Persian Pansies Prance & Pirouette

"Wasted wedges and wasted knights"

Having played their first game in a blizzard and then making fundamental errors in the second game against some Romans as manoeuvrable as anything in the Teutonics arsenal, our group of players threw out another difficult challenge to see if we could cope with the Sassanids, another army of superior capabilities and, if regular in nature, equally manoeuvrable.  As Hochmeister I was willingly accepting all comers in an effort to learn quickly the best way of handling the Teutonic juggernaut.

After some outside (re board games) banter and trash talk, Nash (owner of the Sassanids) was forced to take Anthony onto his team where, suddenly realising his own weaknesses, he made Anthony CinC.  This may have been partly due to the game night banter where it was pointed out Anthony, our newest regular member, had played games in tandem with all the rest of us at one point or another, and had yet to ever lose a game!!

Sur Bob the UnFlappable, Landmeister Deutschland and I had exchanged battle plan ideas during the day but in light of the two very different Sassanid options (either irregular iCvS with elephants OR a regular army with most likely none or maybe one) needing different responses we could only plan to deploy against a secured flank, quality foot to the fore and the knights behind or rearward to the opposite side of the foot.  Hordes would go where they could be most annoying without moving.

Game time saw us invade (Ag=4 but the Sassanid’s = 3 so we hoped for a rare defensive game but .... oh well), choose a waterway (WW) to secure a flank and then on dice of 2 vs 1 double the all mounted (what - no Sassanid hordes??) defenders so we had to deploy first.  The table was almost bare with only a few gentle hills in addition to the edge bound waterway and an irrelevant BuA.

Having laid out the quality foot to determine how wide out our left flank would be I got the encouraging remark from Sur Bob “Is that all there is, are you sure??  <mild expletive!!>”  He was perfectly correct of course, on a basically bare table the mini sized Teutonic army just looks even smaller.  The Sassanids deployed, four commands including an Armenian ally, no elephants but the CinC’s all rCvS command was huge, relatively, at 36MEs!!  Deuchmeister Sur Bob had been in mild fear of facing a Chionite Hun ally but according to the kinglet of Persia (and now lowly deputy commander) Nashur, there simply wasn’t enough APs in all the kingdom to pay for them so the discount Armenians were hired instead.

But the Sassanids had deployed at the opposite end of the table to the Teutonics!!

Don't you just hate corner sitters??

Unless there were a few hiding behind the gentle hill in front of our bowmen.  Our recently converted ex-pagan Livonian hordes were rear edge hugging, well nearly, in the table centre which meant that any enemy approaching from the Sassanid positions would need to pass in front of them or engage them.  This was a good thing.

Our opening move saw our bowmen and spears move across the table and prepare to swing left 90 degrees to face the left end of the table.  The Sassanids almost all headed across the table towards our denied flank which left us the option of forming a line perpendicular to the starting line and thereby shortening the potential front line.  As this was to our advantage we quickly took this option and the battle was fought on a line/front from long side to long side, 90deg from the norm.

From opposite corners both side come out to engage (for now anyway) and the front line swings 90deg.

Sassanids attack the bowline - Now you see them ..........

A small Sassanid command came to harass, slow down and engage the Teutonic bowmen and in the space of their bound, our bound lost enough light horse to dishearten and be one element off breaking and were now also well outnumbered.

In the centre (on the new facing) we formed up a line of knights opposite the huge cavalry command who had moved to table centre, turned to face us and formed into two lines with a space of about 100p

..... now you don't.
But the super resilient rCvS are in the foreground.  
They'll move left to hold the infantry in place.

between their lines.  On the new left (our original base table edge) another small Sassanid command came to engage the hordes and the Armenians tried to follow behind and out flank the hordes to get around behind us.

The hordes, with a few light horse, Ax & Ps supports hovering nearby, proved very resistant to the cavalry and light horse, even when flanked and the Sassanid general spend most the game in combat with an unkillable horde until he eventually died!  Although, until after many bounds when the Armenians finally worked their way around the table edge into the rear of the hordes, they held up the enemy and prevented the Sassanid main cavalry lines from advancing for fear of a totally exposed flank where some of our Turkopoles were lurking.

This Sassanid fear of advancing generated some of the weirdest cavalry manoeuvres I’ve ever seen – now called Persian Pirouettes!!  But more of that in a couple of minutes.

Position before the dancing - note the relative position of the two hills
bottom left and top centre to the central masses of troops.
The Livonian hordes (r) doing sterling work holding the enemy.

On our right, the bowmen and spearmen moved in to break the disheartened enemy command which had got the support of a sole element of rCvS from the CinC.  Here, maybe just to even up the unexpectedly strong showing of Bob’s Livonian hordes, things when sour and the three rCvS, including the general, that were preventing us closing down the flank of the main enemy cavalry proved impossible to kill.  We only needed one element to break through but here the superior cavalry showed just how tough they can be, the bonus factor saving them a few times.

I must complain bitterly about the dicing, they were three distinct combats each bound for at least four bounds (say 12+ in total) many with hard flanks (and a rear attack) and all having combat factors of evens (or +1 in my favour).  And remember, I only need to win one single combat to finish off the enemy there BUT we drew or I lost every single combat!!  I never broke that command despite trying for three quarter of the game to get the one final element needed.  [CvS are horribly overpowered I tell you!!  Or Anthony transferred some spots from my dice to his – so time to insist on digit marked dice only.]

Even when Bob pointed out that with Armenians in the rear his hordes where starting to breakup and expose our flanks on his side, and that it would be a good idea for me to get a move on and ignore that three enemy I so heavily outnumbered, I still couldn’t break off and bypass them.  My command disheartened itself and then broke in the final bound.  For all his justifiably annoyance, mild Sur Bob never said a word in anger when he should really have used the sharp end of a lance on my rear end.

Choose your partners - let the dance begin.

Back to the Persians practicing pirouettes.

When our line of knights moved up towards strike range, the Persian line did a formation U-turn and retreated out of range.  The second line prevented us marching into their rear.  We held in place.

Their rearward line about faces and retires to give space between their lines.  The forward line again U-turns back to face us. 

Forward & back,  backward and forward.

"It's just a jump to the left, a step to the right,
and turn your ..........."

We threaten again.  They turn about once more and run away, while their rear line move further away and U-turns back to face us.

And so the Persian pansies pranced, danced and pirouetted!!  Not a man among them willing to cross swords with real righteous Teutonic testosterone enhanced manly men!

This flaky course of action continues and continues - I think I counted it out at eight or nine U-turns, back and forth!  (The photos don’t give enough info to be sure).  Just to avoid the fight so they could pick off our two wing commands (the biggest two anyway) and break us without fighting the knights.  At one point the second line split into two and ran left and right to completely escape the Teutonic knight line in all its awe inspiring rumble forward.

It worked – it shouldn’t have but it did - and

And so it goes on, and on and onnnnnnnn.

wouldn’t have if my right hand command, exceeding 15 elements in the area, hadn’t of got hung up, and defeated, by three superior cavalry.  Few knights actually fought, one killing an iLhF, another a broken fleeing rCvS that passed across his front and the only lost knight was the final combat of the game that broke our army and even then it relied on a cheesy (dangerous last move type) hard flank to enforce destruction. 

As was pointed out as we entered the end game phase there were a lot of knightly APs in a line that just couldn’t reach the enemy to do any damage – a value I’ve now counted at 212AP of the 400AP on table as it included three generals.

FINAL POSITIONS - Note the size of the dancing, prancing and
piroutteing covered as they retreated and retired.

We played a good sound game, the plan did what we intended but the vagaries of luck in combats meant it wasn’t to be a winning plan.  Yes, I should have broken off from the disheartened enemy and concentrated on taking the flank of the big command but it was just too tempting to get that one last element to take the benefits of breaking a command – in hindsight, my error and a serious one.

Anthony played a unique and clever plan that did minimise their weaknesses and boosted their strengths and it worked, somewhat surprisingly to the rest of us (including his King and subordinate), but it worked nevertheless.  Nash, of course was ably assisting by slowly, so very slowly cutting his way through the hordes for the cost of an exponential number of his own APs and having to use rear attacks from the Armenians to get through the other foot, and a couple of light horse, to eventually collapse our left wing and force another defeat on the Teutonics. 

Well done Nash and Anthony, a job done as it needed to be done.

So that’s three defeats out of three for the Teutonics.  Reflagging didn’t work this time and if it gets to five out of five I may need to convert them all back to pagans and start again.

Next game, in an attempt to reverse the string of loses, Anthony has been appointed Kommital Landmeister Livland and will be commanding Teutonic brothers and their recently converted ex-pagans to ensure his invulnerability will final give us our much deserved initial victory.