Game 2
Elephants!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Khmer army we faced had expected us to field cavalry and so deployed lots of woods to mess up our deployment. This left a 9 element wide gap between 2 woods on our left and so guess what, 9 elements of wall, 7 elements of horde and some other rubbish packed in behind it.
The Khmer deployment again opted to totally ignore the flank with the wall, which left us with again our two strongest commands acting together, with a flank march off to our right as there was no room or role for it on table. The allied command behind the wall rolled an initial 1 to go unreliable, but with no-one to move against, and feeling warm ad safe behind their wall, simply hunkered down for the wait. A price of rough going posed a problem should we opt to advance, but instead we lined its exit with blades, and braced ourselves for impact.
The Battle Cattle saw their opportunity and raced diagonally across our frontage seeking targets of opportunity or, anyone who want a bowman or an elephant.
Rather than hurl themselves at a line of stronger troops, the wily Khmer decided to shove an entire command through the wood on their right flank, hoping to turn the flank of our army. The Sung reacted by redeploying their limited cavalry force and two fast knights to screen off the exit from the wood, this bottling up the Khmeric pedestrians amongst the low hanging fruit trees.
The battle cattle found themselves on the receiving end of an inordinate amount of pips, as they wheeled back and forth trying to avoid another ignominious end. Cows against Elephants was the order of the day, in a bizarre superhero clash of the animal kingdom. Who would win the Trunk carriers or (in a bizzarre Lost-like motif that was to be repeated later that evening) The Udders ?
(The elephants won, stupid!)
Running out of positive ideas, the Khmer decided to reinforce the move into the wood, to try and force an exit through weight of numbers alone. The Burmese ally was also short of things to do, so redeployed glacially to face where they (correctly) expected our flank march to come on. This shift was interpreted as a sign of confusion in the enemy ranks which in turn emboldened the Chinese, who saw their chance and decided to make a dash for it across the broken ground hoping the Khmer elite auxilia would be committed to their own path and be unable to react before the Chinese cleared the scrubland.
Things had gotten so dull behind the wall and advance party was despatched to try and bring back a large cup of coffee for the uncommitted peasantry. They tried to move into some sort of interesting position, so if they decided to come online they might be able to do something.
By now, the emboldened Chinese wee moving forwards in serious numbers, and the once brave Khmeric elephants were starting to eat up pips to avoid death by purple headed rocket launcher.
The elite (and fabulously painted) Khmer auxilia had also decided that having secure flanks was a better option than steaming into the wood and hoping we wouldnt notice, and had swung slowly round to try and counter the Sung halberdiers advance.
Everyone was thinking about becoming committed but the odds were either evens, or very bad for someone and so the battle whilst looking savage was more a Condottieri wargame than a blood and thunder clash of Mighty Eastern Empires.
This pattern was continuing across the table, and with much action but few casualties and with the clock running out the game petered out for a 5-5 draw
with not much table left as Chinese artillery chased down Khmer elephants!
Post Match Analysis
Both armies were too strong and too well deployed to have a real crack at each other. By the time the game had loosened up a little after the Khmer committed part of a second command to the push through the wood on our right it proved too late in the day for either side to force a result. Even though redeploying the cavalry and Knights prevented the Khmer emerging from this same wood, it also robbed our army of a small, key potentially opportunity creating strikeforce to help give our blades an edge as they pushed forwards. The Turkish flank march command failed to turn up until they rolled a 6 in the very last bound, and so never made it onto the table an early arrival would have caused problems for the Khmer whos main axis of attack was on that flank, but after the Burmese had redeployed it was a bonus they failed to show. Pip dice were pretty even.
|
4 Reg Ax (S) |
Reg Chariot General |
Burmese Ally |
Chariot General |
|
6 Reg Bw (O) |
2 Cv (O) |
2 Burmese El (S) |
2 El (O) |
|
2 Elephants |
6 Ax (S) |
2 Cv (I) |
2 Cv (I) |
|
Elephant General |
2 El (O) |
2 Bd (F) |
5 Ps (O) |
|
2 Cv (I) |
3 Ps (O) |
2 Ax (I) |
8 Ax (O) Irreg |
|
2 ps (O) |
6 Ax (O) |
2 Ax (O) |
6 Ps (I) |
|
4 Reg Bd (F) |
|||
|
3 Irr Ax (O) |
|||
|
2 Reg Ax (O) |
|||
|
24.5 |
16.5 |
11 |
18.5 |
Post Game Activity Analysis
Saturday
night saw us eating an early evening Curry and then (surprisingly maybe) going
onto several more pubs, 2 dodgy discotechques (one where a local resident was
carried out paralytic as we arrived, to be seen later barfing up outside
attended by local ambulance crews and this was the more classy
establishment of the two), failed to get into 2 more placed because of my
shoes, took a cab back to the hotel to change into some doorman-friendly
footwear, and then we found ourselves in a 1970s theme pub.
Here we danced like lunatics, drank Stella Artois when we could mange to buy it, and looked on in amazement and disgust as one of the small handful of non-immensely-fat girls in the entire place spent most of the evening snogging the face off a bloke who looked disturbingly like the scary psychopathic nutter Henry Gale in Lost, before finally retiring to the hotel bar for some more unwise alcohol imbibing.
