Bobarsaces did indeed survive*. Just when I arrived at Ctesiphon to be re-crowned, who should show up, in full preening attire and equally vainly attended. The usurper – again. Some dogs just need to be dismembered to be sure they are indeed dead*.
So on the eve
of what is to be the final battle (as I’ve issued no quarter orders and will
execute all above brigade level if his head isn’t on a spike set before me by
the end of tomorrow), we are encamped in position on the open ground with our
right flank resting on a BuA (supplying the usual urban delights for the nights
feasts and entertainment) and our encampment stretches out over the plains into
the distance. Off in the horizon is a
minor orchard, that may be so significant that I’ve ordered it’s not to be recorded
by any of my scribes or artists (read – it’s not in any photos). More of the ‘invisible’ orchard later.
The enemy,
lead by the usurper Bobarsaces the Unspellable, the vain-glory lackey of
big business date traders, are skulking in the hills being unable the face the
glory of a real King of Kings in the light of day out on the open plains that
are Parthia.
The sun has
risen and I ride forth to smite the enemy.
On the open plain, except for two micro-march areas, I stand with my
wall-of-steel cataphracts stretching from my right all the way to the BuA (source of
last night’s female delights) commanded by myself and a loyal general
Watshisnameces. Mucking around
conspicuously** at the rear of the BuA are a bunch of Watshisnameces’ Indian
foot.
The
cataphracts have their screen of horse archers plus I have more looking to our
left flank plus a bunch of these Indian useless levies standing back by the
baggage. The Saka I hired this month are
out forward and centre just in case they get ideas not to honour their contract***. The other loyal general, Obsurarces, was sent
early this morning away around the right flank to come on upcountry and roll
over the hills from the outside.
Before us, are
four large gentle hills with five valleys where the enemy CinC lurks a long way
behind a large expanse of Armenian allies.
On the right (his left) was one of his cronies leading a small but
similar command. Something was
definitely missing although the minimums had all been met. Given the rough behind our BuA I didn’t expect
Bob to flank march on that flank so expected our off table command to be quite
safe until it arrived. Actually given
the open enemy free expanse it should advance onto, including access to the
enemy baggage I was quite looking forward to its arrival. Bob was assuming it contained the missing
elephants. I anticipated Bob’s missing
command would flank march on from our left past the ‘invisible’ orchard.
 |
| Usurper to the left, genuine King of Kings to the right |
 |
| Cowardly leaders to the rear. |
 |
| Impenetrable Wall-of-Steel (& screen) protects a micro-marsh. |
I, insignificant scribe of the great unrelenting
fighter, the King of Kings, Watagases I, humbly known as Unnamedarce have been
instructed to finish this tale of great martial and valiant feats of arms.
As before we opened with great starting PiPs including a six for the
allied Saka and a 5 for the flank march (which needs a 6). Over the first four turns the flank march
rolled four 5s in a row for PiPs and on the 5th attempt, needing a 5
or 6, you can guess how that went.
With
6 PiPs the Saka went mad and ran off right around the outside of the enemy so
that they threatened to immediately be in the rear of the outside command and
in dangerous numbers. Our glorious CinC
had to send some horse archers after them to be sure our army wasn’t cut into
two pieces. The wall of steel just
juggled its position slightly and on the right the idiot Indian foot, who’d
messed up the ambush tried to get themselves back into order. The opposing Armenians didn’t scare us, at
worst it would be a stalemate but to be sure to win on that flank we awaited
our flank march to arrive as they would arrive into the exposed enemy wing. In the meantime this side would just do the
minimum to keep out flank guarded, no aggressive action was intended.
 |
| Saka have gone long and wide (front right) and in response the enemy withdraw unto the hill. |
At this point, barring the enemy’s missing command causing havoc, we had
both enemy wings under pressure (I verbally slipped up at one point and
indicated where our flank march was but Bob had already guessed, I think) and a
continuous and strong front line threatening 80% of the enemy’s frontage. The point of weakness, which I planned to use
as a trap, was between the overly mobile Saka and the left end of the CinC’s
command. He had sent some LhF to the
left to at least give a sense that we wanted the gap covered.
Apart from two micro-marches**** we were on a huge expanse of open
terrain (with GHs only whose only effect is uphill combat factors, all other
terrain touching table edges in the table corners) and on the left wing it felt
like a open plain light horse duel, with lots of moment, circling, stopping and
watching but little closing to
combat. They was no actually fighting
intended unless you had a clear advantage – and an exit option.
To gain some advantage Bob sent LhF from three commands into the gap
between my CinC command and the Saka ally along with some AxO aimed at a
micro-march my side of mid table. A
column of cataphracts came behind to add some weight if needed. Initially I didn’t feel threatened as the
advance was containable and was drawing resources and future PiPs away from my
awaited flank march. Unfortunately an
element of AxO got into the micro-march, from which it would be very hard for
LhF to evict it, and caused some annoying threats to element flanks. I countered by TZing it, and luckily moved my
CinC into the area as heavy support but we suffered a time of lower PiPs and
lost the local initiative.
 |
Bob pushes into the faux weak spot faster than expected.
Watagases himself comes to add some heavy support.
|
As Bob had started a more general advance that would use his advanced
salient as a flanking benefit I decided I needed to deal with it before the
flank march looked like arriving. I
intended to cut off the exposed salient with a pincer movement using two
commands but again ran short on PiPs at an inopportune time.
 |
| Ready to attempt the pincer attack. |
The great warrior King of Kings, Watagases was leading from the front and got himself exposed and surrounded.
 |
| Enemy to the left of me, enemy to the right. |
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| Despite the support this doesn’t look good. |
We had to resort to Plan ‘B’ *****.
 |
| Plan ‘B’ – Dicing your way out of trouble!! |
At this moment our flank march announced it arrival, to support our
troops who had been filling in time skirmishing and probing the Armenians in
and around the BuA. Immediately after
Bob’s missing command turns up as a delayed command, so arrives on table before
us. It’s the Sarmatians (he had two
allies!), the anti-cataphract all iKnF version and he chooses to aim them at
our wall-of-steel (rather than try and support the mid-table battle of the
salient) and run a risk from charging across the face of our flank march. Maybe he expected the missing elephants to
slow down our progress across the table due to a slower speed.
At this point knowing where everything now was located and where our
flanks would or won’t be exposed, we ordered a general advance. Bob had been taking a few casualties over his
three on table commands and some decisive combat action could push any of them to
dishearten soon and with our flank march now going to be in the enemy rear and
into their baggage we needed the frontal contact for both damage and to control
his options.
Our flank march came on, consisting of all light horse (both F and O)
plus a KnX general. No elephants in
sight!! With reasonable PiPs it split
into two groups of light horse, the fast getting into baggage strike range and
the ordinary marching over the first hill while the slow general was abandoned
to his own devices.
 |
| Arrival of both the Sarmatians and the flank march plus a general advance on the main battleline. |
As Bob had spent the game dealing with the potential of elephants
arriving from somewhere, and had played with the thought of elephants repeating
their previous carnage of his cataphract line*, it seemed only fair to now put
him out of his misery.
We released the news that the elephants were in
fact picking dates in the ‘invisible’ orchard on the very left corner of the
table. So out they came, in column, but
with half a table distance to cover to reach the battle they were never going
to arrive in time.
 |
| Date laden elephants wander out of the orchard. Contribution - Nil. |
Having extracted a much relieved****** Watagases we were in a position
of having the upper hand in several positions across the table and used out
superior numbers, troop quality (KnX on LhF) and dice rolling skills to wear
down and break commands and thus the army.
 |
| Final Positions - Bob's left flank. Armenians broken, Sarmatians taking attacks in the flank. |
 |
| Final positions - the Salient, Bob's right. Commands and army broken and surrounded. |
Bobarsaces himself, being a long long way from a table edge
(almost in the dead centre of the table) didn’t escape this time and was
captured [imagine the likely possible event the available LhF in the rear of a
fleeing KnX]. In a moment of mercy he
wasn’t executed but branded, castrated and exiled to a suitable neighbouring
city-state.*******.
A FINAL OBSERVATION
Watagases is yet to return to active leadership due to needing to
clean-up outer and inner garments after so much personal exertions and
danger.****** Unlike last week where the
potential loss of the CinC was unintentional, this week I did it on purpose
after much deliberation, in fact it was the first thing I considered that bound
and yet the last action I took. It
wasn’t the move that was the problem it was the expected retaliations that may have
been available to Bob. Uncertainty
abounded, yet I was in a strong position if the flank march came on and maybe
should have waited for it to arrive. In
the end I pushed the CinC into a very dangerous situation and in the end needed
to rely on better dice than Bob to get out him again.
Putting the CinC is so much danger, was it worth it?? In hindsight, despite it coming off and the
CinC surviving the answer is a resounding no.
It was a step too far into danger and the relatively high odds of it
going bad on Bob’s subsequent bound could so easily have made it a disaster.
But this is a rare occasion where doing a daft thing didn’t become a
tale of woe for me. Anyway I add
the crown of Parthia to that of the Kush*.
A genuine King of Kings, so what is next??
* = See
previous instalments.
** = A ambush
which was so badly set that it was deployed in conflict with the rules, so was
declared on bound one when the error was noted and thus placed on table and the
surprise lost. I had tried to ambush
from an unfortified BuA.
*** = Bob
can’t help but reactivate them if they become unreliable allies if he mounts
any attack across the table centre.
**** = marches
that are almost the smallest possible dimensions allowed, approx a 2x1 ½ base
width oval, which I designed to be placed early in the terrain layout process
to block the opponent’s choices/chances of placing other annoying terrain in
the area. Used especially by open
terrain (all mounted) armies to control strong terrain based armies getting
overly favourable terrain. Sometimes they
are very successful in their job but mostly disappointing due to the random
factors involved. A mildly gamey ploy to
get some advantage from the terrain rules system that I think is both balanced
and robust.
***** = Plan
‘B’, for every army I own and every battle I fight is simple – “if all else
fails, dice your way out of trouble”. Doesn’t
have a high success rate though.
****** = The
offending scribe who suggests the great leader was anything other than
confident and capable in all military activities has since been painfully executed.
******* = In
Thailand all losers of military endeavours (coups) gets exiled to Dubai. Those with local political knowledge will
understand.
 |
| (right) A slightly startled Bob[arsaces] contemplates the exile to Dubai while (left) the victor looks forward to reinstated pleasures. [Also known as "how does the front camera om this iPad work??] |
You will now have noticed I've worked out a lot about how to mark-up the photos now. A frustrating time but perseverance has paid off, hence it's over use. Now to work out where the colour changer is.
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