Samanids v Tibetans 500AP DBM

Tibet Invades Samanids Khurosan

Bob M from Essex Warriors fancied a game so I suggested something larger to take advantage of our 7 hour gaming Sunday. We agreed to a historic matchup and ended up with my Iceni army Bk 3/43 Samanids fighting his Bk 3/15 Tibetans. 

The Tibetan army is usually very small even at 500AP due to the expensive Reg Kn X it uses. He took a Bk 3/08 Khotanese ally contingent using the Irr Kn F troop option.

Command 1 was 13 E/ 13/EE/5 D [25% = 4 EE]

Command 2 was 13 E/ 13/EE/5 D [25% = 4 EE]

Command 3 was 13 E/ 11 EE/4 D [25% = 3 EE]

Command 4 [Khotan Ally] was 13 E/ 13 EE/5 D [25% = 4 EE]

Army 52 E/50 EE/25 B

As posted earlier my Iceni army was 87 E/77.5 EE/39 B

see entry here 21st September 2015

http://drewjarman.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/report-back-from-iceni-2015.html

Bob was the invader and placed no terrain. I placed three areas of brushy RGo which fell in the flank sectors two of which made it perfect for me to anchor my army against. It meant my Buyid ally was left with nothing much to do but it prevented Bob from moving his Cataphracts over to his centre in case I suddenly pushed forward to try and loot his baggage. Bobs ally was reliable and after Bob pushed forward very hard in his first bound I ended up PIP starved with a 2 for my ally and 1's and a 2 for my Samanids which sort of depressed me thinking that I might have broken the cycle of bad luck I had at Caesaromagus. I pushed my elephant forward into the gap I had left for it with 2 pips and attempted to mitigate Bobs first move.

Casualties were fairly even at first but because my two largest commands were larger than his entire army I could afford to absorb any losses whilst I hoped for the breakthrough I needed to exploit my superior numbers. I killed one of his sub generals early on due to a lucky situation of my being able to attack one of his Khotan Irr Kn F with my armoured spearmen whilst it was double overlapped and due to his not having enough PIP's the previous bound I was able to double it to kill it and his generals element due to the lack of a recoil gap. Once my elephant got into combat his Khotan ally knights started to drop like flies against my double rank rear mitigated Sp O and it quickly broke leaving a huge gap in his line. My sub generals Cv S were taking a pasting from his cataphracts in the centre and I was barely holding out by plugging the gaps my my LH. I was 2.5 elements away from losing my CinC's command with Bob only needing a single loss from his CinC's command to break his army. He threw all his troops back into combat with my Spears, auxilia and hard flanked a lone LH F with a pair of his own LH F in the hope that he would get lucky and break my command. My Spearmen held on and recoiled his cataphracts whilst I rolled a 6 to his 1 in the LH F combat to kill his LH F and break his army.

The final result was 10-0 which converted to 30-2 using the BHGS scoring system. The score doesn't really show how close the battle was.

It was a fun game and I think Bob learnt a couple of things and realised where he had made a couple of mistakes which thankfully he managed to survive due to some good dice rolling.

We discussed his army composition which I thought needed a slight rearrangement. I suggested that instead of taking the Khotan as Irr Kn F with all that involves keeping them under control or moving to a better location that he might have been better taking the Irr Cv S version in his already knight rich army. It would have probably been slightly better if he had also taken it as a purely mounted ally, slightly smaller and saved the AP to bulk out the Tibetans a bit more. I also suggested that he might have been better served using the third Tibetan command as more of a PIP dump by making it a bit smaller and putting the Ps O with it to hold some RGo and making the other two commands a bit larger to increase their BP by 1 or more.

Below are a selection of pictures at deployment and a few taking through the game and the situation at the end when the Tibetans had broken.