500-1000AD at Burton 2022
Khurasanian Samanid vs Tamil Indian
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 the fourth game of this somewhat truncated 4-round event hoving into view after a quick in-situ Sunday Lunch in a Bucket, there was barely time to race for a lone pint at the Coopers and then steal an en-passant photo of the favourite Indian Restaurant of the Association of Fans of 1970's British Sit-coms before settling in for a hopefully short and decisive afternoon game against the Tamil Indians
Aris is Cockney slang for Arse, as the phrase Bottle and Glass became rhyming slang for Arse. In time Bottle became Aristotle, later shortened just to Aris
Anita Harris is a well known British singer and TV personality of the 1960's and 70's, who appeared in Carry on Follow That Camel (1967) and Carry On Doctor (1968). These films represent the acme of mid 1970's British smuttiness, and of course led to another evolution from the cockney rhyming slang 'Aris in the form of the phrase, "what a great Anita Harris".
The most famous Royal Harris of recent years probably belongs to Pippa Middleton, younger sister of Kate, wife of the future monarch William. Pippas Harris has several twitter accounts, many of which are now inactive.
The lists for the Khurasanian Samanid and Tamil Indian 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.
Tamil is a beneficiary of Elite Elephantry, with a side order of surprisingly good Impact Medium Foot and a side-dish or two of cavalry and incendiary foot. At 300 points the Elephant Corps stretches to the far horizon, and also stretches the points allowance to breaking point weighing in at around 20 points a pop. It needs to keep tight, and it needs to keep winning once it goes forward .
Dave and his lack of doubles partner (Covid test..) had managed to drop down a village for the Tamils to anchor themselves upon, and had then proceeded to do exactly that with a slightly weird 4th command starting behind the town and looking to do something weird like march through or round it.
The Khurasanistanians had hoped for a slightly wider target, but seemed well prepared for an envelopment with the usual Double-Dailami left wing and then Spearmen and Cavalry on the right.
The Tamils had barely blinked themselves awake by the time the Arabesque cavalry were hurling themselves for a touchdown and a happy punt at running into and over the only part of the Ceylonese line not to be utterly and totally composed of elephants.
The "hinge" also looked vulnerable, and a handful of eager bowmen were the ideal troops to bait that particular hook - dangling in front of the enemy they looked to use their vulnerablity to tempt the Tamils out of their bastion of pachyderms and into the open, in the process creating acres of space for the following lancers to hopefully cause some havoc.
The Tamils however were having none of this "set up cleverly and then abandon it instantly with a rush of blood to the head" nonsense, and were staying as put as a putter put down by a shot-putter on a putting green made of putty.
The Arab spearmen inched slowly forward, increasingly convinced their afternoon would feature dealing with elephants fairly soon.
Indian War Elephants
Finally! Some movement as the Khurasanians started to assemble their forces for a coordinated attack on the left-most flank of the Tamil army.
Slightly distracted by the dazzle of a mobile phone lake on the extremity of the board edge, the well-heeled Afghani noblemen milled about surprisingly close to shooting range of the supposedly soggier parts of the enemy army, which by now had been reinforced by yet more elephants!
In the center, no such cleverness was likely to break out anytime soon.
A huge line of defecating elephantry were steadily creating their own offensive field defences as the Dailami Massive inched carefully towards them, all the time trying to calculate the odds of surviving or even winning whatever maelstrom of combat was about to unfold.
If the Elephants could be tempted to advance the Khurasani's had lancers by the score ready to zip in and cause flank-related havoc.
Over by the village (on a hill no less), something vague and incoherent was happening as a small block of bow-tastic Tamil allies inched their way towards the part of the table where the actual game was going on.
The Afghano-Iranians reluctantly dragged back their probing cavalry adventurers from the slowly-approaching cavalry destruction device, and at the same time carried on poking the haphazardly scattered ambushes in the terrain before them.
Having placed the thing on the palm,
...why lick the back of the hand?
(Tamil Proverb)
The appearance of a handful of Tamil loincloth wear-ees soon put a stop to any faint hopes the men from Khurasan had for pushing through the streets and houses of Tamilsville.
This would now have to be a frontal combat fiesta between the zupin-throwing Dailami hillmen and an almost-Indian army of tremendous trunkage potential.
Finally, inevitably, amazingly the red mist had descended on Tamilistan! .
The elephant could not resist inching forwards and foolishly joining the attack!
With all of this pressure being piled on the flank guard command a weak point had opened up exactly where military tradition said it should - the hinge of two separate commands or troops, which had magically thinned out into a handful of poorly-connected solo units
The Khurasani strike force (such as it was) was super-eager to take advantage of this opportunity - but with a complex set of interlocking ZoCs in their way the potential to go for broke and smash through the front of the Tamil command, weakening their elephant line and causing a catastrophic chain reaction of destruction suddenly looked a lot easier to do (with a poor pip roll) than trying to unpick the Gordian knot of Tamil resistance before the elephantry smashed home.
Light foot were pressed into duty to carve away any overlaps, and the charge was on!
The lancers hurled themselves bravely forward, ignoring the Panic caused by proximity to elephants and hoping to trample the Tamil infantry at a stroke - but clearly this was not quite yet their time, as the Ceylonic tea-drinking foot fought back heroically, bringing the lancers charge to a screeching stop.
Adding insult to injury, the Light Foot tasked with removing one overlap and in the process slowing the elephants down had also capitulated. This was not going according to the script
Medieval Indian Artillery Forces
By now the Tamil juggernaut had smashed its tusk-tastic way into the front of the line of Dailami - the colour-coded elephants attacking in a strict yet inaccurate re-enactment of a rainbow as they sought to do their worst George and Bungle to the waiting Afghani hillmen.
The Dailami had plenty of elite status, and a smattering or rear support - would that be enough to stand up to the onrushing pachydermic charge?
The "hinge" was however coming under some seriously sustained pressure as wave after wave of somewhat healf-hearted and undercooked Khurasanian attacks hurled themselves at what on paper should have been the weakest link in the Tamil line
In reality this meant Heavy Cavalry into a solid line of Impact Warriors, and Javelinmen being pressed into service as front line combat troops against even more of the same types of surprisingly competent almost-Indian infantrymen.
The Tamils needed to collapse pretty quickly if the men of Khurasan were to be allowed to force a way through here
The centre of the battle was emerging as a scene worthy of use in a dictionary definition of Carnage, with the line of Dailami bowing but not entirely breaking as the enemy elephants surged forwards
The Zupineers however were giving a decent account of themselves so far, taking down some of the Tamils in hand to trunk combat and knocking as many holes in the opposing lines as they were themselves suffering.
Suddenly the Khurasania resolve started to crumble more alarmingly than the shortcrust pastry topping on that lunchtimes pie, but this time under a frontal assault from top-drawer elehants instead of bottom-up meaty gravy.
The elephants were breaking through and the Dailami - and spearmen - were in trouble!
Delhi Sultanate vs Southern India
As the Dailami started collapsing faster than a patron at the World of Beers pub after a triple-double flight of pints, the Khurasani strategy changed from clever outflanking moves pressurising the weak points of the Tamil line into a reactive dynamic posture in which the combined arms capabilities of the army were deployed in such a way as to minimise the enemy's opportunity for forward evolution of their position
This was not so much a plan, more a way of dignifying the act of throwing sticking plaster at a gaping wound with some vague military terminology.
Pressing cavalry into service to face down Elite Elephants is hardly the sign of a great plan working well is it?
The Khorasani cavalry wing was finally starting to make some late-game headroom into the supposedly weak part of the enemy line - but shamefully for the Khorasani nobles it was not them, but their supposedy supporting-troop infantry bowmen who were doing the real damage
Elephants were now in full rampage mode, making Tamil-language Pac-Man style beeps and grunts as they wandered across what was once a cccoherent line of best quality Dailami infantrymen.
The Khurasanian army was starting to look as if it had nothing left tpo roll up, and it was now much closer to being tabled than carpeted
The last vestiges for partial success were soon swept away in a flurry of howdahs and swords. The Tamils had taken a real pounding, but the men from Afghanisanitania had suffered far more. The invasion of Ceylon would have to wait for an other year
The Result is a crushing defeat .
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
Way-ey, this were a reet terrible oootcome for oowah army, and e'en Robson Green's singin would struggle to put a positive gloss on the halpless showin' of the Dayyyylaaaami here, although perhaps wi' a bit of help from Jimmy Nail we meet have not gone home cryin' in me chips quite as hard like.
The plan was of course brilliant, it was just the mercenary failures of the Dailami who let us down really - that and the inability of our Khurasanian nobles to overrun a load of hapless infantry on the wing of the enemy army. Inexplicable really given how much better decorated we all were than the mostly white dhotis of the enemt forces.
I am convinced still that we had the best army here, with much to enjoy and play interesting games with - but ultimately our opponents were a little too elite in both games to allow us to use our skills to unpick their monochromic solidity.
The next time these guys make it onto the pitch there will be a lot of lady luck stacked up in their favour , so I am sure the next outing will be one to savour like a bottle of brown alw on a chilly April evening in Big Market.
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
You dunderheaded base-born hobgoblins! The frightening thing here is that you almost had the makings of a plan that could have worked, yet you chose to throw it all away by setting it up and then failing to execute it at all
You spotted that you needed to draw your opponents army apart and work the gaps that would emerge - and you even started to do so, only to then launch attacks along the line with the rest of your troops instead of waiting to develop those attacks, you goatish pagan dandiess!
If you need to do something, make sure you do it 100% and follow through - that is the lesson I have sought to drum into you time and time again but time and time again it slips twixt your ears and ends up bepuddled on the ground like a fart escaping your brain.
You threw away several excellent plans in this game, by dint of being too keen to attack in a game in which you had hours to spare once the point of defeat was reached. An apt metaphor on which to end the weekend methinks.
Add your comments on these reports on the following forums
That's the end - so why not go back to the Match Reports Index and read some more reports?
You may also like....
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
View My Stats for My Match Reports Pages
