Although I booked for the IWF World Championships well in advance I only started thinking about which army to take when one of the other competitors submitted an army list for checking – I’d volunteered to do the FoG as well as the DBM list checking. Clearly it isn’t suitable for the list checker to choose their army when they have sight of their opponents lists so I had to hurriedly make my mind up
With armies from the first 4 books available to choose from (Rise of Rome, Storm of Arrows, Immortal Fire and Swords & Scimitars) there are quite a few armies I can field, however, my real interest from those books is the Moslem armies and so a S&S army was on the cards. A couple of read throughs later I decided that a Seljuq army was the way to go, despite toying with Mamluke, as I could use a load of my nice Outpost figures. After a bit of playing around I finalised on the following (in order of march) which I dated at 1071 so it could be the army Alp Arslan led to victory over the Romans at Manziket
IC – Alp Arslan himself
3 x TC
Foot Archers, 8 LF, Poor, Undrilled, Unprotected, Bow
Foot Javelinmen, 6 LF, Poor, Undrilled, Unprotected, Javelins, Light Spear
Foot Javelinmen, 6 LF, Poor, Undrilled, Unprotected, Javelins, Light Spear
Turcomans, 4 LH, Average, Undrilled, Unprotected, Bow, Swordsmen
Turcomans, 4 LH, Average, Undrilled, Unprotected, Bow, Swordsmen
Turcomans, 4 LH, Average, Undrilled, Unprotected, Bow, Swordsmen
Turcomans, 4 LH, Average, Undrilled, Unprotected, Bow, Swordsmen
Turcomans, 4 LH, Average, Undrilled, Unprotected, Bow, Swordsmen
Bedouin Cavalry, 6 LH, Average, Undrilled, Unprotected, Lancers, Swordsmen
Turcomans, 4 Cv, Average, Undrilled, Protected, Bow, Swordsmen
Turcomans, 4 Cv, Average, Undrilled, Protected, Bow, Swordsmen
Ghilman, 4 Cv, Superior, Drilled, Armoured, Bow, Swordsmen
Ghilman, 4 Cv, Superior, Drilled, Armoured, Bow, Swordsmen
Ghilman, 4 Cv, Superior, Drilled, Armoured, Bow, Swordsmen
Initiative of 4 and 14 BGs. Basic battle plan is to fight in the steppe, run around and shoot the enemy and then charge them when they are not happy. The Poor infantry are filler and should be kept away from the enemy most of the time. The biggest worry was facing an army with lots of troops you need 5 to hit when shooting as it makes it harder and the army has no real impact troops to worry the enemy meaning it really has to affect them with the bows – in practice at the competition this mean the 2 Roman armies and the Medieval Cypriot.
Those who know the Seljuq list will probably ask why I didn’t take either the Dailami or the Knights which are options, although you cannot get both together, or maybe even the elephants. I didn’t take the knights, or some other Lancers, as I just can’t get them to work (I had the same problem with Kn in DBM) and usually end up getting them destroyed for little gain. The Dailami were discarded as they would be the only MF in the army, and the only fighting foot, and I felt that in an open competition a single BG of MF is not a good idea. Elephants went for similar reasons.
I managed just one practice game with the army against a massive Later Ptolemaic where I lost the initiative and so didn’t fight on the steppe. A good learning experience but a draw.
The first round draw saw me facing George Pakos from Greece who was very new to FoG and more interested in playing against new people and learning the game than anything else – good attitude IMO. George was fielding one of the 3 Santa Hermandad Nueva Castilian armies in the competition and it was constructed as follows (not in march order):
IC
2 FC
Men-at-arms, 6 Kn, Superior, Undrilled, Heavily Armoured, Lancer, Swordsmen
Men-at-arms, 4 Kn, Superior, Drilled, Heavily Armoured, Lancer, Swordsmen
Jinetes, 6 LH, Average, Undrilled, Protected, Javelins, Light Spear
Jinetes, 6 LH, Average, Undrilled, Protected, Javelins, Light Spear
Jinetes, 6 LH, Average, Undrilled, Protected, Javelins, Light Spear
SHNC Spearmen, 8 HF, Average, Drilled, Armoured, Offensive Spearmen
Other Hermandad Spearmen, 6 HF, Average, Drilled, Protected, Defensive Spearmen
Hermandad Crossbowmen, 8 MF, Average, Drilled, Protected, Crossbow
Hermandad Arquebusiers, 8 LF, Average, Drilled, Unprotected, Firearm
Fortified camp
(The last may have been 2 BGs of 4 – incomplete notes, sorry)
George won the initiative – ho hum
– but decided that he wanted to fight in the steppe anyway as he hadn’t in any of his other games, and he wanted to learn how his army fared there against a horse archer army. Again I can only salute his attitude as he knew it wasn’t ideal but felt he would learn more this way – and I agree with him, you only really learn when your army has its back against the wall IMO. The terrain ended up with a few pretty inconsequential pieces scattered around the table edge which had almost no effect on the game which was fought out in the open spaces.I must confess that I don’t recall too much of this game, including initial set ups, as it was relatively quick and George and I spend a fair amount of time going through the mechanism and rules so that he understood them and learnt some new stuff. However, here is the gist of what happened.
I deployed with my skirmishers of all sorts as far in as possible, LF in the centre and LH on the wings with the majority of the LH on my left. The Cv were deployed as far in as they could go in a roughly central position but with the Ghilman mostly to the left as that is where the heavier part of George’s army was so I felt their Superior shooting and better manoeuvrability should go there – the Undrilled, Average Turcoman cavalry could deal with something easier.
Again George’s newness to FoG showed as he deployed his relatively small army on quite a wide front for its size – more DBM style really – and with significant gaps between BGs in places. His knights were to my left and the Spearmen were also more to that side of the table along with the crossbowmen. His Jinetes were up front, 15MU in, with 1 BG on my right and 2 on my left as I recall.
Moving first I was able to point my mounted towards George’s lights and with the advantage of numbers in all places. This meant that I was always going to have the advantage in any shooting as I was shooting further, apart from his crossbowmen, and with more bases. The Arquebusiers were soon caught in the open by a BG of Turcoman LH and George found out just how bad fighting with half as many dice when hit in the rear is (didn’t evade far enough) and they were soon heading for the rear with alacrity. My horse archers facing his 2 Jinete units, I had 3 BGs of 4 to his 2 of 6 so even numbers, got the better of the shooting disrupting both Jinete BGs and the subsequent charge swept them away thanks again to greater numbers of dice as we were in fact on a negative PoA at Impact and equal PoAs in melee – him Light Spear and Protected against my Swordsmen.
All the time the enemy Knights were advancing, charging but chasing shadows as my troops evaded out of the way – with nothing to tie down my cavalry he was going to have to get very lucky to catch even my Cv let alone any LH.
Now with gaps in his army I was able to start to gang up properly on some of the tougher Castilian BGs. The Crossbowmen were advancing nicely and are pretty good against a mounted army even in the open, however, with the Ghilman being Superior they were able to weather the shooting and charge into the Crossbowmen. The PoA for fighting MF in the open pretty much cancelled out the extra dice the Crossbowmen had and we drew at Impact, but come the Melee phase with a ++ PoA for heavier armour and Swordsmen the Crossbowmen were butchered mercilessly by the slave troops. This now left a BG of Spearmen sitting in the middle of the table with various horse archers on three sides, also close enough to them to prevent them from forming Orb and so having some chance of surviving, perhaps. Shot to Disrupted and then charged from 2 directions they also broke rapidly and thus the whole army was gone.
However, George had had some success. On my right the Bedouin had gone chasing the Jinetes over there who had evaded a couple of times and were then forced to stand and fight due to the table edge. Obviously now inspired by their lack of escape route (they’d clearly read their Sun Tzu
) they proceeded to give the Bedouin a right good kicking, breaking them in 3 rounds of fighting. In their pursuit they then charged a BG of Cv Turcomans – might as well as the army was going down by this stage – they were well on their way to breaking them (OK, just Disrupted but it seemed fated) when the game finished.So it finished 24-1 to the Seljuqs.
George, despite losing, appeared to have had a good time and he said he’d learnt a lot which had been his aim and this was good news to me. Part 2 soon …
All that shooting and then running away would drive me crazy. I hate those kind of armies (playing them or against them) because they seem the absolute antithesis of my personality. It definitely looks like it would take a great deal of skill to use.
