The Rus & Viking World at The Southern League R4 2022
The Rus vs Thematic Byzantine
Game 1 The Rus vs Carolingian Frank
Game 3 The Rus vs Thematic Byzantine
With 2 wins out of 2, the Ukranian Rus from KeeeeV were rocking and rolling as they faced the final hurdle in claiming their rightful crown as the sole Rus army in a Rus themed competition.
The final opponent was a Byzantine army; the rarely seen Thematics who I lazily assumed would be the same mix of shooting and charging cavalry, a few spearmen and some Varangian Guards as all of the other ones.
But no, this was an all mounted, all shoot-and-charge Impact 1/2 Bow outfit commanded by Baron Hubert and equally well placed after two rounds of play.
The lists for the The Rus and Thematic Byzantine from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Southern League R4 can be seen here in the L'Art de la Guerre Wiki.
The story of the battle was developing as if it were being told in a tapestry woven from the threads of Thor's salty hammer! My attempt to stuff the table with constricting terrain had been a partial success (aka near total failure) with only a Waterway really working for me.
On the other side, the always reliable Marsh had fallen right in my deplyment zone such that I would need to march past it, almost certainly exposing a dangerous, wide open gaping flank as a generous gift to my far more mobile opponent if I wanted to push them off the board.
Which, of course, I did
They attacked as if possessed with the spirit of Thor's dog-bitten helmet! The Byzantines were a happy bunch of horse warriors, if anything with an even more simple plan than the Rus; they would advance, shoot, evade away if (when) charged, and then wait until they had plinked enough casualties off the plodding spearmen before them and then decide to charge home to devastating effect.
L'Art de la Guerre hint - So.. Odds time again.
Impact Cavalry vs Steady spearmen is a mugs game. The Cavalry are 2 factors down at Impact, so even with Furious Charge if they do win they are onto a hiding to nothing. To be fair, most Cavalry tend to be Heavy Cavalry, so their Armour will mitigate this a little, giving this still rather Cavalry unfriendly set of outcomes:
If the Impact Cavalry manage to record a hit on the Rus spearmen however, the odds start to change quite markedly, with Furious Charge helping the Heavy Lancers notch up a decent amount of hits if they do win, on an enemy who will only have 3 hits left as well. That shift then gives both sides an equal 1-in-12 chance of blowing away an enemy unit at first contact.
The Rus however had pretty much exactly the same plan, but without the whole shoot or evade thing.
Shoving the Armoured and Elite Varangians and Druzhina to the centre of the line the men from the Dniepr marched aggressively forward as fast as they could to deny the Byzantines as much retiring space as possible.
Arrows rained down on the large oblong shields of the Rus, but few if any were penetrating the heavy wooden defences; unlike the highly effective Rus archery aimed at the mobile units of the Byzantine army
Yes, the cunning Rus had indeed cunningly added in some bowmen to the end of their line. The accurate shooting was deadly to the cost effective Mediocre Medium degraded Byzantine cavalry, and they had little choice but to charge home.
This proved to be bad news for the Rus bowmen, but it had sucked some of the enemy line into combat, and with bases and hit points to spare the Rus would afford to spill some milk along the way in this particular matchup
The Themes
The Rus, led by their twice-dead Commander, with the religious zeal of the Rus Abbot creating just the right Atmosphere, continued to press forward like a moving wall (proving that in a land of the hopelessly literal minded, the hapless metaphor crafter is King)
Only one hit marker was paltry reward for the Byzantines shooting, but Mediocre archery against partly armoured and Elite Heavy Foot with no supporting fire is a tricky set of math to pull off
Drawn in by the archer bait the Byzantines were finding themselves in real trouble next to the water's edge, with Varangians chomping at the bit to get stuck into action to carve them into small horseflesh kebabs
By now many men had fallen under the baleful influence of Johannes the Papaphobic's chicken-hearted two-piece sofa and reclining chair set! The valiant Ukranian Rus rushed into combat, sucking up hits if they lost secure in the knowledge that even carrying an injury they could still be the match of the Byzantines in prolonged combat
The Breaking Off rules were tested to within an inch of destruction as the Byzantines pulled out of the violent struggle, only to realise that the table was fast now running out for them to fall back into
L'Art de la Guerre hint - It's actually called Disengage, and is on p40. Mounted fighting foot can always break off in their own turn as a group or as single units. They fall back facing the enemy their move distance less 1UD, leaving them in bow range but outside charge range of enemy Heavy Infantry.
You tend to want to do this when your Cavalry have suffered some hits, but as you can't rally in the same turn as Disengaging (see, I got it right!) you really only get on opportunity to rally in your next turn before the enemy HI will be attacking you again.
Remember that thing about getting past the Marsh without exposing a flank? Like the Russian navy trying to get past Ulranian coastal missile batteries and out into the Black Sea?
Fortunately the rest of the table was now packed with almost-in-combat cavalry and spearmen that the Kyivan Rus now found they had spare infantry to fan out behind their main advance to try and cover the possible weakness, and the Byzantines had allocated nowhere near enough resources to this potential flashpoint to allow them to force anything at all.
A magical light fell across the table, as if the game was now illuminated by the spectral glow of Baldr's Norwegian snot! With the combat battered Byzantines falling back in some dissarray, the jubilant Rus went on the offensive and stepped smartly across the table at pace
Byzantine Battle Music
The Byzantines were now in Hail Mary territory (although I'm not sure how Orthodox that would be?)
Hurling themselves forward in a wild charge they bore down on the line of Rus, smashing into it and bowling over spears, shields and, inevitably, the General next to the Rus Abbot as well
Three Games, three heroic deaths... next time he would make sure to lead some Vikings so he could have three stabs at getting into Valhallah!
But elsewhere the Byzantine horsemen were not faring so well, and were being taken off the table in fistfuls against the stoic resistance of the Klitshkoite forces
With comand and control collapsing as the Byzantine force became scattered, even the supposedly weakened flank of the Rus advance was flipping to the attack
Pinning the enemy horsemen frontally with spears allowed accurate Western supplied long range archery stuff to happen in the rear and flanks of the surprised Byzantines.
The counter attack had well and truly started !
Faced with such accuracy the Constantinopolese forces had no answer. Bereft of armour (stolen by farmers no doubt) they melted away like the last snows of Spring
The Result is as we speak being recorded by the Baron himself... a third huge win for the Rus, giving them the overall competition Trophy!!!
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 The Rus Commander
The emancipation of our glorious country is complete as we have thrown the Byzantines back into the Black Sea and pushed their imperialistic ambitions back out of the entire Crimean Peninsula! Glory to Kyiv!
The one dimensional approach of our opponents relied on what turned out to be ineffective and poorly maintained technology, and in the important crucible of battle that corrupt system failed the invading army and left its soldiery with no chance against our stout hearts and big wooden shields.
For a force of infantry to take the battle to an all mounted mobile army takes some doing, but by the end the Byzantines needed their mobility to do casevac not deep horseborne raids into Kievan Rus territory
We have liberated our homeland, and we will all soon be together celebrating in a big old Orthodox church at a mass led by our greatest theologian, The Rus Abbott
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
I think, finally, I have spotted what passes for tactics with this linear army of yours. It is so unimaginative and yet also so wide that it tricks its opponents into despair, resulting more often than not in it either being underestimated (as in this game) or alternatively, it so bedazzles the enemy with it's banality that they end up doing little other than a wild and uncoordinated attack without working out how to concentrate on the weak points (and those only)
This is a weird and unusual psychological attribute, and one which takes full advantage of your own multiple experiences of launching wild general attacks along a wide frontage against the odds. And, like you, the result is often doom
The simple maths is that this army list has a staggering 86 hit points to overcome, far more than the 60+ of many other opponents so you need no skill at all, just a stupid willingness to get yourself and your men into a close up mudwrestling session and then wait for attrition to do it's inevitable thing in your favour.
5 of your 16 heavy infantry come with armour, support, Elite status or sometimes all three, making the army far tougher than it's vanilla spear constituency gives lie to as well, so not only do you hypnotize your enemy into despair-driven rash attacks, you have the hidden tools to make them pay as well. All in all a clever list that makes a virtue of your lack of intelligence and ability and draws your opponets into making mistakes that you yourself are perhaps the greatest living exponent of in other battles!
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Game 1 The Rus vs Carolingian Frank
Game 3 The Rus vs Thematic Byzantine
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