Game 4 at Britcon 2006
Game 4 syndrome struck again - late Saturday night, planning to go out that evening and a confusing match against an unusual 3.1 army - Dailami = poor plan from me!
The terrain was equally unkind, with two massive areas of RGo in the
forward part of my central sector and the forward part of Martins flank giving
great opportunities for the Dailami to sit untouchably in RGO and sneer at me.
My plan - such as it was - was to pin the undoubted hordes of auxilia in the
left hand RGO with my blade command, and draw in another horde to the RGo in
front of me (where my own auxilia could hopefully lose slowly, by the tactic
of avoiding combat for as long as possible). I could then push past both
flanks of this RGo and try and work something on the overextended flanks,
inserting the Teutons into the gap whilst trying to avoid the inevitable
elephant that would also be there, and using the artillery to hold off on the
other flank. A strong wind blowing into my face and risk of rain only
compounded the situation further
This fairly rapidly collapsed into ignominy and desperation as Martins initial fabulous dice (save for an unreliable ally) were matched by my desperate ones, and the auxilia lept forwards and down my throat. Following my pips, the allied command decided he was surely on the winning side and came back on-stream immediately, adding more oil to my own personal chip pan fire.
However the plan did start to look good, as the Teutons bravely ignored the threat of the Obviously Expected Elephant and ran down some of his accompanying auxilia right under his very nose - a bad day for troops who I would imagine were normally elephant filler but who had been pressed into action - presumably against their wishes - only to support the flanks of their larger command.
Following the death of the elephant, the Dailamis were forced to throw Cv (S) into the gap - drawing off pips from the by-now seriously successful infantry advance into the forward area of rough going.
But the death of the elephant had opened up a clear path to some rather surprised yet misplacedly confident Bw (I), who had failed to read the early evening edition of the Manchester Evening News and so were blissfully unaware of the Teutons attitude towards bowmen in Games 2 & 3. The Teuts rampaged on and splattered the Bw(I) (who belonged to the Dailami CinC's command and had up until then been lurking confidently in some RGo shouting arabic obscenities at my Hussites) all over the M56, and the rather shocked Dailami found themselves suddenly 2 commands to the worse, and 8-2 down from what had seemed like a fabulous position only moments ago...
However in the centre my own auxilia had been taking a horrible pounding (note to self - 8 (O) auxilia is not a great match for 12 (S)) and were in fully defensive mode, retreating desperately as their command - my largest - hovered on the brink of collapse.
On my right, my LH and artillery command was equally in full scale backpedaling mode, (note to self - 8 LH (O) and 1 art (S) is not a long term solution to dealing with 6 Sp (I), 6 Bw (O), 3 LH (F), 3 Kn (F), 2 Cv (O) and a Kn (F) General) and were rapidly running out of table - oh for a teleportation device as the Teutons were roaming about aimlessly in the middle of the table, looking for targets and not finding anything other than the odd motorbike-riding demoralized auxilia trying a Steve McQueen in an attempt to escape from the RGo in front of my blades.
By now it had also started raining, further hindering my army
My auxilia command had finally broken, but its fleeing remnants were getting in the way of the Dailami as well, still shooting with the wagons, and blocking recoils where they could - and so the rampant Dailami command also had also by now taken a fairly severe beating - in fact both sides were teetering on the brink.
It all came down to the Lh General and his command - he was was by now pinned to the back of the table by three Kn F and with nowhere to go, he played the old "fil rouge" and exploded the knights. The artillery piece was furiously firing close range grapeshot into the allied General's Kn F element, who kept bouncing back into contact asking for more punishment - each round of combat saw 3-4 chances for me to win 9-1, lose 7-3 or for a mutual destruction, with impossible recoils abounding for both sides....
What would it be ????
Erm, 7-3 loss actually. But with 49.3% of the Dailami army killed it was very very close - from a very unpromising initial situation to boot.
We were still in the hunt....
Post Match Analysis
Terrain, weather and matchup all went against me here - and I was probably more surprised than Martin to find my self 8-2 up at one stage. The Dailami should have wrapped the game up far more quickly and safely than the final result however, the chief culprits being the over confident Bw (I) who strayed into the path of the Teutons and who's demise left their CinC in terrible trouble.
It was being on the back foot that forced the Teutons into a bold strategy against the elephant command, which paid off as the beastie was finally killed by being caught in a recoilers zone of death, his comrades from the command being unable to help prevent the Teutons rampaging through. So, a slower start by the Dailami could have resulted in a bigger win - but I would have been guilty of daylight robbery to get away with anything better than my eventual 3-7 here
And as this Hammytastic clearly chart shows, even though I did do slightly worse throughout, it would be pushing it for me to blame the pips either!
Oh well, time to go out in Manchester.....
