Average Joe Breton Rides Again

The Bretons emulate the Inca* 

* = with all due honour to Lorenzo Mele for taking the (almost) totally** AxO Incas and through four games ravaging his "betters". 

I wasn’t able to paint a new set of Viking figures over the intervening week so I couldn’t use a surprise Viking ally this week.  So with the same basic arrangement (only a slightly changed OoB) and the same Frankish ally the Bretons have set out to actually test the plan.

Travellers from far distant lands have bought word of the Sapa Inca’s glorious all** rAxO victories and we have thus had our own beliefs in the power of pure “O” ordinariness confirmed by the powers that be.

No change in plans.  Just the usual firm warning to self – “stay with the plan”, so no generals in the front line this week!!  And we are going to need to be aware of CvS and impetuous LhS making our PiP shortage feel even more acute.

Battle Commences

First good point, the boys stayed at home, the Juan-juan, in all "S" mode***, have come to us but it’s a loooooong way so the season rolled over one into the winter.  But it's going to be a "O" vs "S" game - something I'm now regretting saying that I could cope with!!

Secondly we got a good terrain layout.  Maybe I’ve overdone it with the BuA centre table but it’s the reason I bought a road in the first place, to have more BuA placement options.

I knew the central BuA would back fire on me – you CAN’T ambush from a unfortified BuA.  Caught it as Bob was deploying after me so had to drop the troops on the table.  (After the last embarrassment last year you’d think I’d remember).

No sign of any apparent Gok Turk allies but we’ll be outnumbered by PsO in the BuA area.  Otherwise conservative deployment on both sides.

We deploy with plenty of options to daze and confuse.

1st Bound

Bob opens by pushing Ps and Hd across the open towards the village (BuA) in centre table.

I push some Cv in column around the village to threaten his weak foot and to see what he’ll do a s a counter.  My all Lh command goes wide right leaving a gap between themselves and the Cv and forming an alley for the ambushing Franks to use if the emeny advance strongly.

Baiting the Trap.

Bob makes very aggressive march moves with a majority part of a LhS command that gets surprisingly close to the Cv.  However he also splits the smaller part to go after my far right command.

Juan-juan response.

2^nd Bound

We’re pleased we’ve got the enemy impetuous LhS command split and with many PiPs available we ran away with the Cv and attacked where we had superior numbers.  By using multiple commands against one we should have control and resilience.

The Franks are released.

Triggering the trap.

First combat dice on the Lh lottery (at 2-1) was 1-5.  We died.  After that we were isolated but no more casualties but we dread the return bound.  

However Bob has only two PiPs plus impetunousness so hopefully not to much will occur.

3^rd Bound

We filled the gap in the line.  The LhS Juan-juan (CvS wannabe) breaks through again!!

 

The Franks maximise their distance and into the jaws of death they go – they can only die once (per game actually).

Bob’s 3^rd command is crossing from centre to our right looking to fill gaps, save their friends and destroy our small command.  We push reserves up the road.

On the left we hold but importantly push a annoying few LhO around the wood into the enemy rear.

Bob retaliates – we’ll need Plan B now which is as Bob calls it “hot dice”.  And the dice were smoking.  Each side suffers Lh casualties.

4th Bound

Enough PiPs to push the combats that are favourable including Franks into the rear of LhS, several hard flanks and a risky position of a Cv in the village (but with overlap support) in anticipation of the Franks coming through into the rear of the opposing element.  It turned out the factors were worse than planed at (0 -1) but we pulled it off.  One disheartened enemy command that was now also outnumbered 2 to 1 and without support.

A good bound.  Now we await Bob’s revenge.

Going long & wide. A important PiP drain on Bob.

He has plenty of PiPs except for the disheartened command.  Let’s see what he’ll do with them.

The Franks have trouble with being surrounded piecemeal and a clever PiP intensive manouver sees the Frank general hard flanked, rolls 1-4 so dies as does a colleague – command broken and small Breton command exactly disheartens with the knock on effect.

We that’s the Franks destroyed.  But we’ve got some options while our multiple groups ploy and the use of several commands against individual enemy commands is making us very resilient.

Developing the weight of numbers on my right wing.

The few LH going around the wood into the enemy rear get ambushed from the back of the wood.  This takes several bounds to resolve (4 LhS vs 4 LhO) and I eventual kill one LhS while losing all mine but it importantly tied up BoB’s PiPs to control impetuous outcomes causing their defeat and his right (my left) flank attack with CvS did not develop for those few important bounds.

A HdO actually kills an enemy in anger!!

More Bounds

BUT, a big “but” is proving to be that, resilient or not, we don’t have a lot of effective attack & damage options.  We have to slowly break up the enemy formations, surround and then take the hard flank kill options – a slow process.

Things have bogged down to picking off the odd enemy elements.

A couple of bounds later a good set of combat outcomes sees a just disheartened enemy command turn around and abandon the fight because if it losses one more element than the three I have trapped and outnumbered in a LH lottery battle, then it becomes a defeat for the Juan-juan. 

Slowly making progress - but  feeling decidedly 'toothless' though.

Up until now we’d had a stand-off in the village but a quick burst of intentional action by the Breton PsS (lead by Bob the pink attired colour blind Breton) saw enemy PsO hard flanked and destroyed, enough to get the required MEs.  Now to deal to those three surrounded enemy disheartened LhS. 

Given that I was also disheartened it was not such an easy task.  Instead we broke but the multi-command in the fight ploy had by now provided other non-disheartened troops to finish the job.  It turned out that my maths was a bit out and in the last bound I thought I’d got the last element destroyed to win the battle but it turned out I’d got one more than required.

So it was a slow, often laboured undertaking but the all “O”ness plan worked out.  However it was expensive and we had ME casualties of nearly 43% - so scored at 17-8.

Note:- there was no time limit and we played for a bit over 5 hours.  However, because we normally play to conclusions we don’t try and play at ‘speed’, often slowing/stopping to chat, eat, joke or get otherwise distracted.  This week the time includes “live” blog entries as well.

** = Well almost totally, a few other grades snuck in.

*** = They were 95%+ mounted and all the mounted, both Cv and Lh were "S" grade.  The small number of foot were iPsO and iHdO.

The Bretons are coming again

 Well it''s game night again, and since Mr Watts has opined that his Bretons can handle a steppe army, tonight I'm going to use The Wriggly Worms, The Juan Juan.

There seems to be an awful lot of terrain for two cavalry armies, but here I am invading Brittany on a cold winter's morning.

BUA in the centre, two woods, an  orchard, a bog and two gentle hills

His position is pretty tough to attack, so I think the central BUA will be pivotal. I'll concentrate my psiloi there, then shift my forces to concentrate one side or the other after I see his deployment.

Deployment

 Turn 1

Turn one sees Wayne advance his cav around the village, and move his CinC from his extreme left towards the center. I got six pips for my left, so was able to pounce on the cav and still fend of the left hand column. In the center my psiloi scurried for the village.

Turn 2

Wayne got good pips and did an abrupt about turn in the center while opening the action on my left.

Franks. Not totally unexpected

And to no-ones surprise the Franks have turned up from ambush behind the hill on my left

Won the first roll in the light horse lottery, killing an element on a factor 1 vs 2

. Bagged another one in my turn to even up the numbers on that side. Due to lack of pips I  had to advance all my LH towards the BUA, but didn't t kill the cav that I caught.

Turn 3

Franks charge forward. LH from my centre come over to counter

The Franks charged forwards and the light horse fight developed on the left where things started to go bad due to poor pips and poor combat dice. On the other flank a group of Bretons came sneaking round the wood, but were surprised by my ambush that was in the rear edge of the wood

Turn 4

The Franks have plenty of pips, was hoping they'd have a crisis, but they split up, and kill some light horse from my left. Things continue to go badly for that command and it disheartens then breaks. However, good pips with my column from the center allow them to launch a devastating counter attack on the Franks, breaking them. This in turn disheartens the light horse command next to them.

Turn 5

Mostly mopping up, most of the Franks cleared off, and one more was killed to shatter the command. On the right the small  group behind the wood was finished off. On the left Wayne marshalled his forces for a counter attack.

Turn 6

Skirmishing to the left of village., took a loss but could have been worse. Poor pips made it hard to collect the group behind the wood, Mild excitement as one of Wayne's horde killed a psiloi in the village.

Turn 7

A bit broken up on the left, looks like the counter attack is going to be nasty..

... which it was, bringing my central command close to broken. On the plus side I broke the small cavalry command on the left, and began to move forwards with my Cv(S) on the right. The runp of the center withdraws.

Turn 8

More losses on the left combined with some psiloi losses in the village  breaks the center and gives the game to the Bretons 17 - 8

Reflections

A tough game where I broke two commands, but still lost. Wayne played it pretty well, concentrating contingents from several commands in the critical area to mitigate the vagaries of irregular pips. On the other side, his sacrificial raid around the wood kept my rightmost command out of the action, while allowing his opposite command to use its pips in the critical area left of the village.

We continued to experiment with writing the battle up as we went. Writing the text. taking and annotating the photos all works well, but putting all together on the IPad doesn't work well, due to problems with the Blogger software. Might let Wayne put it all together on his laptop next week, while I do photos and notes.

This week we used some new technology; a chair, for the high angle shots