500-1000AD at Burton 2022
Khurasanian Samanid vs Irish
Game 1 Khurasanian Samanid vs Beja
Game 2 Khurasanian Samanid vs Irish
Game 3 Khurasanian Samanid vs Xia Xia
Game 4 Khurasanian Samanid vs Tamil Indian
With only 4 games over the weekend, the Burton ADLG Doubles schedule encompassed a substantial allocation of lunch-based time for visiting The Coopers, although whether this was actually enough to fully scoff a Coopers Pork Pie was a rather less definitively answerable question.
Either way, the afternoon session dragged us all back from the unseasonably bright sunlight of the industrial midlands into the Town Hall, to face off against an Irish army under the craic-steeped command of Kev and Steve.
The lists for the Khurasanian Samanid and Irish from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Burton can be seen here in the L'Art de la Guerre Wiki.
The Irish of this era are in many ways a better-organised set of Vikings, with more axe-armed mail-coated heavy infantry warriors than most other armies would ever wish to shake a stick at. That combination gives them immense resilience, but does leave them a little on the narrow side - an issue which is less severe at 300 points than at 200.
The terrain was about as open as the Khurasanians would have hoped, with nothing too distracting falling in the middle of the table and a number of pieces landing on the rear-edges and extremities of the board. The PITA this game was a large plantation which rather cut the arabian-inspired army in half - or at least inconvenienced some cavalry who were forced to start in the crud, delaying their initial lurch forward to pin the almost-Galloghaglagghaichalligh back in their starting boxes.
The Irish were almost uniformly strong across the whole table, with heavy infantry in mail coats shrugging off the desert heat of Khurasania in that way which pasty ginger people always do so well and uncomplainingly.
This meant that the "weak point" of the army was a block of troops who in any other force would have been considered high on the mobile impassable terrain register, Viking Heavy Swordsmen with a couple of medium infantry axemen in support. Grown men were trembling as if at the mere thought of Steffan the chicken-castrator's flame-singed Viking undercrackers! - although having identified them, quite what half a dozen Ghulams would do against them was a rather different question.
On the left flank, our by-now traditional array of Dailami, more Dailami and an elephant were driving forward keen to test their Impact-inspired mettle against the chainmail metal of the Irish Gallioghachiacs. The handful of cavalry on this wing had already identified that their task as to keep the Irish rough terrain force safely bottled up in the rough terrain out on the edge of the table.
Brian Boru's March
Sláinte! Working the opposite flank were a couple of Arabian lancers and a block of archers - a tasty combination to drive back a suite of Irish horse so small as to struggle to put up a decent showing in a donkey derby
Looking at this paltry bunch of nags was enough to make a Dailamite wonder what had so changed in the Emerald Isle over the years to bring us to the days of the invasion of Naam (Cheltenham.. Festival) so regularly seen in the modern era?
By now the Viking dead were turning as rancid as a dead cat trapped for months under Frigg's carrion-eating serpent-tongue
Warfare as Barker Intended was threatening to break out across the entire width of the table, with the gaps between the opposing blocks of units threatening at times to make the game look to the casual observer like an outbreak of old-school unit-based FoGAM had occurred without any of us noticing
But, the quality and resulting paucity of the Irish forces meant that those gaps were tricky for them to fill
Oh Danny Boy! A sudden lurch forward by the Dailami saw the Irish pinned in place, allowing a column of Khurasani horsemen to appear as if from the back room of a shop within walking distance of Festive Road to bolt through into the wide open steppe-like spaces of the Irish back areas
Elsewhere on the table the same scenario was also unfolding, as a forward dash by the hard-shooting Ghulams fixed the bulk of the Irish foot in place with some fairly potent-as-Nigerian-Guinness mounted archery.
What's the craic? At the same moment, a lone Ghulam burst through the overly-generous hole in the Irish lines and started making a bee-line for a world of as-yet-undefined interestingness
The right flank was where the Irish clearly hoped that nothing much would happen, but the Arabs had different ideas, and this part of the table was now all kicking off in some style.
Normally a bit of an arrow and javelin magnet, the Khurasani Medium cavalry felt overly bold in this afternoons session as they were ably supported by a pair of bowmen - the combination comfortably outmatching the pair of javelin-armed horsemen looking to delay anyone aiming themselves at their infantry's left flank
Many of the warriors involved in the combat would soon be paying a visit to Valhallah, to be massaged by a team of heavenly virginial maidens, using scented oils made from Odin's arctic Longship!
With Ghulams powering through in the centre, the first breachers of Finnegans wall had decided to hang around and help the Dailami give a bit of a kicking to the weak-link Bog-Standard Irish Viking contingent, acting as an overlap and helping widen the gap considerably.
The Viking allied component was shrinking faster than a Scandic todger wading through waist-deep arctic circle seas as they brought their longship to shore.
Irish Fighting!
May the cat eat you, and may the devil eat the cat.! Big holes were either appearing or being exploited by the rapid advance of the Khurasani army all along the frontage, as the Irish struggled to force their well-tooled-up Galloghlaichistic infantry into combat in a game where the Arabo-Turkic Dynasty was far more fleet of foot.
The Irish mediums had as a consequence been caught in open terrain, and were suffering mightily as they were run down and crushed underfoot by the onrushing clumps of mounted Afgho-Iranian nobility.
The Dailami went in, and with the Vikings starting to teeter in the face of pummelling archery, so did the Khurasanis Ghulams in a line of battle which sought to test the outer limits of the number of times the phrase "as Barker Intended" could be deployed in one weekend of match reports.
The battlefield was by now as smelly as Arshram the Turophobic's grave-robbing stinkfart
Lancers, cavalry, elephants, Dailami - they all wanted a piece of that loose formation Celtic Tiger turbo-powered by chap debt economic miracle goodness, and boy-o-Danny-boy were they keen to get it!
Fuelled by non-pork pies and non-alcoholic beer bought from the Guinness Brewery in Greater Khorasan the Islamic forces slammed into combat across a broad frontage, seeking to put down any glimmer of an Irish uprising at the earliest opportunity.
The Irish were wide, but the Khurasani were devastating in frontal combat - which clock would tick down first and shove one of these forces to a shattering defeat?
The Dailami and Galloghalagyaicaloney were doing serious damage to one another in the middle of the park, with fistfuls of infantry (and elephants) being removed like leaves plucked off of a multi-leaved clover.
We're sucking diesel now! Both sides were being skittled out in some numbers as the fiddle music wafted across the battle floor.
As ever-huger gaps opened in the two once-complete lines of fighting men, the Afgho-Arabic army discovered that its faster-moving horse-borne and fast-running Dailami components were however much better placed to exploit any holes than the lumbering fighting Irishmen.
Horse archers made a dash for the enemy baggage, looking to spirit away the goodies contained herein, as mounted Turkic hillmen started to roll up the flanks of the solid infantry of the Emerald Isle.
Morale was now at the bottom of Brogger the Agrophobic's salty skull-cleaver!
The left wing of the Khurasanic army was mired in a melee of impressively complex proportions, with vast clouds of infantry and cavalry from both sides mushed together in a random scattering not helped by the unfortunate coincidence that from this distance their bases were almost identically configured too.
They were being drawn to their doom as if entranced by the fires of Thor's hairy undercrackers! Cavalry dashed hither and thither clattering into the exposed edges of the Irish bog-dwellers, who were sweeping forward in an obvious ploy to envelop the end of the Islamo-Khuranic army
Christ on a bike Paddy! The opposite wing was also breaking down, as the once-solid Irish infantry line fragmented and scattered under the continuing pressures of multiple attacks from the harrying Islamic horse warriors and their Dailami buddies.
With Ghulam cavalry now behind their lines, the Irish had to have eyes in the backs of their heads to spot where their next attack was coming from.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey! The Irish had advanced so aggressively in seeking to avoid the tender ministrations of the Dailami/Ghulam sandwich machine that they had somehow stumbled upon the brightly garbed Arab spearmen who's task was to lurk inoffensively while their betters did their worst and best.
The spearmen may be rubbish, but the Irish Galliogalachiactic Infantry were eroded by time, distance and enemy action leaving only a small spearpoint of warriors to make contact with the wall of spearmen.
By now the Viking dead were turning as rancid as a dead cat trapped for months under Steffan the Nomophobic's platted Longship! The Vikings were now being seriously worn down by the combined actions of Dailami and archery. Every spot where some Glagionachiachiac were winning was matched by another where they were falling by the wayside.
God give me strength! The only truism was that the lumbering heavy infantry of the Celtic nation were far less well equipped in the fleet of foot department to do much more than chew forward slowly, whereas the nimble whirling Khurasanis could both exploit, and block the moves of the enemy with alacrity and some style.
Mother of God! Baggage Gone! A huge haul of break points accrued to the Khurasanis as their light horse looted the butter, whisky and Guinness stored in barrels in the somewhat Native American First Peoples style tent which cleverly anticipated the Irish diasporas of the Potato Famine era still to come.
Khazak TV on the Samanids
With the baggage gone, the Irish army was now racing ahead in the "who will lose the battle of attrition first" competition - a game they really had little if any inclination to win.
The final coup de grace was inflicted by the Arabian lancers and bowmen combination on the extreme right of the Khurasano army, shooting down the Irish horsemen and picking up a few more dings on the resultingly-exposed infantry behind them to tip the Celtic Forces to defeat!
The Irish didn’t float up the Lagan in a bubble, but they were no longer able to sip from the sweet cup of success, and instead were forced to indulge in more starchy and banal fare as the Khurasani lept to the top of the table with 2 wins out of 2!
The Result is another big win for Khurasan.
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 Khurasanian Samanid Commander
Ah was reeding me Kawasaki doon tha rood like, and wooah, I shall ney go t'Ireland now no weey. They are done for and e'en some of mah Newcastle team mates from tha Emarald Isle shall need thick skins ta teek tha stick Ah shall be gannin to them bah next treenin session!
But, putting that flashback aside for a moment, this was a performance by the Irish and Vikings that really needed us to exhume the still-chuntering animated corpse of Alan Hansen to castigate the defensive failures and lack of man marking that allowed us to sail through their lines seemingly at will and take pot shots at their camp and their buttocks to help win the game
With an army so strong it is not a challenge to spot the weakest point, and although this was a relative phrase it did give us great focus as to what needed to be done, and by god we did it with vim and vigor
In partnership with my esteemed co-pilot, the Sheringham of Khorasan if you like, I think our two victories sets us up nicely for a run at the cup tomorrow
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
You poor-born codpiece-sniffing nonce! How on earth can you fail to realise that this game was gifted to you by a lack of practice on your opponents parts - if you face an enemy who doesn't know how wide his army is when it is placed on table then it is both a gift and a curse - the gift being to help you win, the curse being to not realise that you have made the same mistake many times before yourself
A tighter deplyment, a closer attention to keeping a solid line and this would have been a much tougher test, and one an unmuzzled saucy peon such as you would surely have failed
The only saving grace of the day was the quality of the pork pie which sandwiched these two fortunate victories - but of course such foods are not really of interest to poxridden inhuman numbskulls such as you and your team-mate
There is a night of curry and middle aged hedonism coming your way and after that a breakfast of champions before you almost certainly slip to defeat in your next game
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition
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Game 1 Khurasanian Samanid vs Beja
Game 2 Khurasanian Samanid vs Irish
Game 3 Khurasanian Samanid vs Xia Xia
Game 4 Khurasanian Samanid vs Tamil Indian
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