Pretty Tiered Umbrellas Aren’t Weapons of War

The Siamese pay a fleeting visit to Burma.

Bob’s Burmese, his original 6mm army (mine were Khmer), is really large in elements (not so in ME) and has a reputation for BwI machine-gunners (who needs BwS longbowmen) which have on more than a couple of occasions bought down an entire Khmer elephant line before contact.  It’s major weapons are the compulsory ElS and the swamping effects of masses of inferior foot.  It also gets enough upgrades to regular/’ordinary’ to be useful and against historical enemies can well outnumber everyone with cavalry (albeit mostly clumsy ‘inferior’) so can outflank them.  In SE Asia it’s the flexible, pick-in-mix army of choice.  Being irregular commands only adds to its sheer bulk.

On very rare occasions a game is just not meant to be, and last night’s was one of those.  

I attempted to engage Bob’s Burmese with my Siamese (Ayuthaya Kingdom) after he issued the challenge last week and below you can follow the list of disasters, both natural and self inflicted to see why I shouldn’t have bothered turning up.

#1)
SE Asian armies all have elephants as prime impact troops.  To take non-ElS up against ElS is suicide (done that several time with the Khmer too) so I needed a ElS version of the Siamese plus the BdF to stand any chance of cutting through the masses of foot.  The only point of difference when you are going to be noticeably smaller than the enemy is a regular command structure and as many regular troops as possible.  Regular ElS generals are super-expensive!!  And then I like four commands. 

The new (haven’t used the Siamese for a while, since the “Elephant Too Far” battle) very experimental Order of Battle was a compromise in all directions and a daft idea.  Four commands, only two regular, plus one an ally, at 21 ½ ME the CinC was all regular troops plus psiloi and El), the regular sub-general at 21ME (iBdF), and two at 12ME, one a sub-general that could ambush in its entirerity, and an ally.  All commands too small and fragile (and some elephants downgraded to ‘ordinary’) and I knew I’d need to use terrain to make this work by keeping his mounted at bay and narrowing the frontage.

There will be a ritual burning of the OoB today.  This list was self-inflicted stupidity.

#2)
Even with lower aggression I invade.  The required terrain selection quantities are lowered.
Bob minimises his terrain selection numbers further reducing the terrain count (and I feared Yuan ally approaching but he later mentioned his army date excludes them).

#3)
Terrain falls badly.  Only one piece on my side and it’s a long wooded hill in my left flank.  Despite it being blatantly obvious I decide to ambush an entire command from here.

#4)
I decisively out dice Bob on deployment.  As invader I now deploy first.  With no options on a basically flat open field ALL surprise is lost.

#5)
I’d totally forgotten the Burmese have TF and Bob’s uses it regularly.  My impetuous iBdF are left aimed directly at the TF manned by iBwI because I’d deployed first.  There is an inexplicable gap in the TF’s centre with an ArtI in place.

Also Bob has significant cavalry, to my nil, and they are on his left flank (my right) and have a unchallenged path into the rear of my biggest command or my army as a whole.

I tell you "There are twice as many Burmese as there are Siamese".  And my position is rubbish.
I wish I had someone other than myself to blame.

#6)

I allocate coloured dice to each command and use them as irregular totally forgetting two were regular.  In doing so I transposed a 6 with a 1.  Doh! 

#7)

Death by stupidity - and a 1-6 roll!!

Having bought the maximum two ArtI myself I had placed a lone iBdF with one to meet the compulsory ‘deploy in groups’ rule with him going impetuously back to the rest of the command in the first couple of moves.  By coincidence it ends up facing the Burmese ArtI without the TF.

I double move it to get close as possible and to take a cheap shot in a later bound.  No problem, ArtI range is 240p.  Not so says Bob, its 320p and you’re in range (of course he’s correct, but who remembers these things when there’s not been a ArtI fired in anger for a year or two).

So it’s bound one and we have an unintended engagement already.  The blade DIES on a 1-6!!

#8)

Having now realised I have two regular commands to use by allocation I roll my second bounds PiPs as 1-1-1-2 and the 2 belongs to the command entirely in ambush on the flank Bob’s is avoiding due to a scary looking wooded hill.

So that’s basically decision made, the massed iBdF, comprising the biggest command (but only 21ME!!) is going impetuously into the bow defended TF, on an angle.  Having seen the Rus spear do a similar thing I know it’s a slow but ultimately possible task.  If it is achieved it would seriously damage the Burmese and cut them in half.

#9)

That's as close as we got.

The blades were mostly double ranked and a couple got to combat (no wins but all recoils not losses) but the bows did the damage (my dice were rubbish – by this point I commented I’d thrown more 1s that all other numbers combined!!) – the command disheartened, lost its impetuous status and stood there to be broken by another bound of bowfire.

I had lost my biggest command without inflicting a single casualty on Bob.  Very clearly game OVER – in theory anyway.

The story unfolds further...

At this point Bob goes conservative to see if he can win without taking any casualties at all. 

The soon-to-break command would leave a big hole - desperate measures under way.

I had managed to get the CinC with his rBdF guards (free PiPs) over to the right to cover the incoming cavalry with help from the (now broken) sub general and his two guards.  It neutralised that threat for the length of the game but was always only going to be a holding pattern only.

Having halted the Burmese cavalry the CinC and elephants are too broken up and surrounded and are about to get swamped and be added to the casualties that break army.

Ambushers come off the (sparsely) wooded hill. 

On my left I released the ambush so it could cover the open space and co-ordinate with the ally command (remember both are just 12ME commands – fragile) to try and hassle Bob’s single (CinC’s) command on this side. 

I did make a fight of it on the left, disheartening the opposing command taking out a few elements and 3 ElS using my ElO and BdF.  However Bob’s few rBdF were close enough and quick enough to fill gaps and his CinC got actively involved and we ran out of punch.

Ambushing the Ambushers.

A funny moment occurred when my ambushing command, having appeared and charged across the open ground was itself ambushed from its outside by a group of AxO from behind the crest of a RH that was on the table edge.  

Luckily we were far enough away that we had time to align a couple of our BdF to deal with them.

What was going to be our shortest game ever did eventually play out to normal length and it was still great fun (I did laugh a lot – so as not to cry?!?) as usual but the result was always a foregone conclusion.  

Burmese elephant buttocks - all but the CinC (right)
failed to survive the battle. 

Once the big command was destroyed I was just plugging gaps, getting broken up and awaiting the bound where low PiPs would see me surrounded and squashed.  It took longer than expected before it happened and in the meantime I did some damage but eventually it occurred.  

The result at 5-20 was respectable in the end considering 0-25 after 3 bounds was almost a certainty.

My Siamese were originally morphed out of the Khmer but I added a Thai elephant corps of 6mm conversions where I added polearms and weapon racks to the elephants plus the correctly shaped and coloured multi-tiered command umbrellas. 

Modifying 6mm isn’t easy but the perfectionist in me said that you can’t use Khmer elephants for Thai when they are clearly so visibly different.  I made a few for Bob as well to use in his general elements as the research show that Burmese and Thai generals were almost identical.  Before any re-published Book 3 arrives I hope we can revisit the Burmese list with some improvements on the details. 

But as I discovered, having correctly attired elements adds absolutely nothing to their fighting ability.  Nor to the commanders rational thought processes!!  Back to the drawing board today.