Game
2 vs Rshunti Armenian
This army won 2nd prize in the best painted army competition, and whoever won must have been pretty spectacular. The painting was so good I remembered that I had my camera (i.e. I had sobered up a bit by now). They had a 3 command army, with 2 large Armenian commands and 1 Arab Conquest one in the center.
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Command 1 4 Cv (S) 4 Cv (O) (DBE’d) 4 Lh (F) 14 Ax (O) 4 Ps (O) 1 General Cv (S)/(O) |
Command 2 (Arab) 16 Wb (S) 4 Irr Cv (O) Cv (O) General |
Command 3 8 Cv (S) 8 Cv (O) (DBE’d) 4 Lh (F) 10 Ax (O) 8 Ps (O) 1 General Cv (S)/(O) DBE |
This would be a very scary army vs lots of Cv & LH outfits, however we endeavored to make our list appear and fight as unlike this as possible by a combination of a/ deploying the Pecheneg LH behind the main spear battle line, and b/ making the Poles unreliable.
We guessed on the Arabs being in the center, and so kept our spear to the flanks. I advanced up the edge of a river, using the CinC’s command and boats supported by 4 WWg to essentially push a whole command (no 3) of Cv (S)/(O) backwards, surrounding some and eventually forcing the survivors back to finish up marooned on a H(S) whilst isolating odd pockets of LH (F), who my spears and Psiloi then proceeded to mug horribly until the command eventually died and fled.
The Rus Valkyrie drops in to say "Howdy" to a number of Armenian Cv (S)/Cv (O) combos as the Arabs start to wonder if they have picked the correct God to be following today....
The Arabs started a slow graceful wheel into the flank of the WWg, contemptuously ignoring the Polish command sat right in front of them. This would have worked, had they not then proceeded to roll a 1, and some of them, gripped no doubt by religious fervor, went spontaneously into the Polish cavalry. The Polish War Machine then stumbled into life, but rather ineffectually, and the Arabs then proceeded to hand out a bit of a kicking to the Poles
“Oh,
you’ve come for your coffee then?”
The Pecheneg light horse then rode into the defence of the Poles, and managed to surround the impetuous Arabs, breaking their command only moments before the Poles would have been pole-axed. 10-0, and off to the pub !
Saturday night was better, with a very decent curry – although a miscommunication resulted in our reinforcements (a combined Welsh/Northern English flank march) arriving at a different curry house, being pushed back off table by pre-existing diners and eventually ending up engaging a mass market Italian Condottal force of Pizza Hut with Salad Bar allies. However we managed to reconvene in, erm, a pub, and then went onto Nutters all night disco again.
