Yesterday's Game - Another Very Close Loss
At the request of Peter K from Essex Warriors he wanted to use his Mongol Conquest army using a list from before 1211 AD against some sort of historic enemy.
After checking the possible options I settled on 4/24 Khwarizmian 1186 AD - 1211 AD 400 AP
My army was composed as follows:
1 x CinC Reg Cv S - 30
2 x Sub generals Reg Cv S - 60
10 x Lancers Reg Cv S - 100
12 x Qangli Irr LH F - 48
10 x Askaris Reg Cv O - 80
4 x Persians Irr Cv O - 28
1 x Turkoman ally general Irr LH S - 12
6 x Turkomans Irr LH S - 42
6 x Mobile Baggage Irr Bg I - 0
46 E/46 EE/23 to Break
Organised as follows:
Command 1:
1 x CinC Reg Cv S
6 x Lancers Reg Cv S
7 E/7 EE/3 Dem [25%=2EE]
Command 2:
1 x Sub general Reg Cv S
2 x Lancers Reg Cv S
6 x Qangli Irr LH F
5 x Askaris Reg Cv O
2 x Persians Irr Cv O
16 E/6 EE/6 Dem [25%=4EE]
Command 3:
1 x Sub general Reg Cv S
2 x Lancers Reg Cv S
6 x Qangli Irr LH F
5 x Askaris Reg Cv O
2 x Persians Irr Cv O
16 E/6 EE/6 Dem [25%=4EE]
Command 4:
1 x Turkoman ally general Irr LH S
6 x Turkomans Irr LH S
7 E/7 EE/3 Dem [25%=2EE]
Peters army was also entirely mounted with no half elements and organised in mixed commands of Cv S Generals, Cv S/O, LH S and LH F.
Command 1 was 13 EE - breaking on 5
Command 2 was 15 EE - breaking on 5
Command 3 was 14 EE - breaking on 5
Command 4 was 2 EE [PiP dump] - breaking on 1
Making 44 E/44 EE/22 to break
I defended and elected to place 3 x 0.5 FE of RGo and 3 x 0.5 FE of H[G]. The terrain fell mainly to the ends of the table except for two gentle hills in the central sectors.
I deployed 3, 2, 1, 4 across the table with the Turkomans filling the gap between the RGo and centrally placed H[G].
Due to a quick run of very low combat dice rolls Peters mixed LH S and LH F broke my Turkomans and ended up going spono all over the place as a result. Two turns later I managed to break his Command 2 evening the game a bit more. As casualty numbers increased we both ended up three away from breaking. Try as I might his broken command managed to survive and even took another two elements meaning that I was one away from losing the game. Sadly this happened despite my best efforts and ending up with Peter losing 20 EE spread over four commands to my 23 EE loses.
The Khwarizmian list has some merit but as with all regular armies they tend to be very small. I am not sure if I would change the command dispersion as having two commands of S troops makes them fairly resilient [dice rolls excepted] and the other two commands become a highly mobile fighting force able to get to the table to overwhelm one enemies wing before they have time to intervene. I have never used this army before so I am unsure if its a bad list or I was just unlucky this time.
We did discuss the Mongol OOB after the game and I did suggest that he could have shifted one element from command 3 into command 2 to increase its resilience or even make Command 1 7 EE of Reg Cv S troops and spread out the other elements to bulk out the other three commands thus C 2 16 EE, C 3 16 EE and C 4 5 EE, breaking on 3, 6, 6 and 2 EE respectively. If he culled the odd element from Command 4 he could even take a few more S graded troops? If he was happy with the 5 EE break points of Commands 1 - 3 he could have even shifted over the 3 EE excess over 13 EE from each of them into Command 4 making it 5 EE and breaking on 2 EE.
No comments:
Post a Comment