A couple of weeks ago I decided to try a little experiment with that much-beloved army, the Early Vandals.
Yes, I thought I'd try the Early Vandals, with masses of Wb, some Kn (F), Moorish allies, and a brilliant general. I faced Tim's Jurchen-Chin.
Tim was the invader, and I selected terrain to cover my flanks. It actually ended up pretty well for me, with a BUA and small gentle hill on my left flank, and a nice big patch of boggy flat on my right.
Tim had to deploy first, placing a small Sung ally command just right of centre, a small Khitan Kn/Cv/LH command on their left, and large Jurchen LH (S) commands on each flank. I placed two commands of Vandal Wb in the centre under the Vandal subs, the C-in-C on the left with the Kn (F), Alan LH (S) and some Vandal Ps (I), and the Moorish allies on the right with Ax (O) and Ps (S) in the front line and LH (O) in reserve.
To cut a long story short, I got a lot of good luck and Tim got a lot of bad luck.
On my left flank Tim's LH contacted my LH and Kn on top of the hill. In that first round of combat Tim lost three elements adjacent to each other, with nothing in position to cover the gap. I then used a Brilliant Stroke to double the C-in-C's PIPs from 3 to 6 to make a series of moves to exploit the hole, and within a couple more rounds (and some more good dice results) Tim's right wing was broken.
On my right flank I was just able to get my Ps (S) into the boggy ground, which made the fight with the LH (S) fairly even. Tim was able to get some LH around my flank, but with big PIPs the Moors were always able to get elements into the right places. The Moors also rolled well in combat which resulted in a couple of dead LH from my LH, and a large number of spent LH from fighting the Ps and Ax. However, the Jurchens inflicted their share of casualties too, and within a few bounds the Moors were disheartened.
In the centre the Wb hurried across the table as quickly as they could, coming under fire from the Sung Art (S). They suffered little in the way of losses until they came into range of the Sung Bw (X/O). One column of Wb pressed forward into double-overlapped combat, and copped an element loss as a result. The big problem for Tim was that the Sung command was too small. To cover one gap he placed the Sung ally-general in the line, and it also destroyed a Wb on contact, but it was then destroyed in my next bound. This was enough to break the Sung, and with them the army. The Moorish command also broke that bound.
End result was probably 19-6 to me. Thanks to Tim for another fun game.
As for the Vandals, well the main thing that struck me was how much trouble I'd have forcing a battle against someone who wanted to keep away.
