The Kushans Decided To Invade The Delhi Sultanate
At our club Essex Warriors one of our regular ancient gamers, Bob asked for a 400 AP game and said he would be using a new army and would I pick something suitable to face them from my Arab-Muslim collection. At the time I didnt know what he was using and since I am still honing my skills with the Delhi Sultanate Army decided to go with them.
Bob then informed me that he was using Kushan 299 AD which highlighted that he was probably taking a Scythian Ally. This turned out to be correct though I had not considered that he was going to take an almost all mounted army.
His army was arranged in four commands:
Command 1 - 19 E/19 EE/7 D [25% = 5 EE]
Command 2 - 16 E/16 EE/6 D [25% = 4 EE]
Command 3 - 16 E/16 EE/6 D [25% = 4 EE]
Command 4 - 10 E/10 EE/4 D [25% = 3 EE] [Scythian Ally]
Army Total 61 E/61 EE/31 D [no half elements]
Having deployed I was panicked about my flanks for most of the game and played accordingly using my positioning in such a way that it allowed for a relatively small amount of troops to exercise a large area of control against an otherwise fairly impotent enemy consisting of lots of Light Horse elements.The plan was to arrange for my centre to take out the enemy centre and break the army.
Bob's combat dice rolling was on the whole pretty appalling most of the game. I lost a total of six elements during the game, two Reg Cv S due to they ending up being turned and failing to recoil, a pair of Irr Ax X being ridden down by a Cataphract and a pair of Irr Bw I also suffering the same fate. This was countered by the two Delhi Indian Irr El S elephants sweeping all before them ably supported by the remaining mounted arm and the artillery keeping his own elephants out of harms way meant he kept screening them off as I managed to take a couple of shots at his CinC's elephant. In the end it didnt matter as the accumulated losses meant I broke one command in bound 5 and the larger CinC's command in bound 6 which was enough to break the whole army. My Rathor Ally contingent was deployed too far back to be able to make any contribution to the game which wasnt helped by my forgetting to move it during one bound wasting its PIP's. I even managed to survive a lone combat with an Irr Bd F being hard flanked and overlapped at the rear by three Irr LH F.
Post game I went through the army with Bob and made some suggestions on how he might consider organising his army to give is some decent RGo infantry to exploit any terrain that an enemy will deploy to counter the larger numbers of LH he has. I suggested that with him taking the Scythian Ally that he had far too many Kushan Irr LH F to be able to exploit his advantage. I also managed to get his army into three identically sized command of 19 elements [or more with further tinkering] meaning that he would be able to maximize his deployment options as currently I managed to deploy to get some perfect matchup which caused Bob issues with avoiding my artillery with his elephants and being irregular it meant his own cataphracts could not avoid my own elephants. Whilst I dont mind advising people I always preface that I know you play your own game and have your own ideas, but, have you considered this as an option? I should probably learn to keep quiet and let other players learn the hard way what works or doesnt work for themselves?
I managed to take a short series of pictures during the game to illustrate its progress. I expect to see the Kushan's across the table from me in the not too distant future.
