Wall to Wall Ordinariness

"Average Joe Breton is a-spinning in his grave."

Pre-PREAMBLE 

Despite the work front being indecently busy, Bob and I have maintained our weekly gaming routine, while it’s been the army painting and terrain building that came to a standstill.  The blog has also been unloved for far too long as well.

Additionally some eye sight issues kept me fearful of attempting to complete the massive Rhus and Viking painting task (in 6mm it’s a huge number of figures).  We had been waiting for the oft delayed Baccus Crusader ranges to become available as that was our next chosen era from which to add a few armies to the our respective stables but after another delay announcement I felt I needed something softer than the Rhus/Viking monster to tackle to keep the painting skills current. 

Despite their absence from the blog the Rhus have had numerous outings in their basic form with the Pecheneg ally.

  

The Rhus - a huge figure count - do exist.

None of these games made the headlines (blog) due to the work/time constraints, our failures to take photos and the eclectic nature of the opponents which, while providing great fun, didn’t really feel like reportable encounters even though I had a string of victories almost indecent in its length.

Next I spent quite a while playing with a morphed (read mis-represented) set of Kushan style figures used to represent the Jurchen, a four regular command army with a mixture of rCvS/O, iLhS, iKnF lead by rKnF generals.  Fighting mainly against steppe or otherwise generally mounted armies these produced a series of seat-of-the-pants, win or lose on the last roll of dice type of games which again failed to make the blog due to the above mentioned constraints. 

I agree that, as commented on by others, a regular four regular command army is the crack cocaine of ancient wargaming.  

I like the army so much that I’ve done the figure count and it will go with our next order to Baccus although there will be a bit of conversion work to make it from their ranges, but in the small scale the details of harness style and bowcase shape/location are usually irrelevant.

PREAMBLE

Like the Rhus, which only got painted into existence because I had wanted such an army for more than a decade and couldn’t face purchasing & painting that volume of lead in the 25mm we played in the old country, my new ‘soft’ painting project was another one I’d wanted to do for at least as long.  I had even started it in 25mm, using cast off GW LoTR Rhohirim figures bought super-cheap on the eBay equivalents, a year before departing for the Land of Smiles.

So, I’ve just got the Bretons ready to grace a table. Bretons, pure “O” ordinariness from start to finish.

Well, not quite, it’s list has six PsS and is the only foot other than HdO, and its allies can have iBdI, iKnF and iSpI.  But I always saw it as a test of generalship skill – no “S”*, no “QKs”* and for better or worse, no impetuosity. 

It was the pure ordinariness of it that was always its attraction.  We are a mad bunch at times, aren’t we??

TACTICS 

Having no QK’s and being (almost) all light horse and cavalry it’s reasonably resilient but never going to make holes in the opposing battle lines.  So it’s all about out-flanking, getting into the rear and flank locking enemy elements.  To do that you need to manoeuvre on one hand and hold the enemy in place on the other, for which the Lh and Cv would be assigned respectively.

The Cv are in danger from Kn and CvS but otherwise should be able to hold most other enemy if played conservatively and their line is maintained but to which a few gap fillers will be needed occasionally.  The Lh will have to be aware of the great Lh vs Lh lottery but otherwise should only be required to strike except when circumstances are favourable.

The big issue is going to be PiPs.  With only three commands and a lot of non-impetuous mounted filling out those commands they are going to have to stay in large (immobile) blocks or only a portion of each command is going to be directable.  That created the idea of having two of the commands structured so that you engaged with only about half of the command while the other part stood and watched from the sidelines until it was their turn.  I felt you couldn’t engage with all of the command because you are very soon it’s going to get a low PiP roll and get caught badly out of position.

Fight by groups in waves.

The third command is the annoy the enemy and run through gaps 16ME, general plus 10 LH elements command that we’ve developed in most of our steppe style armies**.  

Low aggression at 1 should allow for many home battles and using the terrain, especially hills and similar to provide ambush options will be very important.  But all must be done to prevent DGo on the flanks as that will damage the chances of the essential out-flanking and getting into the rear tactic that is so important to this army.

One last point, I maximised the peasant hordes (HdO of course) as they are the cheapest ME in existence and will fill a lot of table space and force the enemy to go really wide or spend significant time chewing their way through them.  The only other foot option is the 6 elements of PsS so the Hd may also double as terrain holders as there are no other choices if this is required.

So the final plan is:-

1)  Play at home and use non-difficult terrain to give combat advantage and ambush options.

2)  Fight in waves with commands engaging with only part of their troops at any given time.  The stationary portions act as march blockers and overlap threats.  Portions that have done their job can be abandoned to be annoying blockers as being non-impetuous they will just stand around.

3)  Keep the generals central and out of conflicts as they will be needed to control the second/third waves.

4)  Use the massed hordes in a stationary capacity to block table area, funnel enemy movement or to just take ages to die and hold up the enemy.

5)  With no QK options* avoid frontal clashes unless by cavalry with the purpose of stalling or holding the enemy in place while the light horse use rear attacks and hard-flank attacks to destroy the enemy from their wings inward.

PRE GAME

The army at least looks good.  The Rhus looked boring but these are more colourful and I am really happy with the visual effect I got and they feel ‘right’. 

There is colour, bulk, variation and even the bases worked with the new style experiment.

A few foot elements to play in the rough.

 Then the pre-game trash talk by email started and Bob got fixated on the photo mis-colouring that gave several of the horsemen a pink tinge despite there being not a drop of pink anywhere.  As I suddenly realised I was short the PsS elements I then did paint one figure in a pink tunic just to satisfy Bob.  (Thank goodness for a lead mountain which could produce 5 elements of suitable javelin armed psiloi).

Meet Bob Breton, only man with an excuse for a pink tunic.

Despite my confidence Bob just laughed at all my talking up the benefits of massed ordinariness.  He chose to avoid Kn based or steppe (S mounted) armies and bought his Burmese.  These Burmese have a long and distinguished history of beating up most of my armies.

There was one secret weapon in play, an ally option I had prepared in total secret and carefully never mentioned even once. 

GAME NIGHT DEBUT

The new models were so excited with their first outing they forgot the home advantage terrain plan and invaded Burma instead. 

The table quickly filled with unfavourable terrain as Bob put his efforts into blocking up both flanks, selecting one as his additional numbered side and using a placeable BuA for the other.  I did get a couple of favourable GHs on my side but the out-flanking options were effectively lost before a single element hit the table.

After deployment, which I did first having doubled the defenders dice, I made a late discovery - mounted can’t pass though Hd’s – doh, that’s a minor deployment error and something I’d missed in the tactics planning stage. 

The only positive was that I’d managed to get the totally unmentioned Frankish ally (half a dozen iKnF) in ambush behind a hill.  Bob was expecting my Vikings as allies only and didn’t realise I even had another ally option and the models were painted in total secret.  Even when I laid out only three commands they were wide enough for him to accept it was the total army (we rarely AP count).  Massed hordes sometimes has that effect especially as the army has quite a high element count anyway.

Bob’s posting has described the battle well (the spelling errors not withstanding) and include my own comments (with spelling issues too).  So I don’t have much to add.  Read his post "The Bretons Are Coming" for the games flow and some pictures.

The invasion and terrain layout was most unfavourable and ruined a good plan before we started.  The only option I saw was to concentrate troops from three command on Bob’s right (my left) where there was inferior and outnumbered Burmese troops facing our ordinariness and where my Cv could get QKs on half a dozen bow element.  It was the only option to punch through the line to get opportunities for our required rear attacks.  

 "No where to go but straight at the weakest point at the head of the big red arrow.  My superior "O-ness" against the inferior and out numbered Burmese in a line without backup options"

So I attempted it.  We were a bit unlucky in the combats and it didn’t come off.

The Franks were a good looking disappointment.  I may have released them a move too soon but as they needed a wheel in their charge I decided I needed the 5PiPs they had that bound rather than risk lower PiPs in a later bound.  To have them ‘shatter’ without inflicting a single casualty against BwI was so frustrating.  

The shame - that overlapped inferior Cv killed my "O" Cv general.

Of course these are Bob’s machine gun/longbow armed “elite” peasant levy inferior bowmen which have been the bane of my life for years.  They can gun down an entire Khmer elephant corps before contact, or anything else I tried to use against them.  They are so good I built my own entire bow army (Arabo-Aramenian) to emulate them from my side of the table.  In my hands bowmen just get run down – so I gave up on bows again – but still don’t have an answer as to why these Burmese iBwI are so damn good.

But next week we might be a bit less ambition is our travels and only go as far as the steppes or the Tarim Basin***. Our plans might get a full and genuine testing.

NOTES

* =  Well there are 6 PsS in the list and I use 5 of them but its so few as to be irrelevant.  For QKs maybe my mounted can in some cases deal this way to Ps and Bw.

** = During our past battles with steppe/pseudo steppe armies Bob and I have developed a Lh command of general, ten elements plus two baggage making a 16ME command.  These have the highest dishearten point (a disheartened Lh command is as good as dead) for minimum points and we have found that in commands any bigger some elements get unmoved, caught and killed anyway. 

*** = It's been suggested that Bob might play Juan-juan or CATs next week.