Post by gavmeister on Apr 23, 2018 9:36:07 GMT
In the 15mm final my Feudal Hungarians (c 975 AD) met Chris Richards' 9th century Later T'ang army, aided by a lost 10th century Southern Han elephant. My army was unchanged from our earlier friendly game but Chris' Tibetan allies were a nasty surprise, returned from fighting on loan to Steve in the early rounds.
The Hungarians won initiative with the aid of their swarms of light horse and as usual opted to attack in plains terrain. The battlefield was fairly open with just a couple of patches of rough terrain on the Hungarians' right. Winning initiative is vital for this army, which relies on getting its cavalry and horse archers into action as near the enemy baseline as possible.
The T'ang deployed with Tibetans on the right, a block of the dreaded 'penknife on a stick' heavy foot in the centre, and the elephant with bow and swordsmen support on the right crossing the rough terrain.
The Hungarians deployed their gentry, Szekelers and horse archers opposite the Tibetans, supported by the Hungarian and Saxon nobles. At the left centre, a couple of Serb foot acted as a mobile link with the central spearmen - which were refused. Only a couple of skirmishers faced the elephant command.
The Hungarian cavalry rushed forward immediately to engage the Tibetans. The Szekelers crushed the light horse in front of them, and then spent the rest of the battle chasing away a solitary unit of Chinese light horse - Chris had had the good sense to fortify his camp. The gentry and cavalry closed to shoot the Tibetan cataphracts, whilst other light horse worked around their rear.
Stung into action, the Tibetans charged forward supported by Chinese cavalry. The Hungarian and Saxon nobles counter-charged, beating the Chinese cavalry and holding their own against the cataphracts. The gentry and other cavalry first evaded, then enveloped the cataphracts' exposed right flank. After several rounds of hard fighting the Tibetans were wiped out to a man.
The Serb auxiliaries were forced to move forward to prevent the nobles from being outflanked on their right but were decimated by the advancing Chinese 'halberdiers'.
The rest of the Chinese infantry trundled slowly forward to engage the Hungarian spearmen, arriving at the same time as the elephant and its supports crushed the skirmishers in front of them. An entire round went by with the Hungarians inflicting zero casualties. Then the Hungarian infantry losses began to mount; and the victorious elephant rushed to within a half a cm. of the Hungarian camp. Just in time two units of Hungarian nobles charged in to rescue the remaining Serb unit on their right, just pushing the Chinese over their break point. Result: a Hungarian victory by 22 points to 19 points. As close as it gets.
My full thanks to Chris for being a gentleman - and providing a tense, challenging and thoroughly enjoyable game.
Chris adds:
History is written by the victors, but how close was this?
I realised immediately that I had been out-deployed by Gavin. His 10 Cavalry and 6 Light Horse faced 5 Cataphracts, 2 Cavalry and 2 Light Horse. Meanwhile my elephant was being skirmished off by 2 Light foot. My only hope was to die slowly with the mounted and slip my foot by him and into his squishy foot under-belly.
As it turned out I almost made it. On my last turn I had inflicted 19 casualties, I had an elephant (with a general) a smidge from his camp (4 more points) and my ‘penknife wielders’ ( 2 HCW Swordsmen) were in the front of 3 Spearmen, all disrupted and one had a medium swordsmen in the flank. One more heave and the Hungarians were gone. Moreover I had lost 20 attrition points. After moves Gavin had one combat where he was up – but I was already disrupted and had 3 lives left and thought I could hang on – and he was down on the other 4 combats. I won the combat I was down on, but lost 2 of the others and that tipped it.
In fact I thought from before the game that winning the initiative would be decisive, and that’s how it turned out. Gavin won the initiative and was down the throats of my mounted before I could breathe. Had I won I might have bought them some time.
In retrospect I made a couple of small errors, but they matter not. Gavin’s generalship (aided by having seen my army before) was a bit better than mine on the night.
