The Mongols Invade Britcon

[neilhammond]

Philosophy


I decided I wanted to take a mobile, shooty army to Britcon. I wanted to see if I could get it working and to test out the much vaunted power of mobile horse-archery.

I have a Mongol army but the Mongol list wasn’t available to beta-testers so it was either Ilkhanids or Tatars. I opted for the Ilkhanids as they had some light foot available and an option for some crusader knights and crossbowmen. The down side of the Ilkhanids is that they don’t have steppe as a territory type.

The army was:

Ilkhanid Mongol circa 1260 AD
1 x IC (Helegu), 2 x TCs
1 x Best Equiped Mongol Cav: 4 bases drilled, superior, armoured, bow & sword
6 x Mongol Cav: each 4 bases drilled, superior, unprotected, bow & sword
3 x Mongol LH: each 6 bases drilled, average, unprotected, bow & sword
1 x Kurdish LF archers: 6 bases undrilled, average, unprotected bow
1 x Hospitaller MF crossbows: 4 bases drilled, average, protected crossbows
1 x Fortified camp

I decided to maximise my shooting by “buying” as many horse archer elements as possible. So I minimised the armoured cavalry and did not upgrading the remaining cavalry to protected. However, I did feel it worth going superior for the cavalry (although not the LH). I took an IC commander on the theory that it would bolster chances of surviving shooting cohesion tests (CTs) and help with complex move tests (CMTs). The crossbows were a filler unit. Everyone in the army can shoot.

I didn’t take the optional crusading knights because I felt they would compromise the mobile flexibility of the army.

The army was to stand-off and shoot until enemy units degraded and only then attack. The LH units were to protect the flanks and therefore were slightly larger in order to soak up shooting hits.

That was the theory. How did it work in practice?

[neilhammond]

Game 1 vs Jerome Bodelle’s Later Medieval Scots.

Jerome’s army consisted of masses of protected offensive unwashed spearmen, fearsome highlanders (bow* protected impact foot), 2 small units of knights and some LF. Protected foot weren’t a problem if I could pull them out of a tight defensive position, and I could always evade the knights. Unfortunately all of the terrain was on my side of the table which meant that the Scots could press me back into the rough stuff.

I flank marched but Jerome irritatingly anticipated this and deployed his army stretching from his centre-rear (well away from my flank march) right across to his left-hand table edge in a solid, mutually supporting line. He then executed a massive right-hand sweep with his army, overwhelmed my light opposition. To add insult to injury his knights caught my evading cavalry and ate them up. His spearmen were three deep, with rear support. I couldn’t bring enough shooting to bear and, whilst they occasionally went disrupted I couldn’t get enough repeat hit to really worry them. Jerome was also very aggressive with the army. Eventually he got into my fortified camp and the game was over: a well deserved 32-0 to Jerome.

[neilhammond]

Game 2 vs Simon Hall’s Ancient Brits.

I was at the bottom of the league so I got to play on the bye-table against an easy opponent – Simon! There were 5 pieces of nasty terrain on the board including a small lake, but it was reasonably spread out. Simon anchored his flanks on terrain and for a few minutes I thought he’s be nice and allow me to concentrate most of my cavalry against one wing of his army. Not so, and he soon abandoned the terrain and started attacking, pushing back my cavalry units repeatedly with large blocks (i.e. BG’s of 12) of warband and never allowing me enough respite to regroup and concentrate my horse. In the end my army started to disintegrate under the continuous pressure. Time was called, rescuing me from complete humiliation and I ended up with a draw result as the game was officially a bye.

My army lacked sufficient teeth to really punch through one sector of Simon’s line. Against Simon, I’d have been better off designing the army with 2 units of armoured cavalry (and possibly the knights) and charging in side-by-side to overwhelm a sector of Simon’s line. Still, you makes your choice and pays your points.

Both Simon and Jerome had successfully used big units, three deep to counter my shooting, with knights/chariots in support.

It was all starting to look a bit embarrassing, really.

[neilhammond]

Game 3 vs Eric Thomson’s Later Hungarians.

The terrain was fairly open and this time things did go to plan. Eric had separated his armoured infantry from his mounted forces, and I managed to neutralise Eric’s infantry by screening them with a unit of LH and cavalry, allowing me to concentrate the rest of my army against Eric’s knights and heavy cavalry.

I evaded and shot the knights and cavalry units until they were fragmented, and then charged in. There was always a chance of getting caught whilst evading but, unlike in my game against Jerome, I always managed to outdistance the charges.

Eventually the Hungarians broke and ran. They had been stretched out across the table whilst pursing my evading cavalry and as a result I could use my better mobility to “gang-up” on units with missile shooting. At last, a win!

[neilhammond]

Game 4 vs Jim Copeland’s Scottish forests and heather

I’d invaded Pictish Scotland. All I could see on the other side of the table was forest and rocky heather outcrops, stuffed full of Picts. And the midges were terrible. I declared I wasn’t going into the terrain, and Jim declared he wasn’t coming out onto my side of the table, which was largely open. So we agreed an official draw and swapped sides to play a friendly using each other’s army.

I had to say, it was interesting looking at my army from the other side of the table. There seemed to be plenty of Mongols in evidence on the table.

The Picts pressed forward, trying to engage quickly with the Mongols. Eventually we got to grips in the centre and my left, each mauling a few units of the enemy. In the end the Picts had the worst of it, but it wasn’t a foregone conclusion. The Pictish infantry were largely unprotected offensive spear MF, which proved too vulnerable to shooting and combat. I felt the Pict infantry units were slightly too small as 6’s and 8’s – perhaps 8-10 for the Attecotti warriors and 12s for the Picts would work better, if permitted. A Saxon ally is worth considering because it gives the army a HF core.

[neilhammond]

Game 5 vs Paul Brandon’s Classical Greek

There was a reasonable amount of terrain on the table but most of it was pushed out to the left flank. The key feature was a steep hill in the centre of the table which split the battlefield into two, and an open field in my deployment zone on my right, near the centre line.

Paul deployed across the table, spreading his hoplites quite thinly to cover frontage. He’d positioned his light troops to seize the steep hill that dominated the centre of the table. By now I was getting used to the Mongol mobility and decided to task off a cavalry and LH unit to contest the left hand side of the table and put the remaining 6 cavalry units on the right. My remaining two light horse BGs and light foot protected my “hanging” flank. From practice games I knew it was a matter of being patient, waiting unit the shooting from 28 superior cavalry bases caused a hoplite unit to disrupt and then fragment (I expected a quite a few disruptions but most would be recovered when Paul moved a general to the BG and bolstered it).

By the end of the game I’d been squeezed into a tight box as the Greeks pushed my holding wing off the table and circled around and attempted to storm my camp. But finally two hoplite units fragmented under shooting pressure. One broke when charged, one stood and put up a prolonged resistance before it also collapsed. By then I’d also managed to pick off a few more units to give me a 21-11 win.

[neilhammond]

Game 6 vs Hunter Hope’s Pechnegs

Another shooty mobile army, the first I’d encountered this comp. The terrain was steppe. It became clear that Hunter planned to deploy in a continuous line across the battlefield. I decided to match Hunter’s deployment. For me, this was the most buttock-clenching game of the weekend.

Hunter’s entire army was protected average cavalry with bow and sword. He had enough troops to form a second, reserve line. I didn’t as I was stretched across the entire table trying to match his frontage. My armoured cavalry formed what I hoped was an anchor in the centre of the line, with the unprotected cavalry stretched either side.

I put all my light horse on my left where I expected to shoot and easily evade Hunters cavalry, expecting to eventually wearing the Pechnegs down on that wing. In order to cover the last few bases of frontage on my right wing I had to commit the crossbowmen and light foot archers. I expected them to be ridden down, but hoped they would hold on long enough for something useful to happen elsewhere…

My rather desperate plan was to engage Hunter in a shooting duel where my superior cavalry had the edge, and I had my IC to assist with CTs. Hunter was having none of this and closed as fast as he could. I evaded the first charge, which saw all of Hunter’s first line (about 40 elements) charge. The only contact was against my crossbowmen who had to stand and take the charge. To both of our surprise the crossbows survived the impact and initial melee by only dropping to disrupted.

I was running out of table so it became necessary to take a stand. The shooting had proved inconclusive, with a few units on each side becoming disrupted. The light horse on my left proved to be totally incompetent, failed to do any damage, and two of the three LH units were eventually driven off the table. The remaining unit hung on long enough to provide some semblance to stability on that flank.

The crossbowmen on the other flank kept throwning 5’s and 6’s in combat to win the melee, eventually killing off enough bases to auto-break their Pechneg opponents. Similarly, the LF archers shot well enough to disrupt and eventually fragment and break the Pechneg BG sent to ride them down (the edge-of-the-world effect proved critical here).

The centre dissolved into a desperate clash. Hunter had the edge because his cavalry were better armoured but my superior status meant I could reroll 1’s. I generally threw poorer combat dice but made amends by rolling brilliant CT and death roll dice. Hunter threw good combat dice but poor CT and death roll dice. Finally three more of Hunter’s units broke (mainly auto-breaks through losses), giving me a 22-10 win when time was called.

All in all a great game which could have gone either way.

[neilhammond]

Reflections

Foot armies proved difficult to beat if they formed up 3 deep but were vulnerable if they spread out. A horse archer vs a heavy infantry clash is always a difficult match-up for both players. In the end it depends on a number of factors, with terrain playing a key part. I think the balance is reasonable, I certainly don’t think the horse archers have an edge in terms of game balance.

A “heavier” cavalry army (e.g. Ghaznavids, Mongols with upgraded cavalry, Ottomans, etc) do have the ability to shoot to disrupted and then charge in and stand a good chance of beating heavy infantry. However, armoured cavalry are 50% more expensive than my unprotected Mongol cavalry so you quickly run out of troops.

The main weakness of the Ilkhanids is the lack of steppe as a home territory type, which means that there is frequently too much terrain on the table for my tastes. Perhaps the Mongol or Tatar list would work better. On the other hand the ability to deploy knights is interesting…

The inspirational commander worked well for the army. I frequently worked without a reserve so the extra IC factor helped compensate. The issue with a reserve if you plan to evade a lot is if you’re not careful the evaders and the reserve can get entangled with each other.

The Mongol horse can be either LH or cavalry. I was happy with the cavalry choice as they gave me better options to attack or counter-charge if I so wished. The risk you take is that there is a greater chance of being caught in an evade; something you have to balance up in your overall plan for the army.

Finally, it was a very enjoyable event, my thanks to the Britcon team for all of their hard work. I think the FoG rules are at a good state of beta-test maturity. Well done to the rules authors and to their approach of opening up the rules to play testers. Everyone I speak to appreciates the authors’ willingness to accept criticism and comment from playtesters without becoming over-defensive.

[shall]

Great write up Neil. Thanks for doing that.

It was fun chasing your Mongols while it lasted - alas my Britons were not so successful inthe toher two games - althought hey got th Romans to 1 BG from breaking before finally collapsing under the strain.

For my part if was very enjoyeable umpiring and gathering reactions, and seeing the varied approaches to the game.

Si