DBMM Forum
General Category => Battle Reports => Topic started by: Barritus on July 20, 2012, 03:56:41 AM
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Well, me!
I faced a Med Viet army at Cancon a few years ago (the one comp I've actually won - you can read about it a little way down!), and another friend at the club wanted some ideas about how to use the army. In both cases the army was defensive and relied for victory on the enemy attempting to attack and coming a cropper. But if the enemy chooses not to come in and play, what can you do to score anything more than a draw?
So I decided to take up the challenge of designing an an MV army which could be used aggressively. The list I came up with was roughly as follows:
Command 1:
Court Bd and Bw
Ten Circuit Ps
Regional Ax
Command 2:
Elephants
Ten Circuit Ax and Ps
Command 3:
Artillery
Ten Circuit Ax and Ps
Regional Ps
TF
Command 4:
Tribal Wb and Ps
All generals were irregular.
The general plan for this army was to generate terrain alleys and use Command 3 to block one of them as cheaply as possible. This left few other options for an enemy to deploy in, which I could fill with either Bd, Ele or Wb, depending on my opponent, and plenty of Ps and Ax to dominate the difficult terrain separating the alleys.
Dave, whose MVs I was using, faced me with Southern Han from the Late T'ang list. I was the invader in spring.
The terrain featured a waterway on my left, and the rest of my left flank was cluttered with a patch of rocky ground, a couple of woods, and, nearer the centre, enclosed fields. On my right flank in Dave's deployment area was a gentle hill. So rather than a couple of clear alleys, instead we had a lot of terrain on the left half of the table and not a lot on the right.
The terrain threw my deployment plans out a little. I settled for placing Command 3 at the edge of the fields, Command 2 behind, Command 4 in the centre and Command 1 on the right flank. I then won the deployment dice roll and had to deploy before the defenders. There was no weather, but the battle started early enough that Dave had the option of a night attack, which he declined.
I deployed in such a way that Command 3's Ps sat in the enclosed fields, while the TF protected the Art and Ax. Behind them Command 2's Ax and Ps were on the left, ready to advance through the heavy terrain, while the Ele were positioned in column to advance past the flank of Command 3. Command 4 was compressed to only three columns wide. Even so, Command 1 had so little room that the Bd were in a single column and the Bw in another column next to them. Ps and Ax extended further out, with a column at the end of the line so they could expand out to the table edge.
Dave then deployed three regular commands. On my left was a mix of Bd (F), Ele (S) and Wb (F) (southern tribes), positioned to run through the heavy terrain. In the centre was a block of Sp (I) supported by some Bw and a small Cv reserve. On my right, sitting on the gentle hill, were some Ax (S) (Zhuang) supported by a couple of Cv and LH.
My plan was to attack on the right and defend on the left. It sort of worked out that way.
Command 4 was reliable, but generally only got 1 or 2 PIPs, making fancy maneuvers out of the question. They simply advanced towards the Bw, who took quite a toll of them. Command 1 generally got good PIPs, which allowed the Court infantry to shake themselves out into a line. But it meant the Ps had to face the Zhuang while the Ax had to face the mounted.
On my left, Dave's Bd, Ele and Wb command had the highest PIP dice, and these troops hurried across the table. Command 2's light troops advanced to face them. And when it turned out that Dave's command was pretty much heading straight forwards, I sent the Ps from Command 3 across to threaten the enemy command's flank.
The opening combats favoured Dave. I lost close to 10 elements across the army before inflicting any losses on Dave, although the losses were spread across three commands and were all only 0.5ME troops.
Then my tribal Wb got into Dave's Bw, and wiped them out. Dave deployed a couple of generals to contain the Wb and in turn had to survive a couple of flank hits.
On my right Dave's mounted knocked over some Ax, but this uncovered the Court Bw who returned the favour. Then the Court Bd met Dave's Zhuang, and the combat generally favoured the Zhuang. Meanwhile, on my left the Ps of Commands 2 and 3 were starting to get to work on Dave's Wb. Dave couldn't commit his elephants because my troops were either in the enclosed fields or the rocky ground, which elephants also treat as difficult (my elephants didn't get involved due to lack of PIPs).
Casualties mounted, and after a bit of a struggle I was able to turn some Wb to face the Sp (I). However the Sp survived, and at this point we had to end the game.
My Commands 1 and 4 were both disheartened, with Command 4 close to breaking. Command 2 hadn't taken many losses but also wasn't inflicting many losses on Dave's Bd/Ele/Wb command. Dave's Zhuang command was disheartened due to the loss of Bw and mounted, and his centre command had lost a few ME as well.
Had the game gone on Command 4 was likely to break, but this may simply have opened the way for the elephants of Command 2 to attack the Sp (I) of Dave's centre. Command 1 was also in a bit of trouble, but as the only troops facing them were also disheartened, they may have been able to hold on. The Ps of Commands 2 and 3 also had a chance to uncover the flank of Dave elephants. So while things didn't look good I think I still had a reasonable chance of pulling a victory out of the game.
The problem with the army was the difficulty of coordinating four commands of mostly infantry led by irregular generals. In particular, once the loyal Command 4 started getting low PIPs I was committed to advancing it, which meant I had to support them with whatever was available in Command 1. I would have preferred to hold the Wb until I'd properly deployed the infantry of Command 1. The artillery in Command 3 only fired a couple of shots, but this wasn't a major problem. That command did what I wanted and could still spare Ps to help Command 2.
It'll be interesting to see how this army goes against other armies, especially those out of region.