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.