Steppe-ing Out for the Last Time

The Franks are a Liability Again.

Although not as much as the army commander!!

Average Joe and friends were put in a position of actually having to fight their way through a battle instead of using their numbers and mobility as their strength.  They didn’t do well and Bob Breton the colour blind spent the entire time up a tree picking fruit.

  

In deploying I tried to encompass two concepts that simply wouldn’t fit together and the resulting conflict of deployment rectangles left the Breton far too far forward and badly bunched up.  I wanted the Hd on the hill and the Franks behind facing across the table and to achieve both I had to put the large CinC command hard up to the start line which is not where they ever want to be.

A thoughtless deployment faces a wall of steel and death.

When faced with a almost table wide linear arrangement of Bob’s Southern Hsung Nu, loaded with Breton Cv & Lh killing KnX and KnF, backed by 26 LhS and bulked out with assorted low grade foot I knew immediately after his troop placement that I had probably given the game away by bad planning and the worst deployment execution.

It turned out to be true.   

While we played a long(ish) game, the Bretons putting up a reasonable fight and managing to avoid a frontal clash with the knight ‘wall of death’ we never got to play the manoeuvre and concentrate tactics we need.

And for the third out of four games the Franks were a waste of space (although they didn’t die and rout this time) but they didn’t manoeuvre, or charge and mostly ended up impetuously jammed up against the orchard (immobile) with their flank and rear to the enemy.  As a result their enemy killed count was one isolated LhS. 

Avoiding the enemy knight while our knights avoid the enemy

On the right, having run right as best we could given our large numbers and only one PiP dice to use to rescue them, we were always in trouble.  So we did the best we could, abandoning the Hd to face the enemy knights alone if the iKnF continued straight ahead.   

The resulting congestion soon showed that we had better go forward and the only way forward was using the large CvO numbers to punch through an uphill command of Bob’s LhS.  

Trying to make the best of a bad situation.

 This we tried but didn’t succeed with, despite having a longish engagement, because we were not really organised well, in too many groups so didn’t get a single front line and didn’t have the PiPs to keep everyone engaged as needed.  We got held up and the casualties from the “S” effect mounted.  

  

We did however avoid the knights which ended up engaging a Hd or two and were then promptly dispatched in retaliation with hard flanks by some light horse.

On our left we moved around more freely but didn’t do much as we waited for the enemy KnX to come far enough forward to expose some flank opportunities.  As the battle got more desperate we sent a line of LhO through a small gap in the hope of slipping into the rear but weren’t careful enough to stay the last 5mm distance from some enemy Lh (we could have easily done it – just downright carelessness) and then Bob had a surplus of PiPs for a couple of bounds and they got closed down and took serious casualties.  Without that level of PiPs Bob may not have been able to engage them and they could have run clear in another move.

A good oppurtunity wasted by carelessness!!

When fighting KnX with Cv and Lh we inevitably took some casualties and these built up and the CinC’s command breaking’s knock on effect disheartened the next biggest command and after that it was only time until the command and army broke.

Throughout the night the combat dice were giving me a hard time in response to the rubbish battle plan and always felt low.  The inevitable end came but the sting of four consecutive 1’s in the last four combats was a perfect statement of how the combats went on the night.  (Not that a run of four 4’s would have helped much anyway, the combats were all very unfavourable and battle was already effectively lost).

I didn’t play to the strengths and paid the price with a 3-22 loss.  The Bretons do quite well when they play to their plan and fail when they don’t play to a plan although tonight showed that they were still resilient even when the result was always going to be negative.  The game was not a quick walk over even though Bob played it well, pursued my errors and utilised his own strengths.

I still have faith in the Bretons as a threat to all comers – although they may want to find a better commander!!  Next week the Viking ally should arrive so the dead weight that is the Franks will have their contract terminated before we head in the direction of Bactria (if the rumours are found to be true). 

Delayed Posting of the Game Report

Due to the week being busy with a family member returning from overseas, the family reunion and a memorial service up-country there just wasn't enough time to fit in overcoming an uploading issue (which turned out to be an competing ISP's cookie interfering).  However the busy time with road trips had a couple of benefits.

We got in a side trip (we were passing close by) to the Khmer temple complex at Phanom Rung.