Biblical at Campaign 2019
New Kingdom Egyptian vs New Kingdom Egyptian
Game 1 New Kingdom Egyptian vs New Kingdom Egyptian
Game 2 New Kingdom Egyptian vs New Kingdom Egyptian
Game 3 New Kingdom Egyptian vs New Kingdom Egyptian
Game 4 New Kingdom Egyptian vs New Kingdom Egyptian
Game 5 New Kingdom Egyptian vs New Kingdom Egyptian
Game 6 New Kingdom Egyptian vs Bedouin
After a traditional Milton Keynes evening dodging the drunks and scoffing curry in The Don it was soon time for a full English Weatherspoons breakfast and the 5th game of the weekend.
In an unexpected development I had managed to be drawn against the FIFTH NKE army (out of 5 possible opponents) that weekend. At least I now knew that Bedouins faced me in the final round..
The lists for the New Kingdom Egyptian and New Kingdom Egyptian from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Campaign can be seen here in the L'Art de la Guerre Wiki.
Tutankhamun woudl have turned in his grave to see how this time the flood plains of the Nile were also stunningly absent as a shockingly blatant hill landed straight in the centre of my opponents Rebel NKE deployment zone.
This looked like a bit of a problem, as in a game of evenly matched troops types the advantage inherent in the centre of the enemy army being uphill could be terminal and decisive.
With this rather negative scenario in mind the Loyalist Egyptians needed to come up with a clever and cunning plan.
Sadly none appeared to be available online due to the lack of reliable mobile data coverage in 2nd millennium BC Heliopolis and so instead the wall of unwashed but salt-encrusted mad charging warriors simply set off with the intention of ignoring the hill entirely.
On the opposite flank the usual scenario of being wider than the enemy had again magically arisen and so ignoring a rough terrain plantation with a bit of forced marching and a dash of bloody minded aggression my forces advanced at the fastest speed they could towards an engagement with the enemy on level ground.
L'Art de la Guerre hint - In this shot the double-move marches of my men have been stopped by an enemy Ambush marker in the field to the left. The ability of the defender to drop a couple of these markers onto the table in any terrain they wish (or more accurately any terrain which could hide LF) does help the defender control the speed of the enemy attack pretty well, making for a good balance between the roles of Attacker and Defender in the game.
By the second turn the middle of the table was almost as denuded of my troops as the underbelly of a well oiled asp is of hair and legs, as the army parted like the biblical Red Sea and homed in on both wings of the opposing force
OK, there might be the odd fairly obvious flaw and risk associated with this plan, but it was still better than going in uphill and hoping to be lucky
By The Beard of The Pharaoh! Triggering the ambush early doors the outriders of my left wing carried on with their Momentum and pushed forward to start exchanging archery shots with the enemy skirmishers.
Egyptian Warfare
On the opposite flank the drift to the flanks had accelerated even faster, but this had at least placed the Mediocre Bow in my army out of arc and range of any dangerous reply-shooting from the enemy chariots.
Quite whether a huge gap in the line when facing enemy cavalry was as good an idea as the gap in the middle of my army against infantry was yet to be seen
Everything was geared around getting into the squishy enemy bowmen at the extreme left of their line.
Driving off their protective Chariot screen with accurate archery was a good development in that respect, but a massed flight of Mighty Mighty Meshwesh hand axes being applied to their frontal lobes at high speed seemed like the logical way to pursue the strategy to its logical conclusion.
Mighty Mighty Bosstones
With a pre-Cannae refused centre being pretty much perfectly executed in front of them the Rebel Egyptians were finally tempted down from the hilltop and towards combat at the same moment both wings of the Loyalist forces crashed into their respective targets.
The envelopment from the right was certainly on - if it succeeded would rest on these next few combats.
The rebel shooting was accurate and deadly as light foot shot arrows poured into the harassed Sea Peoples.
Their somewhat half-hearted shields proved little defence as the mercenaries fell like overfed flies in the Egyptian heat under the constant hammering of archery.
On the opposite wing the breakthrough certainly had gotten off to a good start, with hits springing up along the line as the two sets of infantry crashed together.
Careful recycling of LF into overlaps was giving the Loyalists an advantage as the two near-identical sets of troops got to grips.
L'Art de la Guerre hint - Light troops in ADLG count as full unit losses in determing when an army has broken. This has several in-game effects - it means you need to be careful not to throw them away in the early-game skirmishing sequence, you need to expend comand and control capability to pull them out of the combat zone once the real fighting starts, and finally if you bring them back later in the game to provde overlaps this is not without significant risk. many an army has been undone and broken due to the careless loss of a few too many skirmishers
The Loyalist army were completely round the flank of the enemy on the left too, with a solid line of chariots and infantry overrunning the now-empty space even as a lone chariot soaked up his generals space command and control capacity to race around the field and appear utterly behind the enemy line of scrimmage too.
Megiddo
Sporting a full colour palette of hats the Meshwesh and Sherbert Dib-dab tribesmen slammed into the opposing line of infantry, scattering warriors and archers in their aggressive attack. This could be a decisive turn as a wide frontage of enemy infantry bowed under the pressure of the warriors charge
Ya nhar eswed! The real damage however seemed to be being done on the opposite flank, where what had looked like a holding action was suddenly turning into a rampaging victory.
Huge blocks of enemy units were lifted wholesale from the table under the poking spears of the Egyptians supposedly anti-cavalry troops and Chariotry. Many of the Cairo-ese had never seen such boundless opportunity as the enemy flank gaped open before them.
With almost too many opportunities the challenge was choosing the right ones
Fortunately a great round of command and control rolls allowed the Loyalist General to shuffle his units and take advantage of pretty much all of them - smashing into more flanks than the enemy had realised that they actually possessed between themselves in a flurry of turns and charges.
The opposite side was still somewhat of a desperate struggle as neither side managed to engineer the decisive breakthrough that would unzip the enemy line.
That was however until a heroic effort from the central Non-gender-specific Sea Person unit in the very centre of the line saw someone on the opposition being mightily smote - and removed!
This unlocked a tidal wave of destruction as the rest of the enemy centre collapsed like a deck of Egyptian tarot cards, men, shields and weapons being cast aside in the headline evacuation of what had once been seen as an impregnable uphill position
As the front rank of the enemy line simply ceased to be, poor quality bowmen who had previously been lurking in reserve found themselves almost swept away by the tide of routing friends and then immediately afterwards violently attacked by the jubilant Mishmash warriors of the loyalist army
.
The tide was turning on the right as well, as the steady attrition of close quarters combat started to seriously damage the ability of the enemy Rebel infantry to sustain the fight.
As more and more of them reached the all too dangerous 2-hits status (out of 3) the line looked very, very frail all of a sudden
The left wing had by now pretty much wrapped up its work of mopping up the remnants of the enemy right flank.
Nothing seemingly could stand in the way of the multi-vectored attacks of the swirling mob of Loyalist Egyptian chariots and drilled infantry as the enemy went down in a hail of axe and sword blows.
Pursuing up the hill the rest of the enemy second line bowmen suffered about as traumatic an attack as it is possible to suffer from a bunch of loincloth-wearing proto-Lebanese maniacs with bronze swords and giraffe-skin cloaks.
These BC Batmen analogues held no fear in their hearts as they raced forward to sweep up the last remnants of the enemy army
Suddenly a pause for breath - the enemy had been swept from the field and utterly crushed by the power of the Loyalist Alliance!
The only hill in Heliopolis was again recaptured for the glory of the Loyal Empire!
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition, or read on for the post match summaries from the Generals involved, as well as another episode of legendary expert analysis from Hannibal
Post Match Summary from the New Kingdom Egyptian Commander
Hmmmm.. that didn't take long at all. I am clearly the Lion of the Desert, ruler of all Egypt, the King of Kings and bester of all other Kings of Kings (apart from the one from the first round and arguably the one where I had a mutual destruction - although to be fair most of that army was dead before it started so their opportunities to outlive me and claim the Kingship are probably somewhat limited)
But, let's face it, the whole avoiding the hill thing was about as clever as anything I have done all weekend managed to get here, and it did also play a huge part in my army winning the battle so that is certainly something to be very proud of indeed.
With such skills starting to develop against more Egyptians it is a shame that there are no more left for me to play, and that my next game will be against a totally different army
But, given the choices, I am sure that lining up in a big long line and attacking and trusting to the dice and matchups will work like a treat then too
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
To say this is getting tedious is to do a disservice to the Great Priests of the Temple of Tedium on the Black Sea island of Tedios in the village of Yawn. PLease God of Gods, give us a different opponent in this competition - and I do know that this is inevitable anyyway so bring the damn thing on
Here an opposing army demonstrated the flaws of building too strong a position to attack, and you demonstrated the sort of cowardice that in my armies would have had men hung, drawn and quartered but in Egypt seems to have enabled you to be promoted to God King. God help us!
Those two solid Heavy Foot have proved a bit of a god-send for you too, being tougher and more resilient than any enemy mounted or foot, which sort of makes up for your lack of manly chariots.
I do hope there is only one more game left and so let's find out shall we in the next game?
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition
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Game 1 New Kingdom Egyptian vs New Kingdom Egyptian
Game 2 New Kingdom Egyptian vs New Kingdom Egyptian
Game 3 New Kingdom Egyptian vs New Kingdom Egyptian
Game 4 New Kingdom Egyptian vs New Kingdom Egyptian
Game 5 New Kingdom Egyptian vs New Kingdom Egyptian
Game 6 New Kingdom Egyptian vs Bedouin
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