bactrian’s didn’t.  However in the inner left flank aimed at the Vikings were the massed pike and some rAxS and a couple of elephants that would be the battle's point of concern.

The Bretons have a clear and simple plan.  Move to position and hold only on the right.  Outflank and fight on the left.

The plan was to do nothing on the right wing, have the Vikings stand and receive, outflank and outnumber on the left wing while trying to get into the flank and/or rear of the enemy infantry as they went past on the way to hit the Vikings.  Bob’s low PiP allocation turned out to be on the right so that was clearly not going to be much action from either of us on that side of the table.

But on the left side his Lh turned away when we advanced in mass but the AxS, PkF, PkO and ElO all went full-on across the table where the AxS, PkF and maybe the ElO would cross the bog on the way to contact with both groups of Vikings.

With my iLhO being forward and his foot troop's aggression Bob had left his AxS’s flank open to a LhO attack.  I smelled a trap, a big trap but couldn’t see it.  I got enough PiPs, but still dithered as it seem such an opportunity that it had be a trap.  I moved all the other elements.  I dithered some more.  Then I attacked his flank, with double overlaps as despite still thinking it must be a trap, I just could not see how.

Taking the risk - lucky the trap didn't exist.

No trap, Bob thought I’d attack frontal with flank lock rather than all on the flank and he thought he'd fight me off as my mounted would be in the bog.  I felt he made an error with that choice at this point.  Combat was won and the enemy flank held up in ZoCs.  This would give flank and rear options in the bog as the enemy rushed forward into the Vikings.

 

Olag the Ordinary commanding the bog defending Huscarls against El, PkF and AxS.

It turned out that the iBdO Vikings didn’t need the help as they destroyed an elephant themselves and threw back the foot.  Further back on the flank the enemy general was sucked into combat, surrounded and dispatched.  However the large PkO block in the open carried on past the bog unopposed while aimed at the hill defended by iBdI.  Some CvO sent out to hassle the right flank of the pike block was chased away by some rKnX and a KnF wedged general.

At this point we were happy with events and expected to get into the pike block’s rear in a few bounds and in anticipation of this started to put some pressure on Bob’s troops on our right wing to use up his PiP options.  This optimistic outlook proved premature as Bob successful held up our left wing despite having a broken command, by clever use of the remaining elephant and some psiloi, all the while his pikes steaming onward into the hill defending Vikings while our mounted went impetuously out of control.

Bactrian Pikes start to push the Hird (iBdI) off the hill.

As he had avoided the palisades the fight was hard, our line thin and the pike eventually chewed their way through the Vikings (although as some of the increased Viking command size were still lurking unnoticed in the draw*, with the baggage which also inexplicably wasn’t on the table, the second line was missing**) it turned out it wasn’t in time or causing enough damage to break any Breton commands and the pikes did take casualties.  

Despite being disheartened the Viking general assisted the hard flank death of the Bactrian’s CinC which broke the command and army.

Final Actions.  Breton plans executed as intended.  Resultant victory.

Victory to the Breton and Viking mix 22-3.  A victory achieved by returning to the clear plan of hold and annoy the enemy while striking the flanks or rear if possible where the numbers gave clear local superiority.  Better planning and execution this week also influence the combat dice which rewarded us with good rolls when it counted.  The Vikings proved solid even if eventually disheartening and will remain the Bretons standard ally option.

*  Discovered on packing the figures away immeadiately after the Bactians broke.  There should have been a second line on the hill so not effect to the outcome.  Alternatively a late deployment would have seen them placed on the rear table edge again without influencing the outcome.

** Or as Bob said "there would have been more for the pike to kill".   I suspect not as he won't have broken the line and turned to the hard flanks that caused the Vikings to dishearten.

*** As for the Greco Bactrians, despite a decisive defeat this week, they are clearly a strong mixed arms style army and should be dangerous in most situations and I hope Bob will use them regularly as they will always be challenging to oppose.  I wouldn’t mind having an army from that list myself.

Photo Competition

With a limited range of figures in 6mm, sometimes you need to get creative.I use the figures below as Indian Mountain Spearmen in my Graeco Bactrian and Kushan armies, but what are they called in the manufacturers catalog. Guess correctly and I'll buy you a bottle of Thailand's world famous Chang Beer *, sponsors of Everton football club.

What are these

* You will need to be in Bangkok to claim your prize
** If I like you, I might even buy you a decent beer instead.

Graeco Bactrians vs Bretons

This week saw Wayne debut the Breton's Viking ally, so I thought I'd try the Graeco-Bactrians against them so as to have a good infantry match-up.

I've played with the GBs quite a few times this year, but they haven't featured on the blog yet, so lets start with some pictures.

Pikemen, Elephants, and a wedgie general

Pisidian colonists Ax(S) and Mountain Indian Pk(F)

The Bactrian cavalry can shoot all round.

It's a well balanced army, that I like a lot. Kn(X), Kn(F) wedges, pikes and elephants provide hitting power, Ax(S) and Pk(F) take care of the terrain, and plenty of Cv(O) and LH for the flanks. Regular generals mean that at least some of it goes where you want it, when you want it go there.

For this weeks game, I fielded all the available Pk(O) for the simple reason that I'd finally finished the last four elements, after having them sitting half done on the painting table for the last two months.

Once again I was the invader, and the terrain was again quite cluttered. A BUA and large difficult hill clogged up the left flank, a wood in the center of my deployment area was an annoyance, and a couple of bogs and an orchard obstructed the right flank. There was also a long gentle hill in the front center of Wayne's deployment area.

My plan was to seek out the Viking ally with the pikes and elephants, crush it as quickly as possible, then hope to catch enough  mounted Breton elements with cataphracts and elephants to win the game. The pikes and elephants would start the game on the right of the central wood, angled towards the central hill, the Ax(S) and LH command would protect their flank around the bogs n the right, and the Kn(X) and Cv would hold the line on the left.

As expected Wayne deployed the Vikings on the hill, with two Breton commands to the right, and one on the left. A nasty surprise was that some of the Viking frontage on the left was protected by a palisade. A quick totting up of the factors revealed that he'd be fighting at factor 9 in his turn,  but luckily there was plenty of unprotected frontage too.

Nasty wooden sticks. Don't want to go there.

Initial deployment and opening moves

I wanted to sent the phalanx up the hill as quickly as possible, and to do this I'd need to clear out the bunch of Vikings in the bog. I was committed two elephants from the center, and the Ax(S) and Pk(F) from the right to this task. As it turns out I was rather over confident in their ability to do this, as while I remembered that El kill blade even in the rough, I forgot that they themselves would get a -1 factor. Anyway I pressed ahead here as quickly as possible, which meant I was a little short of pips to sort out the light horse on the right, and with Wayne's two commands pressing forwards here, he was able to turn the end of  my Ax line before they reached the bog, and kill one.

However, I pressed on in center and through the bog, and scrambled together a defensive line, while the LH struggled to put the bog between themselves and the on rushing Bretons.

Pikes storm the center, while a mixed force lines up to clear the bog. A hasty defense tries to hold the right

The pikes continued to advance rapidly in the center, and a couple of cataphracts came over from the left to chase of a force of Cv who'd thought about trying to delay the phalanx. The force tasked to take the marsh lined up and charged in, and the same time several Ax(S) , the right hand SG and a light horse lined up and attacked the flanking Bretons, hoping to tie them up, and buy time by ZOCing the cav behind.

The assault on the Vikings in the bog, went badly with the Pk(F)  attacking at 5-4 being beaten and failing to create an overlap for the elephants. The later not only failed to stomp any Vikings, but one of them was killed too. Things looked more promising for a moment on the right, with the wedgie general killing a Breton light horse and advancing to ZOC the general behind. We then rolled for the Ax vs LH combat next to it, with only a 6 - 1 against me posing any danger*. This was duly rolled and the victorious light horse advanced to a position behind my general. In the next bound, he made the obvious move, surrounding and killing the general, causing the right hand command to be disheartened and shortly after broken.

Right hand sub general is surrounded and killed. Bretons pour across the bog.

Despite the disaster on the right, the phalanx pushed on in the center in the way that phalanxes are wont to do. The lone surviving elephant was withdrawn from the bog to provide a modicum of flank support while the Bretons mopped up on the right. Eventually the phalanx stormed up the hill, with support from a cataphract from the left, smashed a big hole in the line, and with the elephant stomping several blade elements who'd ventured out of the bog, the Vikings became disheartened.

Pikes storm the hill

However, the Bretons were pouring across from the right, and the rightmost file of pikemen with little flank support had taken losses, and only the C in C was available to support them. The later did a valiant job, but eventually overwhelmed and killed, breaking the central command and making the game a decisive win to the Bretons.

Looking back, the plan was basically solid, but I was rather over confident in my ability to storm the bog, and pushed on a bit too aggressively there, when I might have done better to spend some pips organizing the defense on the right.

* The decisive moment in the game was an Ax(S) dying on a six to one, and exposing the rear of my general. Unfortunately, in the heat of battle I completely forgot that the Ax was entitled to a +1 wingman bonus for the adjacent general scoring a kill. If I'd remembered this, it wouldn't have died, my general wouldn't have been rear ended, and the right wing wouldn't have broken for several more turns.

Steppe-ing Out for the Last Time

The Franks are a Liability Again.

Although not as much as the army commander!!

Average Joe and friends were put in a position of actually having to fight their way through a battle instead of using their numbers and mobility as their strength.  They didn’t do well and Bob Breton the colour blind spent the entire time up a tree picking fruit.

  

In deploying I tried to encompass two concepts that simply wouldn’t fit together and the resulting conflict of deployment rectangles left the Breton far too far forward and badly bunched up.  I wanted the Hd on the hill and the Franks behind facing across the table and to achieve both I had to put the large CinC command hard up to the start line which is not where they ever want to be.

A thoughtless deployment faces a wall of steel and death.

When faced with a almost table wide linear arrangement of Bob’s Southern Hsung Nu, loaded with Breton Cv & Lh killing KnX and KnF, backed by 26 LhS and bulked out with assorted low grade foot I knew immediately after his troop placement that I had probably given the game away by bad planning and the worst deployment execution.

It turned out to be true.   

While we played a long(ish) game, the Bretons putting up a reasonable fight and managing to avoid a frontal clash with the knight ‘wall of death’ we never got to play the manoeuvre and concentrate tactics we need.

And for the third out of four games the Franks were a waste of space (although they didn’t die and rout this time) but they didn’t manoeuvre, or charge and mostly ended up impetuously jammed up against the orchard (immobile) with their flank and rear to the enemy.  As a result their enemy killed count was one isolated LhS. 

Avoiding the enemy knight while our knights avoid the enemy

On the right, having run right as best we could given our large numbers and only one PiP dice to use to rescue them, we were always in trouble.  So we did the best we could, abandoning the Hd to face the enemy knights alone if the iKnF continued straight ahead.   

The resulting congestion soon showed that we had better go forward and the only way forward was using the large CvO numbers to punch through an uphill command of Bob’s LhS.  

Trying to make the best of a bad situation.

 This we tried but didn’t succeed with, despite having a longish engagement, because we were not really organised well, in too many groups so didn’t get a single front line and didn’t have the PiPs to keep everyone engaged as needed.  We got held up and the casualties from the “S” effect mounted.  

  

We did however avoid the knights which ended up engaging a Hd or two and were then promptly dispatched in retaliation with hard flanks by some light horse.

On our left we moved around more freely but didn’t do much as we waited for the enemy KnX to come far enough forward to expose some flank opportunities.  As the battle got more desperate we sent a line of LhO through a small gap in the hope of slipping into the rear but weren’t careful enough to stay the last 5mm distance from some enemy Lh (we could have easily done it – just downright carelessness) and then Bob had a surplus of PiPs for a couple of bounds and they got closed down and took serious casualties.  Without that level of PiPs Bob may not have been able to engage them and they could have run clear in another move.

A good oppurtunity wasted by carelessness!!

When fighting KnX with Cv and Lh we inevitably took some casualties and these built up and the CinC’s command breaking’s knock on effect disheartened the next biggest command and after that it was only time until the command and army broke.

Throughout the night the combat dice were giving me a hard time in response to the rubbish battle plan and always felt low.  The inevitable end came but the sting of four consecutive 1’s in the last four combats was a perfect statement of how the combats went on the night.  (Not that a run of four 4’s would have helped much anyway, the combats were all very unfavourable and battle was already effectively lost).

I didn’t play to the strengths and paid the price with a 3-22 loss.  The Bretons do quite well when they play to their plan and fail when they don’t play to a plan although tonight showed that they were still resilient even when the result was always going to be negative.  The game was not a quick walk over even though Bob played it well, pursued my errors and utilised his own strengths.

I still have faith in the Bretons as a threat to all comers – although they may want to find a better commander!!  Next week the Viking ally should arrive so the dead weight that is the Franks will have their contract terminated before we head in the direction of Bactria (if the rumours are found to be true). 

Delayed Posting of the Game Report

Due to the week being busy with a family member returning from overseas, the family reunion and a memorial service up-country there just wasn't enough time to fit in overcoming an uploading issue (which turned out to be an competing ISP's cookie interfering).  However the busy time with road trips had a couple of benefits.

We got in a side trip (we were passing close by) to the Khmer temple complex at Phanom Rung.  

 

Bretons, The Final Steppe

This week's game saw the third steppe army in succession heading for northern France, this time the Xiong Nu fancying their chances. With the Bretons acquitting themselves well, I decided to try an army with some troop types they'd find a bit more troublesome, so I chose a Southern Hsing Nu army with seven cataphracts (including two generals) and eight fast knights (including general) plus assorted LH(S) psiloi and horde. Wayne's Bretons were much as before, though he tweaked the command structure a bit.

The terrain fell with a BUA and difficult hill masking off the right hand side, and then a small gap before an orchard on the centerline. The rest of the table was open or gentle hills. Although the Bretons had considerable mass, they didn't have anything that particularly worried me, so my plan was pretty much to put my knights in a line and steam forward with the light horse protected the flanks, and forming a second line to the fast knights. Psiloi would mask the orchard. An ambush of six horde were behind the gentle hill on my far left just to be awkward to any Bretons inclined to steal round my flank.

Deployment and early moves

Wayne deployed most of his forces to my left, with one command to the right, and a suspicious gap in the center. I shifted my deployment left a little from what I'd originally thought, but otherwise followed the plan. Wayne's Franks were nowhere to be seen, and with the only hill they could be hiding behind covered in horde (whom he had previously learned can't be interpenetrated by mounted), I wasn't sure they'd be there, and thought they might be in the orchard instead.

Wayne's opening move was to move his forces on the left even further left to escape my knights, and the force on the right turned round and backed away. I wheeled my cataphracts towards it, and moved my light horse to prevent his move round the extreme left. The knights fast in the center, had to advance straight though, due to lack of pips.

After a couple more moves, we got into a good fight on the left, with my light horse getting much the better of thing this week. The Franks it turns out were behind the hill, but in a column pointed towards the center. They made rapid progress advancing to the right in an attempt to get in front of my cataphracts, but then their procession turned into comedy relief, as lack of pips saw them carry straight on, ignoring the battle, and their progress only being stopped by the orchard. My own fast knights finally got some pips, and split in two, with one part going left and one part right to counter the Franks (who I assumed at this stage would be taking part in the battle).

Franks head off to the orchard

Losing the light horse battle on the left, and seeing a bunch of knights heading his way, Wayne committed the bulk of his cavalry on the left to attacking the portion of my horse archers who'd occupied the hill, but with the downhill bonus and overlaps on the flanks, the Xiong Nu got the better of this fight too. However, having split an impetuous command in two, I inevitably lost control of part of it, and some Kn(F) went haring off up the hill, smashing the horde there, but then paying the price in the counter attack.

Breton Cavalry attack up hill on the left.

On the right, four of my Kn(F) bore down on the Frankish general, who having waved off the rest of his command, turned round to fight alone, bravely resisting until the end. There was a swirling light horse fight around the knights with their rear ranks trading losses with elements from several Breton commands.  Meanwhile the cataphracts caught up to the march blocker cavalry whose retreat had been cut off my the errant Frankish column, and dispatched them in due course.

The fate of the right hand Breton command was sealed though by four elements on the far side of the orchard. These pushed forward rather too zealously, and found their column assailed in front by LH and in the flank and rear by psiloi. Unable to deploy out their column, they were duly slaughtered, breaking the right hand command.

Bretons head round the orchard straight into trouble.

The misadventure up the hill, and rear rank LH losses had disheartened my central Kn(F) command, but the remaining knights didn't really care. and with the left hand Breton command losing all along the line, it eventually caved in, giving the game to the Xiong Nu 22-3.

As it turned out, there were only a couple of Kn on Cv combats, but while the knights didn't kill much they did have a significant effect on the Breton tactics, causing them to get congested on the flanks, and handing the Xiong Nu the advantage in the LH fights. The Xiong Nu certainly performed better than the previous outing for this configuration, which had seen the Kn(F) getting out of hand and assaulting the gate of a fortified city in column.

The next battle may very well feature Vikings and pikes, in another glaringly ahistorical, but possibly interesting match-up.