War of the Strategists at Alicante 2023
Berber vs Timurid
The Journey to Alicante (via Valencia)
Game 3 Berber vs Maurikian Byzantine
Game 6 Berber vs Feudal English
The Journey back from to Alicante (again via Valencia)
Following the epic 4-game first day, pretty much the entire contingent of players decamped to a local restaurant for a rather excellent and great value Tapas meal
These two Scottish reprobates were undoubtedly the stars of the evening - this is the look on a Scotsmans face when he is handed a pitcher of "free" (aka included in the price of the meal) beer only moments after going to the bar and buying a round!
Here Rafa Tortosa is pictured attempting to sell Hugo Carmona a river after the one this afternoon had contributed to the defeat of his Timurid army at the hands of the Berbers
Hugo's attempt to negotiate a discount meets with the traditional response
The younger Mastrieux is seen here attempting to browse an illicit PDF copy of the ADLG army lists to try and work out what exactly is in the nonsense but somehow all-conquering Berber army which he has been drawn to play in the first game the next morning
And so the final day of the event, and the penultimate day of the CLWC Tour of Southern Spain dawned fresh, dark and a little bit chilly if I'm honest. Pausing only momentarily to scarf down a quick cafe con leche in the bar next to the hotel a gang of wargamers trudged through the pre-dawn light of Alicante's backstreets towards a date with destiny, dice and a Timurid army commanded by Belgiums youngest competition-grade ADLG Ace
By now I was starting to almost believe that I had somehow stumbled upon a half decent army, but against such top drawer opposition I also knew that hubris was a shortcut to hideous embarrassment. So, "be careful" was the order of the day
I have already told you about Timurid armies in the previous report, and this isn't one of those rulesets where the author changes the lists every few weeks (or even in the middle of a game - which believe it or not I've heard has actually happened for some other sets!) so of course nothing has changed since then.
So, calm down, make a cup of tea as its just more elephants, some good cavalry and those irritating expendable levy impressed prisoners of war yet again.
The lists for the Berber and Timurid from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Alicante can be seen here in the L'Art de la Guerre Wiki.
So, basically a Timurid army is Ghaznavid army yet again. I'd beaten two of these beasties already this weekend, so what could possibly go wrong?
Yet again the terrain managed to clutter up and narrow the table, with my own Village on my army's left and a plantation hemming in the Timurids on my right.
Having done so well with a river in the previous games I'd wanted to again use the really nice one I'd bought from Rafa the previous afternoon, which of course condemned the dice roll needed to get it on table to complete failure.
Even where dice are involved, some things are always 100% predictable..
The Timurids started the game by lurching forward in a near-solid line, with elephants in the centre and tasty double-armed cavalry facing the Berber mishmash of troops on the right.
The second chunk of Timurid horsemen were however hanging back for now, driving the mob of impressed peasants and war prisoners forward as a sacrificial screen to presumably try and blunt any Berber attack on the left wing before the Timurid proper troops got involved.
Heads covered by tea-towels bearing the imprint of the worlds greatest Moroccan carpet salesman's Priest-cursed merguez sausage-based organic body scrub, the Berber army was furiously trying to sort out a haphazard and incorrect deployment.
This involved the Black Guard and Christian Knights swapping places in the line as the whole army raced forward to deny the Timurids space to do their traditional shoot and fall back trickery.
At the same time the Berbers misfiring anti-elephant weapon of choice, the Medium Cavalry javelineers had again dismounted and were making a bee-line for the Timurid Pachyderms, having utterly failed to guess correctly where they would be deployed at the start of the game.
Advancing past the edge of the plantation inevitably started to expose the Timurid army's left flank to the much wider Berbers, and so as they galloped forward the Timurid cavalry started to form a crescent arc to protect themselves from envelopment by marauding desert-dwelling light cavalry
The Timurids
The Berber forces had by now fully sorted themselves out (almost..), allowing the Christian Knights a chance to yet again (for the third game in a row!) test their mettle and metal against the creme of Tamerlane's steppe-dwelling Mongol horsemen
As the road to Tunis echoed to the footsteps of Al-Andalus' sand-blasted Rif Mountain goat, and full of fire and fury (other ACW rulesets are available) the Knights surged forward towards another date with destiny, with their non-co-religionists the Black Guard now neatly arrayed ready for battle in front of the Timurid's elephant Corps as well
This was truly 15mm poetry in Iberian tabletop motion!
Moslems and Christians, side by side,
Fighting for what they hold deep inside,
Their beliefs and their faith, their love and their pride,
In a battle for power, this whole game to decide.
The clash of steel echoes throughout the land,
The fate of Spain is in balance, nothing more can be planned!
On the opposite flank to all of this excitement however, the Timurids had just left their expendable screen of densely packed peasant prisoners to die under the hooves of the Andalusian cavalry, hoping that the horsemen would be sufficiently delayed in this pointless endeavour to keep them mostly out of the game while the full weight of Timurid equine excellence smashed the rest of the Berber army elsewhere on table.
Having stumbled in previous games (and events) when attempting to avoid fighting the hostage screen, this time however I had adopted a different tactic - throw the dammed kitchen sink at them in an attempt to try and sweep them off the table as soon as possible!
As the streets of Caasablanca filled with laughter for the festival of the camel-toed Pharoh-cursed enormous mosque, lancers and spearmen from the Taifa Andalusian contingent combined with javelin-armed skirmishers who had been deployed as an unused ambushing force in the village all piled in to seek a quick clearing-away of the semi-destructible human terrain.
Despite the speed with which the Berbers had managed to redeploy, there were however just too many good quality Timurid cavalry on table to allow the Berber forces to oppose all of them with something decent.
Suddenly it seemed that every line of Berbers had a potential weak spot in the form of some outnumbered and outmatched bowmen or crossbows.
Tamerlane's elephants, dragged all the way from India, had also now declined to charge the Black Guard as well, and taking advantage of their own skirmish screens had sidestepped neatly and sought out lesser enemies against which they seemed invincible, the soldiers atop the mighty beasts appearing impossible to defeat.
The Berbers were at imminent risk of being pushed back, their lines on the point of breaking as their archers bore the brunt of combat and struggled to hold the enemy at bay.
The Berber archers were horrified by the sight of these massive beasts, but they refused to back down. They rallied their morale, determined to do their bit to continue the winning run of this hodge-podge force from North Africa and Spain.
One of the Berber warriors, a young archer named Ali, decided now was the time to become a hero in this battle.
He was quick and fearless, and a fearsome marksman. Dodging the charges of the elephants and unleashing arrows with deadly precision he rallied the rest of the archers in his unit, encouraging them to fight on and aspire to victory, even in the face of the enemy's seemingly unbeatable war elephants
Ali and his Berber bowmen charged forward, diving under the elephants and shot up at their soft underbellies, as other archers set down their bows to strike at the elephants legs with their swords.
The elephants stumbled and fell, and the Berber bowmen fought their way up to the soldiers atop them, striking them down one by one.
The battle was brutal and intense, but in the end, the Berber archers astonishingly had emerged victorious.
With one elephant removed from play by the unfeasible combination of Archers supported by the leader of the Christian Knight contingent, the middle of the Timurid army suddenly seemed rather bereft to troops of any type or quality
The shocked Timurid cavalry attempted to reform their lines as they realised as one that they were now exposed to long range archery, and the prospect of being charged yet again by the apparently horse archery-proof mercenary knights to add close quarters injury to the insult of bow-based harassment
The Knights broke forward in a maelstrom of fury from the Berber lines, leaving spearmen and the African infantry trailing in their wake
The Timurid nobility were still shellshocked by the ferocity of the Berber bowmen, and, reluctant to face getting bogged down in combat against the cutting edge warriors of Christendom, retreated as one in the face of the knightly charge
This retreat order however had not gotten through to one of the Timurid horsemen, leaving a lone unit to be surrounded and overwhelmed by the combination of rampaging Knights and merciless desert javelin armed horsemen
With the Knights driving Tamerlanes cavalry back out of sight, the last of the Timurid elephants, having been marched all the way from Indian to Timbuktu, suddenly found itself facing the absolute dream team of the Dismounted Javelin Cavalryman
Yes, Zaid, the failed potential hero of the very first game, was now looking redemption straight in the eye, and that eye was just above and slightly to the left of a large grey trunk!
Having deployed in the wrong place dismounted, and absorbed a large part of his commanders attention and management capability during his long, lonely march across the back of the Berber army, Zaid and his Berber ex-mounted Elite Javelineers were now about to have a chance to live their best possible lives !
With a Javelin and two overlaps things had started in a very good place - but by following that up with a 6-1 dice roll win to end on a 10-2 advantage, Zaid was now the absolute camels dingly bits in terms of elephant expulsions
This great result was then tempered only marginally by the unfortunate situation of the very, very dead elephant crumbling forwards in defeat to accidentally crush some of Zaid's buddies as he fell
Even so, this minor misfortune could still be brushed off, mainly as it did have the upside of allowing me to yet again deploy the recently purchased Elephant Rampage marker which Rafa had supplied me from his extensive store cupboard of MDF gizmos, all for an extremely reasonable price as well!
With both elephants gone, and the hostage screen swept away in double quick time as well the Berber army was now in full pursuit of a Timurid force which having been designed for sweeping action on the great Eurasian steppes, now found itself in full reverse mode as it crammed itself into an ever more tiny corner in its frantic efforts to try and avoid defeat
With the game time petering out and the Timurid army only moments away from defeat I rushed through my turns as quickly as possible, knowing that as soon as I ended a turn and the Timurids rolled their first Pip dice I would then be guaranteed another turn of my own movement and combat under the "defender always gets the last turn" system in operation in Alicante
However this time it was not to be, as the Timurids managed to hang on grimly, nowhere near to inflicting defeat on the jubilant Berbers but having been only a rally or two away from their army breaking for the final few turns of gameplay!
The Result is a winning draw for the Berbers, leaving them on 4 wins and a draw, still undefeated after 5 rounds!
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 Berber Commander
My fellow warriors, today we gather to celebrate a hard-fought victory. We stood against the forces of Tamerlane, a conqueror who sought to add our lands to his empire. But we showed him that our Yorkshire spirit could not be conquered, and came close to giving him a very bloody nose as well.
We fought with bravery and determination, and though the battle was long and gruelling, we emerged with a hard-fought draw. Our army may have been smaller, but our Yorkshire hearts were bigger. Our unity and our refusal to give in to fear allowed us to hold our ground and preserve our independence
I am proud of each and every one of you. Your courage in the face of adversity has inspired us all. And though we may face more challenges in the future, I am confident that we will always rise to the occasion and emerge victorious as only an army of true Yorkshire Moors could do.
Let us raise our swords in salute to our fallen brothers and to the bravery of our soldiers. And let us remember this day as a symbol of our strength and our unwavering determination to protect our land of Yorkshire, and our Yorkshire people."
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
Verily, I say unto thee, good sir, that thou art but a mere pretender to the throne of military mastery. Thy tactics are naught but a feeble imitation of true greatness, and thy victories but a shadow of those that I have achieved
They rely on brute force and numbers, instead of cunning and wit. They do not understand the true art of war, and as a result, their victories are hollow and fleeting
It is always a pleasure at events such as these to see such a gathering of illustrious military minds. But, I must admit, I do find myself a little amused by your belief that you are validly placed in this company
So, with this not-won game under your belt, if you have any sense you will step aside and let me lead the way. For I am the only one who truly understands what it takes to win a war and achieve greatness.
Can we just stop this painful experiment and move on to the next game please?
My own 10-minute video run-through of the game
Read and watch the next game here
You may also like....
The Journey to Alicante (via Valencia)
Game 3 Berber vs Maurikian Byzantine
Game 6 Berber vs Feudal English
The Journey back from to Alicante (again via Valencia)
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