Night Attacks - the New
"Rock n' Roll!"
Using Arab
Conquest, we (chose deliberately to ) attack at night
in all four games (3 ended up moonlit, one cloudy &
raining) and faced Khazar, Tang, Samurai and Feudal
Spanish.
The couple of other Conquest armies did
the same "night attack" tactics, and you could
see it becoming the talking point of the weekend - ie,
our Samurai opponents didn't even know the night attack
rules when we played them, but used them to attack a
Christian Nubian army in their subsequent game! I really
got the impression that it was a case of the genie been
unleashed from the bottle, and that night attacks in
winter could become as ubiquitous (for when you opponent
is more maneuverable than you) as the
"WW-on-your-flank" used to be (for whenever you
had less LH & Cv than the enemy).....if this does
happen, sorry - it's my fault!
Against the Khazars night wasn't
really an issue, as there was very little we could do
anyway against the LH - it helped maintain our line
as were all moving 2", and we took down one command
of Cv with a Cm/Cv(S/O)/LH command, and won 6-4.
vs the Tang it was a great benefit,
as the Tang LH were unable to pin us at all, and the 40
WB (S) steamed across the table with only minor delays,
and even got in amongst the Tang baggage! Unfortunately
we just ran out of time 2 EE away from a 10-0, having
killed the CinC's Cv (S/O) command. This happened as it
pressed an advantage on our right, threatening our LH
Nomads whilst outflanking the big Wb block. As they
pushed forwards, the Tang General got separated from the
bulk of his Cv, as he was busy fighting off single Wb(S)
on autopilot...The rest of his horse pushed forwards
regardless, confident in their own ability to charge down
6 LH (O) and 3 LH (I), even if they were dropping off a
few elements on the way to pin down the Arab foot. This
theory was rapidly re-evaluated to "overconfident
in their own ability", as suddenly they, and
more importantly, the Nomad LH realized that the Tang
were hopelessly overstretched and outnumbered! The Nomads
then quickly turned the tables with some nifty encircling
maneuvers, and charged into every available flank (and
there were quite a few to choose from!) whilst the CinC
was out of sight in the dawn mists! A 7-3 win...
vs the Samurai night again almost
gave us a decisive advantage, as the Cv they sent out to
delay our inexorable advance often got out of sight of
their generals, and so were hampered from withdrawing.
Unfortunately it was a cloudless night, and so the Cv
were able to move their full distance -
added to our CinC's roll of 1 with his first 3 pip dice
and we just didn't get these fast enough to take
advantage.....
The warrior monks had been placed in ambush on a rocky
hill on our flank - but given that they were clearly
going to be road kill anywhere else on the table, we
guessed this might happen, and the Dailami & Ps (S)
managed to claim the crest and that was that - Allah 1,
Buddha 0. We however then lost the Nomad command (6 LH
(O), 3 LH (I) + General) after their flank march arrived
immediately, and then their baggage raiding exercise was
cut short by some mounted Samurai Cv. They did however
manage to make the Warrior monk's litter-borne WWg (I)
General flee - not a sight you see every day
you must admit! 1 or 2 more turns and we would have eaten
enough of the Ax (X) to turn a 5-5 into a 9-1, but the
CinC's initial pip shortcomings let us down...
vs the Feudal Spanish it was again
moonlit, which allowed or Nomad command to immediately
gain a dominating outflanking position as the rather
small battle frontline of the Spanish ran out of LH &
Cv on their left (out of sight of their general
also...who was leading the Kn in the center), whilst a
steam train full of 4 deep Wb (S) motored towards the end
of Kn (S) line. Unfortunately the devastating initial LH
attack, which should have killed 4 elements of Spanish
LH, and left the Cv (O) exposed, instead left 1 of the
nomads with fatal dice-inflicted wounds, and a rather
precarious position for al his mates. The Spanish general
then decided to gamble on a risky LH move, to kill 3 more
nomads and get the command, and to leave the Kn to trust
in fate, as they would break ranks and dribble towards
the oncoming turban-clad steam train. The nomads died (of
course), but so did the Spanish sub general, as he
charged in behind a Kn who found himself double
overlapped, racked and stacked. As some auxilia had also
died that turn, The Spanish command broke as it somewhat
surprisingly failed to roll an 8 in it's next turn.
Comment From a Spanish General
"Considered risk I say in my
book, took the command, Mine was going down anyway, what
with having to fight three bloody commands."
After that it was a race to see how well our Cm/Cv
command could stand against the rest of the Kn (S) vs how
quickly the demoralized Nomad general & 40 Wb (S)
could cover the 2' to get to the baggage, through a
routing bunch of Ax & Cv. Well, it almost worked,
until...the cavalry general was forced into combat to
plug a gap, of course he died, and it was a 4-6 defeat as
his dice failed to be more than 4 in the last turn (even
though we killed a higher percentage of elements)
Comment from another Spanish
General
"Your battle report was
fairly accurate, although I think you had more time than
you thought to complete your attack on our weaker flank.
A little more care and Steve would not have been able to
take your command. (he's
bl**dy right you know..."red mist" and all
that...)
I must admit I had the game put
down as a possible 6-4 to us before you informed us it
was night time!! Once the ramifiacations of that became
clear we revised it to 5-5 or 6-4 against.
(Hmmm...
all our games started as a definate 10-0 to us....not
sure what that says...about whom...) However,
had we considered time of day we would have certainly
deployed differently and reconsidered visibility ranges
which was what effectively screwed Steve! Anyway we
enjoyed the game and hope you did too."
The bizzarrest situation to arise was where a command of
the Spanish Kn could only see one of our LH (visibility
being 6"), but as it was not directly in front of
them, they had no legal impetuous target, so didn't have
to spend pips to be halted. This did seem a bit odd...
In each game we had at least 4 turns of
night before dawn - whilst it was good for us, I still
really think that it would be better to make night bounds
30 minutes each.....
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