500-1000AD at Burton 2022
Khurasanian Samanid vs Xia Xia
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
After a textbook night of curry and beer - helpfully avoiding the Sprout Curry for fear of as yet unheard of horrors the following morning - the Khurasanian battle pantechnicon rumbled on into the third game of the weekend, and a civilized battle against the Scrabble-winning combination of the Xia Xia with Tibetan allies.
The lists for the Khurasanian Samanid and Xia Xia 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.
Xia Xia is all about cataphracts, with a scattering of Chinese-style infantry to round out the offering and give some semblance of a theory if the Xia happen to be drawn against any armies with elephants.
Adding Tibetans to the mix further boosts the Elite Cataphract status, and in a period with no actual Knights there is a compelling argument to be made that Elite Cats are the apogee of military evolution, devastating and also resilient.
But not cheap.
The Tibeto-Xiaist army unsurprisingly had deployed a long line of cataphracts across the middle of the table, with some rather unusual and still-a-novelty Polearm Chinese foot on their right flank.
Facing this the Khurano-Dailami collective agrarian people's army of liberation was for some reason arrayed with spearmen on the far left, Dailami in the centre, Elephants and Dailami next and then the mounted Ghulam command in the foreground
The Ghulams and their supporting cast of lesser nobility were facing, well, almost bugger all frankly, with a handful of lancers and light horse next to a hopefully squishy block of those textbook semi-mixed Chinese sword/crossbow dudes
Clad all in yellow, and with all sorts of options these are the same chaps who seem to be regarded as useful by any mounted almost-Chinese dynastic force but get little look-in in your actual honest-to-goodness actual Chinese armies with their more intriguing all-you-can-eat-buffet army list options
"Anything that walks, swims, crawls, or flies with its back to heaven is edible"
"Everything else needs to be deep fried in tempura batter and served up as part of a mixed starter, and then that will be edible too"
(Ancient Chinese Proverb)
The Khurasanian tactic, in retrospect, looked to be to recreate the mistakes of the Irish and Vikings of the previous day by leaving large gaps between each command.
Fortunately the slower-moving and less numerous Cataphract warriors of the Northern Chinese Plains were unlikely to have either the pace or the inclination to surge forward - and, indeed, being matched up against the Dailami, probably felt little desire or need to do so.
Some Xia Stuff
Drifting more swiftly to the right than a focus-group-commissioning Labour politician the Khurasanis were working at full pelt to get as many of their sub-par Mediocre spearmen in front of the wall of steel that made up the Xia centre as they could.
This was however inevitably inching them ever-closer to the sophisticated and futuristic sci-fi gunpowder artillery park of the Lets Call Them Chinese Anyway Xia Dynasty, propelling the possibility of them actually doing something useful in a game into sharp focus.
At least the Crappy Spearmen had set themselves up with all of their snazzy new rear-supported units facing off against the Cataphracts, and so every time they inched themselves sideways the dudes most capable of surviving a Cataphract charge pushed ever-further in front of the gleaming beasts and their impassive riders.
Closer to the centre of line, the Khu-Khu-Khurasanians poorly-constructed light-foot-free elephant command was making a careful bee-line towards yet more mounted metal-clad riders from the Northern Chinese Steppe area.
Faced with this combination of squishy javelineers and dangerous pachyderms, the Tibetans were dithering, unsure whether to stick, twist or just try and walk away
The bottom line was that they really wanted to try and find something more Buddhist to do, possibly involving chanting and incense and a lot of clothing featuring the colour of turmeric.
With their bizarre crap-list-design driven formation puzzling the Tibetans into stunned silence, the Dailami/Elephant Death Star lumbered forward under continual harassing fire from small packets of enemy skirmishers.
The desultory archery of the loosely organised semi-Chinese missile-men was however barely making a difference to the probably overly-bold Dailamites
At last! Something dramatic was happening! Colour met grey steel as the Xia Nobility stepped up to the challenge of charging home into the brightly-clad line of Arabic spearmen, presumably press-ganged into service in the middle of a particularly exuberant religious festival in their home towns.
This would be a real test of the rear support rules in V4, and also a test of the long-term resolution of Heavier Armour + Elite status vs Mediocrity in an otherwise probably evens combat (spoiler alert..this may not end well for the Spearmen).
Throw me a slipper! The Ghulamist faction of the Khurasani army was by now considering its options for a bold and heroic charge into the Chinese-flavoured Ukrainian-supporting mixed foot in the Tibetan part of the enemy army.
Standing around getting shot up was really not an option though, even if they had a ablative shield of hapless Light Horse to take the brunt of the incoming fire.
Chinese Cataphracts
In a blur of motion (or overlooked by a wobbly tripod maybe..) the Tibetans engaged the Death Star.
This attack, which sadly was barely recorded in the photographic annals of Khurasania, caused the Arab Javelineers to evade and thus freed up space for the Mighty Pachyderm Death Star Lazer Elephant Thing (With Carpet) to slide out and rush to engage the enemy, blattering them to destruction in a flash of trunkage and lateral pike stabby-stabby motion.
The Death Star had a hole to exploit in the heart of the enemy army!
This success - and their continued degradation from enemy archery - encouraged the Ghulam command to also try some of its luck. With the enemy foot already starting to skulk off, the Nobility of Khurasania risked all and charged home.
There were Cheers all around (see what I did there?) as the two armies were gradually being sucked into a wall of combat as more and more troops closed up to the inevitable line of decision.
The crappy festival spearmen had done their jobs well in the first round, standing up against the Cataphracts charge and inflicting some (but not many) losses on the high plains, highly-armoured horsemen.
But now the battle was all about attrition and resilience rather than impact and explosive attacking prowess - who had the moves to come out on top this time?
The Tibetan Dregs (aka "infantry") were also doing their bit for the Pedestrian Contingent, and had been standing up manfully against the worst the Ghulams could throw at them.
With combat seemingly a failure, the fancy-pants horsemen resorted again to archery to try and pick holes in the enemy cavalry they still harboured hopes of enveloping and overrunning later in the game.
The Death Star Breakthrough team was staggered across the width of the table, with a lone unit of Arabian Lancers the most advanced party.
Racing at speed in pursuit of success, they had managed to catch an evading Tibetan Light Horse unit in the rear (giving them an initial 3 vs -1 combat advantage against a unit with only 1 hit point left)
.. but the cunning Tibetans clearly wanted promotion to the Cataphract Corps, and fighting manfully they had not only repulsed the lancers, but now had been able to call up some friends to turn the tables on a combat which really should barely have gone past the first round!
The Xia troops had now stepped up their attack on the Khurasani left, driving forward with cataphracts and their polearm-equipped infantry to engage pretty much everything on this side of the Afghani-Arabicized Islamic-inspired force facing them.
As the struggle ground on, cracks started to appear in the Arabian lines in the form of a positively fecund display of fresh hit markers sprouting from the ground, Harryhausen-like in a range of garish colours as the Cataphracts slowly started to gain the upper hand.
The Death Star Breakthrough Team however had clearly decided that this was their game to record a failure so spectacular that it would be a candidate for the main topic of discussion in the Coopers Arms that lunchtime.
Throwing away their initial round 4-factor advantage, and giving up 3 hit points as well, the Lancers returned to the big metal biscuit tin in the sky
Suddenly and violently, the Dailami holding the centre of the Khurasani army collapsed almost as one.
The Xia cataphracts had swept them away in a torrent of combat, and now were coming rapidly to terms with a victory that left them masters of the centre of the battlefield, casting around for yet further targets to go and wreak yet more instant damage to in their bid to further the expansion of the Xia-ist Empire to the unknown lands of the West.
Just Cataphracts in General
With their allies now removed, the Khurasani spearmen too started to lose heart, flailing for success against a supposedly fairly evenly matched foe.
A few local successes were more than matched by their failures, and the line of worry-induced crumbling continued, biscuit-wise, out to the left flank of the army of Al-Khurasan.
Seemingly committed to continuing the entirely inappropriate biscuit metaphor way beyond what was sensible, the spearmen's resistance suddenly sagged and collapsed like a digestive left a little too long in a cup of hot tea. All that was left of the Khurasani forces was essentially an unappealing soggy mess, being slowly stirred through by the shiny metallic surfaces of the Xia cataphracts armoured spoon-warriors (am I stretching this too far?).
A huge loss 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
I think Ah may gan oot on a motorboat this aftahnoon and pretend nowt just happened reet like. Possibly I may treat meesen to some taramasalata too?
But, BBC-voicing it again for a moment, what a hard game to win with such a wall of steel to defeat? I really thought that we had them cracked with getting spearmen into most of the line, and driving elephants and cavalry at the ragged ends of what was a much smaller army, but no it was not to be sadly
There are some things you just need to put down to bad luck, and like me never winning any major trophies at The Toon and being sacked as manager too sometimes you just have to accept that luck is not always with you in these endeavours
But at least with giving this pair a leg-up into the final round we can submarine from a more lowly place and pick up some easy flat-track bully points in the final game to popssibly snatch a trophy which we so richly deserve
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
You chowderheaded spittle-dripping hugger-mugger! This was no more down to luck than your choice not to go play for a proper team in the early 2,000's was not entirely laid at your door.
he simple reality is that you had a terrible plan you cut-throat pustulated scion of a wart-worriers daughter! Quite why the Dailami were in the centre and the spearmen were on the flank is utterly beyond me - what did you think, that the Xia would put Cataphracts through the terrain? That the Dailami could stand up to and beat a wall of metal-clad horsemen? Idiocy of the highest order
The two of you were over-tired from too late a night, and over-thought your deplyment when your opponents just did the obvious - and correct - thing, so your clever try at outhinking them ended in the sort of inevitable failure that any attempt to think by a cancerous codpiece-sniffing crones scion such as you will always end in
There are more tears on their way I dare wager, as this late in the day there are no easy games, especially 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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