HYW English v Sassanids

[paulcummins]

HYW English v Sassanids

Lots of terrain for the English to hide in, with a big steep hill on one flank and big patch of rough on the other.

English deployment was of alternating longbows and MAA, with light art in the centre, LH on the outside of the steep hill, accompanied by the knights and LF in the rough on the other flank.
The Sassanids had 2 bg of elephants, some bow LH and Dailami faced the steep hill, a couple of BGs of skirmishing super shooty cav (SSC for short) faced the centre, and 3 double ranked groups of super shooty cav with supporting LH and LF faced the rough flank.

I should have sat in my nice defensive position and shot down any attackers, but I actually wanted to play a game so I attacked.
My jav LH raced up to the Sassanid LH, advancing to 1/2MU away before charging, and so over several bounds forced them off the table.

I tried to line up some longbow to shoot at smellies, but they got exposed to dailami while the elephants faced the knights.

Shooting did nothing at all to the dailami, so I had to send the knights in to see if they could do some damage to the dailami before the elephants got them. (they didn??™t manage anything except to be trampled by jumbos). The Dailami then ate the bowmen while the MAA charged a bg of jumbos and autobroke them in melee.

Things were looking a bit better on the other flank with 3 bgs of longbow ranging in on the cav, causing lots of tests. One bg of SSC charged in unsupported, pushed the bowmen to disrupted, and then got chopped up. When it broke it took most of the survivors of the shooting with it. Unfortunately for the English all of them rallied.

In the centre the guns proved a complete liability as they refused to move, and then got run down by another group of SSC. The remains of the centre were held by Bgs of heavily armoured MAA who didn??™t make much impact, but were somewhat indestructible.

With all the damage the longbows had done being repaired on one flank, and the other collapsing under the weight of jumbos we called it a day there ??“ the MAA were unlikely to break anytime soon, and they had an untouched bg of longbow up to support them. On the other hand I wouldn??™t be doing much to the escaping SSC as they move fater then my bowmen. 10-6 to the Sassanids.

MF longbow ??“ lots of shots, very nasty against armoured cav in 2 ranks. They really do need that extra shooting to have much of a chance ??“ you cant really stop the charge, so you need to do some serious damage, and you only really get 1 lot of shooting at effective range to do it with.