Game 3
Sunday morning came far too soon after Saturday night had finished. In fact, there was a significant degree of overlap, indeed enough to cause us at least 2 negative factors in any likely combat the next day.
Our erstwhile opponents were a Lesbian Byzantine Army (I think that’s what they said….)
|
8 Irr Bd (O) |
2 (4) DBE Knights |
Cv (S) General |
Cv (S) General |
|
2 Art (O) |
Cv (S) General |
8 Ps (O) |
7 Cv (S) |
|
Cv General |
2 Lh (F) |
4 (8) DBE Bow |
1 Ps (O) |
|
Something Else |
4 Bd (X) |
4 (8)DBE Bow |
|
|
Some Ps (S) |
|||
|
1 Ps (X) |
|||
|
19 |
7 |
19 |
19 |
Things were looking bad. They were cooking up a plan……. Maybe we would need one as well..?
Fortunately their plan involved lots of woods – which was also ours!
The game started with a minor kerfuffle when the Lesbian generals attempted to deploy their largest command last (erm, nope!), and also spread it out across the entire front of their army (erm, cheesy..!). Fortunately after some debate about other options, we decided that we thought their deployment of it was so rubbish we were happy to let it stand where it was with no penalty!
The terrain picks had left us with the ability to screen off the left hand side of our table with the wall, and a narrow gap in the middle down which to stuff all our blades and bowmen.
Soon the forward-deployed Byzantine Psiloi found themselves facing a surprise attack from the tooled up Chinese Firelancers, supported by bowmen and hoodie-wearing day-glow Chinese Psiloi.
This attack was co-ordinated with another thrust on the other half of the command, as a wall of Chinese halberdiers surged forward between the trees – suddenly what the Lesbians expected to be the safest elements of their advanced command were looking dangerously exposed as their general struggled to command such a disparately spread set of tree hugging elements…..
… a situation further exacerbated by the Orange Order clambering eagerly over their wall and steaming across the table towards the block of Bw (X) which made up the third – and possibly most terrified so far – elements of the Scatterlings of Byzantium. OK, we had to fight some Kn (I) DBE – but hey, it wasn’t that scary !
In the middle, the Chinese swordsmen were advancing with impunity between the two action-packed wooded areas with their flanks now secured by our bold advances into the forestry trade. Byzantine troops not ideally suited to dealing with Regular Blade (O) took up the baton as the Varangians dithered.
By now Chinese troops were pouring through the gap in the middle of the table, and the beleaguered Lesbians had no-where to turn as our "advance in numbers with better tactics" were causing them all sorts of headaches – exacerbated by the way in which their best dice were being siphoned off to help dig the spread-out commands three islands of troops out of their respective holes!
The Byzantine Psiloi on our right were soon swept away, dragging more overpriced and underperforming Bd (X) – again from the spread out command – into the woods to take on the rampant firework team.
Then, to pour soy sauce on the festering wound, the flak march finally arrived – for the first time in 3 games it was on table and in a position to do something really useful!
Soon the Kn (I) DBEs were skittled, caught between advancing bowmen, artillery and a wave of Turkic horsemen – leaving the spread-out command all at sea and soon it too was drowned under weight of numbers across the width of the table.
Other allied Turkic skirmishers raced for the baggage, and were running amok in the Lesbians rear (ooh – er!). With the Byzantine army in shattered pieces, there were simply too many holes to plug, and too few pips to do it with – but time was running out and with the last bound called we still needed 2 more elements to take down the enemy army.
The game was all happening in the middle, and Al’s Day-glo Blades pushed onwards throwing themselves into every combat they could generate, supported by the fast knight firelancers who waded in to help create overlaps.
The last round of combat rolled across the table – and one by one the chances all failed to go our way. Even the desperate act of throwing the Kn into 2 ranks of enemy Varangians to gain an overlap for our own axmen on another more favourable combat looked to be a miscalculation, as blades were repulsed.
The games last dice roll – overlapped Kn vs 2 ranks of Ordinary blades. 3-2 down – but the Byzantian Vikings roll a 1.
"You need to make this a 6, Al"
"OK then"
6!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
10-0 to the Lads from Canton, in the last roll of the game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Post Match Summary
The Byzantine decision to spread their largest command across the entire table proved to be a costly one – especially when combined with our "probably-still-drunk" overly aggressive gameplay, and the "we might be figuring out that this army isn’t actually totally pants" 3rd game timing of the match.
This meant we caught their two forces of psiloi totally unawares with our attack into the woodlands with blades & bowmen - what would normally be considered troop types who would avoid closed terrain at all costs. But with a very narrow board, and a large chunk of the table successfully screened by The Wall we had blades and bowmen going spare.
Once we had committed to contest both shoulders of the gap – and drawn off the best pip dice from the Byzantines in 8 turns out of 11 to use for the essentially defensive duties of trying to save them, the game became a lot harder for the Lesbians to figure out. This is shown clearly by the comparison of the average pips vs time per bound.
With dice pretty even, and even with the exceptional circumstances of an umpire call in bound 9 (when a Byzantine LH fled through 2 Art (O) on carts, who lacked room to follow on behind him!) the Lesbians consistently took around 50% more time to allocate dice and make their moves, illustrating clearly the tactical problems they faced in extricating themselves from their back-foot predicament almost from the off
