Well, after the disaster of the rebellion of Mrauk-U (see the last post) my forces were reeling more than a little. The next campaign turn, 1535, saw one base (infantry) returning to the fold, but my field army was still denuded of troops. Which made it all the more unfortunate that the random event came first, and consisted of Lan Xang raiders attacking Chiang Mai, my easternmost city.
Grump. Why could I not draw something simple, such as ‘no event’? Anyway, the raiders are hard to deal with but not too scary, he said hopefully. At 2 skirmisher bases, 2 bows and 8 infantry I should manage to get the drop on them with the cavalry and, hopefully, my ever-faithful elephant. Still being rather short of troops, I called in two sets of vassal allied, from Chiang Mai itself and also Mone. These brought a welcome boost to my forces and meant that, except for potential ambushes, I just about outnumbered the enemy.
The battlefield is above, with the raiders to the left and myself and the allies to the right. I was hoping to outflank the enemy with my cavalry and roll them up by crossing the stream. Unfortunately, my wily foe spotted this and has placed the skirmishers and bows on the stream, backed up by a block of foot to see off anyone foolish enough to try to cross. So I had to revert to plan B, which was to threaten with the cavalry while using my foot, supported by the elephant, to smash the centre.
As you can see there was fair potential for ambushes, and with my raider hat on I hoped that they would happen and could cause disruption and chaos. Unfortunately for them, none of the ambushes were live troops, so that was a relief, although I did not know that until the end, of course.
As you can see, the plans developed. I have forded the stream with the elephants (in these lists the general is always mounted on an elephant) and the cavalry have deployed, menacing but out of bow range. My bows (technically, allied bows) have also moved up and have caused a little damage to the enemy skirmishers. The infantry are about to bite the bullet, as it were.
The infantry have crunched home but, rather to my disappointment, the impact, even though I charged, was less than I hoped. Only a couple of recoils which, while not a disaster, given that my foot are 4 or 3 deep and theirs are only two, could have been better. On the other hand, my cavalry and bow base are keeping 8 bases of the enemy amused, or stuck to their positions anyway.
A few moves later and my left-hand infantry column has prevailed, although the right hand has been bounced (as has their’s, incidentally). My elephant has performed heroics routing a base of bows and a base of skirmishers, while my right-hand infantry column pursues their fleeing foes. This could get messy in the centre, of course, but the enemy morale has just dropped to fall back so I’ve a little space to manoeuvre.
As so often it depended on the timing. In spite of losing another base, the enemy morale actually improved, while I managed to stop my elephant rampaging too far after its charge. My left-hand infantry column also started to rally, while my own and the enemy infantry on my right clashed again. I needed, however, to do something about their infantry who had spent the game facing the stream, on the left of the picture. If they turned and attacked my disordered infantry I was in trouble. In slight desperation, I turned the disordered elephant base into the rear of their infantry and, mercifully, routed two more bases, which was enough to rout the entire raider army.
Well, although I have now defeated the raiders twice, I still think they are pretty tough. The terrain favoured me, slightly, I think, in that they had to cover their flank from my cavalry, but could not advance against them for fear of being charged while disordered. On the other hand, my cavalry could not attempt to cross the stream for the same reason. I was a bit surprised by the infantry fight turning into such a slog. I am used to four deep tribal foot blowing away the enemy, but poor dice rolling on my part meant that it was rather closer than I liked. If they had got the initiative a few more times my infantry could have performed embarrassingly.
I am still, incidentally, pondering the details of the charge moves. In the current version, a charge which strikes home but is then repelled gets the bases disordered. This is a change from the rules on the page here, by the way. But what I have not worked out yet is whether a charge which does not even attempt to strike home should also be penalised. It would make declaring charges more costly, and often it might seem not to be worth the risk, but on the other hand, someone shouting ‘Charge’ and the men looking out and replying ‘Not likely, guv’ might well cause some confusion. So I am still pondering this. After all, the model of charge combat is of various people looking fierce and waving weapons and shouting ‘Grrr’ to see if they can intimidate the other side. ‘They are not falling for it, sir’ might be a reasonable response which would not disorder anyone in particular.
Rules considerations aside, the campaign is throwing up its challenges, as noted. While I have in fact won most of the battles, each of them has had its struggles and been a lot closer than I am really comfortable with. While some people might not like the degree of random events which is in the system, one a year is probably not unreasonable and certainly keeps the solo player on their toes. As I mentioned, keeping an army in being becomes important, which I nearly failed to do last time. If my army routs then I suspect I will have lost the campaign….
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