The next action in the Spring 1606 turn was, again, in South-East Asia. This was a little more complex than usual and needed a bit of checking on recent moves. The Laotian main army had, in fact, just moved into Luang Prabang, so it was not available to support the garrison of Vientiane when the Vietnamese army arrived. You might object that the Vietnamese were engaged this turn in defending Dai Viet from rogue Burmese invaders, but that was a local defence force, not the main army, which moved from Dai Viet as its regular turn.
As the Laotian garrison no longer had an army in the province, I decided to permit it to become an army and oppose the Vietnamese. Thus, we have both forces with their ‘normal’ 12 base lists. This gave the Laotians, the defenders, an elephant and general base, a cavalry base, eight tribal foot, and two bow bases. The Vietnamese have a little flexibility in their list, and this time came up with two elephant bases, one of which was the general, two cavalry bases, three bow bases, three blade bases, and two skirmishers. As noted before, the skirmishers seem to be a bit of a weak point in this army, and I had some thinking to do to ensure they were firstly safe and secondly, possibly useful.
The setup is above. On the left, the Laotians have, after some consideration, put a base of archers in the village on the far side, along with their cavalry. The other archers are holding the fields on the near side. In between, the tribal foot is in two blocks, along with the general. The idea was to let the Vietnamese come to them, and then hit them with the tribal foot.
The river caused the Vietnamese even more head scratching. As the road crossed the river, I diced for whether it was a ford or a bridge and, somewhat unusually, came up with a bridge. This means that troops in march column are not disrupted by crossing the terrain. After a bit of thinking about it, I put the Vietnamese cavalry and skirmishers on the road, with the infantry and elephants already across the river on their left.
The Vietnamese deployment actually arises from the battle set-up rules I have devised, where the defenders can set up 15” from their baseline, and the attackers 10” from theirs. Thus, the Vietnamese left is across the river, while the right is not. I toyed with the idea of deploying the Laotians at their limit, but they would only have had a toe hold on the hill in the foreground, and might have been vulnerable in the fields in the centre, so I pulled them back.
Both sides were fairly cagey in the opening moves. As planned, the Vietnamese cavalry and skirmishers crossed the bridge, and the cavalry have deployed, facing their Laotian opposite numbers. The skirmishers are moving towards the centre, in the hope of becoming flanking overlaps for any combat there. In the centre, the Vietnamese foot has advanced, and have just placed their archers at slightly less risk in the central field. On the near side, the general has taken control of the main infantry block and is reorganising it, so the blades face the tribal foot.
The Laotians were a bit hamstrung by poor tempo dice rolls, but mainly because they did not really want to move the tribal foot forward very far. Tribal foot are a one-shot weapon, and you need to harbour them until the decisive moment.
Eventually, it started to come to a head. The Laotians moved their central tribal foot into charge range, and the right-hand column went home, pushing back the Vietnamese blades. The other column refused to charge the elephant base initially. The Laotian general also took control of the right flank tribal foot and moved them up against the Vietnamese on the hill.
In the second round of combat, the Vietnamese blades got lucky and recoiled the tribal foot, while the other column in the centre got its courage and charged home, only to be bounced by the elephants. So, that attack was a lot less successful than had been hoped. In the foreground, you can see a base of Vietnamese bow sneaking past the field, while their compatriots keep the Laotians in the field engaged. This was a cunning outflanking plan the Vietnamese general had come up with, which also had the advantage of keeping the bows out of range of the tribal foot.
The second crunch point came when the Laotian general and his tribal foot attempted to charge the Vietnamese on the hill. The foot, perhaps sensibly, refused to go uphill against blades. The general, with more heroism than sense, did charge, and, indeed, recoiled the enemy general, who survived the risk to general roll. However, on the next turn, the Vietnamese won the tempo and had one tempo point left. So they turned a base of blades against the Laotian general’s flank. Only a recoil was needed, and was duly obtained, and the Laotians became general-less.
In the foreground, the Vietnamese archers have opened fire against the Laotian camp and killed a base of it. This is bad news for the Laotians, as they are now 6 morale points (out of 12) down. They managed to survive with a waver, but the writing was on the wall.
It did not, perhaps mercifully for the Laotians, go on much longer. The Vietnamese archers in the central field plastered the shaken tribal foot with arrows, which firstly shook them, and then, as seen above, routed them. The archers attacking the Laotian camp drove off the rest of the camp followers, while the Vietnamese cavalry and skirmishers started to lumber into action. However, the end-of-turn Laotian morale roll came up ‘rout’, so that was the end of the game.
Strategically, the Vietnamese have now conquered the Laotian home province, although the Laotian army in Luang Prabang next door may have some comments to make about that in due course. Still, the Vietnamese managed to win the battle, due to their firepower, my misplacement of the Laptian camp (I thought it would be safe enough in the corner), and the staying power of blades and elephants against tribal foot. The Vietnamese were a bit lucky, really, in that I decided, as Laotian commander, to fight well within my deployment zone rather than at the front edge, and the Laotians were slow to respond anyway.
Still, onwards! The next action in the campaign move is a Muscovite civil war. India is still a bit quiet, but I dare say it will liven up in a few months time...
