The European Serin On Tour - Part 5
Open Period ADLG at The Worlds in Spain 2025
Khurasanian vs Mongol Empire
Game 1 Khurasanian vs Ghaznavid
Game 2 Khurasanian vs Ottoman Empire
Game 3 Khurasanian vs Mongol Empire
Game 4 Khurasanian vs Wars of the Roses
Game 5 Khurasanian vs Mongol Empire
Game 6 Khurasanian vs French Ordonnance
Or, for our many foreign readers ..
** Game 1 Khurasanian vs Ghaznavid - In Spanish! **
** Game 2 Khurasanian vs Ottoman Empire - In German! **
** Game 3 Khurasanian vs Mongol Empire - In Portuguese! **
** Game 4 Khurasanian vs War of The Roses - In Spanish! **
** Game 4 Khurasanian vs Mongol Empire - In Spanish! **
** Game 4 Khurasanian vs French Ordonnance - In Australian! **
Sunday, and the Khurasanian army is sat comfortably on 2 wins, 1 defeat and one unresolved game, tucked nearly into the Europa League places in the standings. With two more games to go it's all still to play for.
Sunday's opponent is a second Mongol Empire army of the weekend, generating a significant challenge for me as it means I will have to make some some new, mostly spurious but this time in a different way , block of pseudo-historical text to pepper the banality of the actual report with.
By Game 5, the broad brush strokes of the compositions of many of the armies in play start to become known amongst the players (as either someone you know has played against it before, or, as in my case, very similar lists that a player has used before have been posted on the ADLG Wiki for several years, complete with reams of battle reports of how it's been deployed and used against various opponents.
The word on the street was that this army contained two heavy trebuchets, the Mongols dreaded siege engines which allowed these horseborne monsters to quickly reduce forts and cities in their relentless advance across Eurasia.
Word on the street also said the the little coffee bar across the road did great expresso and pretty decent pastel de nata as well - and this morning I was keen to test the veracity of both rumours to the max.
The Mongols
The lists for the Khurasanian and Mongol Empire from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at The Worlds in Spain can be seen here in the L'Art de la Guerre Wiki.
The Mongols had elected to defend in Steppe terrain, ignoring my own army's Steppe credentials in order to secure almost total control over the near total lack of terrain in the process.
I had done my best to cook up some constraints on the Mongols ability to wheel around at will on a billiard table by getting a rarely-seen gulley over on the right, and a river - which turned out to be totally dried up and irrelevant - on the left.
The anticipated artillery were, as foretold, plonked in the middle of the enemy deployment, bifurcating the rest of the Mongol army into two unequal halves.
L'Art de la Guerre hint - A Mongol army facing an opponent with Steppe terrain in their list faces a dilemma.
Do they choose to "Attack", alllowing their own light horsemen to move first and pin back the enemy, creating acres of space for their strike troops to redeploy behind the screen and focus on a weak point in the enemy line, but at the risk of seeing large areas of brush appear on the tabletop to hinder your cavalry's freedom to move?
Or do they defend in their own Steppe terrain, on the basis that this allows them as the Defending player to pick pretty much all of the "uneven" (aka cavalry-troubling) terrain types as tiny pieces, and then seek to keep them entirely out of the battlespace to maximise the billiard table on which Mongols like to play?
Add in a couple of heavy artillery to the Mongol list and suddenly you create an even bigger dilemma, with the artillery's beaten zone funnelling the enemy into some fairly obviouls channels of attack - a scenario in which having some terrain to form the other side of each funnel is fairly tempting.
The smaller half of the Mongol force was on their right, and against it the Death Star command was more than happy to advance at speed, looking to pin back the handful of Mongol horse archers with a rush of elephants, Dailami and infantry archery.
The entire command of Khurasani troops swung out to the left at speed, careful to avoid coming into arc of fire of the heavy mangonels and trebuchets of the enemy artillery park as they advanced.
The Mongol Empire, often remembered for its sweeping cavalry and thunderous charges across the steppes, was also disturbingly proficient in the grim business of siege warfare.
While their horsemen could encircle cities with terrifying speed, it was their embrace of siege engines - catapults, trebuchets, and giant crossbows large enough to fire suspiciously aerodynamic goats - that allowed them to conquer the fortified cities of China, Persia, and Eastern Europe with surgical, if slightly chaotic, efficiency.
On the other flank, again squeezing up towards the edge of the board in a ploy to get away from the enemy artillery, two commands (the Dauilami and the Cavalry/Spearmen) moved up swiftly again to bottle up the Mongols.
The Steppe-dwellers had hidden something, perhaps, in the gulley on their left, but I had elected to kind of ignore this obvious place for the Dailami, and instead to drive them down the middle of the board to try and run down the artillery park in the expectation that the Mongols would not put many/any of their Impact-capable best quality cavalry (the apex predator of Dailami in this game) in front of the trebuchets
The Mongols were quick to borrow from the cultures they encountered: Chinese engineers, Persian mathematicians, and one particularly enthusiastic Venetian with a moustache shaped like a scorpion tail all contributed to their siege arsenal.
In the middle the Mongols had unwisely pushed up a lone Light Horse unit, which ended up being trapped by the rapid advance of the Dailami skirmishers sneaking behind it. Clattering into the horse archer with Dailami and 2 overlapping infantry should have seen it removed immediately, but this Mongol skirmisher was made of sterner stuff.
Trapped and unable to escape, and surviving against the odds for several turns the Mongol light horse hung on long enough for the rest of their left wing to move up and threaten the Dailami/Khurasani formation, persuading the Dailami Light Archer who had initially trapped the LH in his ZoC to turn around and face the new threat!
L'Art de la Guerre hint - This is a very long winded way of explaining that at some point the LF were facing the back of the LH and ZoCCing them, which is necessary if they are to prevent the LH from evading from the troops charging their front. The survivability of the LH was phenomenal though, pulling out some great dice, so not all plans work as planned!
In a blur of motion the left flank Elephant Corps of the Khurasani army swept forward to close with the right wing of the Mongols, leaving them almost static with elephants and archers at close range.
The Khurasanian light infantry had been doing sterling service shielding their betters from Elite mounted bowfire as they charged, but with combat now imminent some of them drifted out to both flanks to position themselves to harry and harass the flanks of the decidedly hamstring-able Mongol horsemen once the time came (and came soon).
Contrary to popular belief, however, the Mongols rarely dragged their siege engines across deserts and mountains. Instead, they preferred the far more logistically baffling tactic of assembling flat-pack trebuchets on-site, allegedly sourced from a roving division of IKEA known as the “Golden Assembly Horde." .
This time however the Mongols were able to escape, turning as one and dropping back at high speed towards the back of the table carrying with them a vast array of archery-inflicted wounud tokens to signify their disquiet
Tactical withdrawal, Eastern Mystic Pragmatism, or Sheer Cowardice - or perhaps a plan to shoot, scoot and return being implemented? Who knew - but either way the Khurasan army now had near total control of this side of the table for the foreseeable future.
Upon arriving outside a city, Mongol commanders would dispatch scouts not just for strategic recon, but also to locate the nearest IKEA outpost - or at least something that vaguely resembled one after a long ride through the Gobi.
There, they'd acquire vast quantities of modular pine furniture, with warriors spending the evening assembling ballistas ("ballistae"?) out of BILLY bookcases and trebuchets from LACK tables, using the tears of captured engineers as lubricant for the joints.
The laggard in this rapid advance was an injured Khurasani horseman, shot by enemy skirmishers early on in the battle and in his wounded state unable to keep up. More attempts to rally for free than any unit in history ensured, none of which were succeeded.
L'Art de la Guerre hint - If a wounded unit is more than 4MU away from all enemies it gets a zero-pip rally attempt every turn, and also rallies on a 3 or more, not the usual 4.
That is great in theory, but in practice makes no difference at all if you only ever roll 1's and 2's when attempting to rally them.
With the recalcitrant Light Horse finally despatched to the great Mongol Fermented Yak Milking Parlour in the Sky, the scene was now set for the Khurasani forces on the right and in the centre to push on.
The pair of spearmen formed a formidable block facing off against the Khans Guard, daring them to charge and get embroiled in a pig-wrestling match as the better-armoured Khurasani cavalry pressed forward against the Elite but Unarmoured Mongols further along the line.
In the centre now only the unimpressed impressed peasants and prisoners of the Mongol Horde (DBM joke there for you oldsters) stood between the Dailami and the Trebuchets.
Mongol siege weapons were deliberately designed to be simple to put together, even by the often-challenging standards of many IKEA instruction manuals, hence the famous Mongol Artillerymen's slogan "If Genghis Khan, anyone can".
Siege protocol also dictated that all engines be named after Swedish meatball varieties, for reasons lost to history but frequently noted in the more surreal passages of the Secret History of the Mongols. Before a bombardment began, the engines would be blessed in a solemn ceremony involving fermented mare’s milk, a ritual Allen key, and a sacred reading of poorly translated instruction leaflets.
Aided by decisive foot archery, the Khurasani Ghulams showered the Mongols with arrows, shattering their formation at crucial points at the end of their line and beginning to expose the rest of the horse lords' forces to being rolled up.
The deadly Dailami had taken no time at all in sweeping away the motley collection of prisoners, women and children and they too were now eyeing up their next decisive attack.
L'Art de la Guerre hint - Dailami Impact Swordsmen will be on +2 against the Levy on a factor of zero in the first round of combat.
These Dailami are also Elite, adding a further +1 to any die rolls of 3 or less (ie, half the time, so let's just call that + 1/2 a factor shall we?), and one of the units even has an Included Commander, giving a further +1. The Levy are Mediocre, deducting 1 from every roll of 4,5 or 6, so that's another 1/2 factor equivalent, putting the Dailami either 3 or 4 factors up at Impact even before any overlaps come into play.
With the Levy only having 3 Cohesion points, it's therefore very likely that the Dailami will win the first round combat by 5 or more and this eliminate each levy unit in just one round of combat.
Perhaps I should have worked this all out in Game 3, and attacked the levy immediately rather than trying to ignore them?
This was the time for the Dailami to renounce the clever, and simply put their heads down and run like hell towards the enemy artillery park before its shooting could inflict serious damage on the clusters of hill tribesmen as they advanced to the sound of the trebuchets.
As the Dailami warriors raced forward ready to punch out the artillery crew, even their archers swept leftwards behind the charging pack of zupin-warriors, as the now-single minded Dailami command had a task so simple that even 1 pip (plus their Generals) was enough to do everything they wanted and could to bring Khurasani victory ever closer
The Mongols artillery-fetishising ritual often baffled their enemies, who understandably mistook it for some kind of shamanic IKEA cult.
Cities often fell not just to Mongol cunning, but also to the psychic toll of knowing that the last thing their walls would see was a trebuchet named "Snørbjörn" flinging a double wardrobe with a selection of handy internal storage drawers and hangars through their main gatehouse at speeds which reputedly sometimes exceeded Mach 2.2.
Soon enough, both of the Mongol siege engines - monstrous contraptions of dubious IKEA origin, still half-covered in protective yurt-scented tarpaulins - found themselves entangled in the most undignified of fates: hand-to-hand combat with the Dailami. These were no ordinary skirmishers, but snarling hill-born axe-fiends from the poppy-steeped heights of Daylam, men who considered melee combat a recreational pastime somewhere between goat wrestling and composing bitter poetry.
The siege crews, clearly unaccustomed to having their carefully tensioned torsion springs assaulted by swearing men in sheepskin hats, collapsed under the pressure like a camel under a bookshelf. The machines creaked, groaned, and in one case emitted what sounded suspiciously like an apologetic sigh as the Dailami scrambled over them, hacking and howling with the righteous joy of unpaid mercenaries in reach of the enemy’s payroll tent.
With these siege-beasts duly neutralised and probably being turned into impromptu firewood, a great number of the liberated hillmen surged forth once more - their blood still up, their moustaches twitching with martial delight - to join a glorious tide of violence lapping hungrily at the flanks of both Mongol wings.
Meanwhile, the centre of the Mongol army, once a taut drumskin of horse-archer precision, had become a yawning, flailing chasm - a dust-choked crater now overflowing with the brightly clad forms of Khurasani troopers. It was as though the heavens had opened and poured down a thousand mildly irritated textile merchants, each one carrying a bow, a spear, and a strong opinion about poetry.
The Mongol host, outflanked and undone, looked less like an army and more like a badly run street festival being aggressively shut down by local authorities in leopard-print lamellar.
The Mongol right wing had been pretty much swept from the board by the rapid advance and deadly archery of the Elephant command, and now only a few lone skirmishers remained to cover the retreat of the Mongol survivors.
But, faced by such superiority of numbers as the Khurasanian force now possessed, even the most tricky and slippery of Mongol horsemen now found themselves often surrounded and assaulted, unable yet again to escape their fate
Thus, while the Mongol Empire's siege craft was technologically sophisticated and devastatingly effective, it also bore the distinct scent of pinewood, dried dairy products, and chaos.
It was not uncommon for besieged defenders to hold out for weeks, only to be overwhelmed not by missiles, but by the existential dread of only being able to conduct counterbattery fire against their besiegers after assembling a twelve-ton trebuchet from a flat-pack self-assembly kit without one hexagonal Allen key and no spare screws.
On the right, concentrated Iranian firepower was proving more than a match for the becalmed Mongols, who's potentially game-changing strike troops were still locked in a sterile faceoff against the Khurasani spearmen.
The Mongol line was being systematically reduced by Khurasanian mounted archery, their siege engines were being looted by allen-key equipped Dailami hillmen, and all in all the game was up for the Empire of the Khan
The Result is a significant victory for the Khurasani army
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition, or read on for the post match summaries from the Khurasani Commander, Sheikh Yabouti, delivered beneath a towering poppy-coloured tent, while seated cross-legged on a rug woven from equal parts goat hair and delusions of grandeur. He holds a spoon in one hand and a half-melted tub of Ben & Jerry’s “Cherry Garcia" in the other, as well as another episode of legendary expert analysis from Hannibal
Post Match Summary from the Khurasanian Commander
O children of Khurasan, disciples of divine timing and dessert-based prophecy, gather round and hear the tale of how your Sheikh - that’s me, baby - stared into the swirling, fudge-ripple vortex of fate... and smacked the Mongols right off their ergonomic horse saddles.
Let the world know: the so-called unstoppable tidal wave of Mongol fury has just been out-chilled, out-shot, and out-snacked. While their generals plotted in tents smelling of horse sweat and fermented goat, I meditated, spoon in hand, upon the sacred scrolls of Ben & Jerry.
And lo! In a vision shaped like a caramel swirl, I saw it all - their formations, their tricks, their hideous misuse of Swedish modular engineering. Some say it was spycraft. I say: mint-choc clairvoyance.
Their plan? Simple. Rely on their sacred ritual: assemble siege engines from IKEA-branded yaks and casually ping arrows at anything that twitched. But they forgot one thing - Dailamis don’t wait politely while someone follows pictogram instructions. No, my glorious hill-men, high on honour, hashish, and decades of mountain sprints, charged straight down the centre. Those Mongol siege engineers barely had time to unwrap the Allen keys before they were being forcibly reclassified as blunt trauma instruments.
Meanwhile, the wings of my own blessed Khurasani host moved like poetry in motion. Left and right they flowed - not flanking, no no, that’s a Western concept. They enfolded. They outshot the Mongols, outpaced them, and - most insultingly - out-sulked them. For the famed Mongol horse archers, masters of the shooty-retreaty dance, never even tried to stand and fight. They galloped in circles like confused goats, loosing arrows and hoping the sheer act of activity would somehow win the day. Sorry, Genghis - this ain't cardio class. This is war.
And thus, my friends, my vision was made real. I saw the Mongols not as unstoppable horse demons - but as overly confident nomads with a poor understanding of both woodworking and metaphysics.
They thought the battle would go as it always had: pepper the enemy, flee, and win by confusion. But we brought clarity. We brought coordination. We brought... cookie dough.
So raise your bowls, your banners, and your slightly dented bits of Mongol siege junk! For today, we honour foresight, the valour of poppy-smoking mountain folk, and the simple truth that no army, no matter how fearsome, can survive when the universe sends a man with a mystical sugar high and a really, really good battle plan!
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
O Sheikh Yabouti, thou perfumed prophet of puffery, thou desert-born dribbler of self-regard - once more thou struttest from the field, cheeks puffed like a muezzin's goat bladder, declaring thyself the Moon-Touched Seer of the Steppes.
Divine vision, was it? Celestial foresight delivered atop a cloud of mystic enlightenment - or was it, as the rest of us with ears and functioning memory know, a half-overheard muttering from General Harrison in the tavern, between his third jug of apricot arak and a loud complaint about the local hummus? Yes, Sheikh, the so-called vision thou trumpetest was nothing more than tavern gossip and eavesdropping passed off as revelation.
I must commend thy creativity, if not thy honesty. A man who claims omniscience from overhearing a half-cut Iberian is surely a master of interpretive fiction.
And let us speak of the enemy, those elusive Mongols. You declare triumph over them as though they met you tooth and nail, blade and blood, in the dust-choked arena of honour. In truth - they did no such thing! They refused to fight. They danced away like perfumed eunuchs in a silk bazaar, loosing arrows from afar while refusing to meet your charges with anything resembling courage. It is no triumph to wrestle with a cloud, no glory to punch a shadow. One might as well boast of victory over the breeze.
The terrain? Fortune smiled on you like a drunken aunt giving out wedding money - blindly, without judgement. That the hills and gullies favoured your troops was not brilliance, but blessed coincidence, the kind of thing a true general accounts for, not celebrates as strategy. Thy claims of mastery over fate are as credible as thy singing voice - which, if memory serves, resembles the croaking of a frog with a shisha pipe stuck in its throat.
And your much-vaunted tactics - thy frontal charges, thy flanking horse archers, thy mystical conga line of Dailami screaming down the centre like spice merchants late to a sale - all very fine, very colourful, but hardly challenged by an army who chose not to fight. It is like winning a duel against a man who never showed up and then composing a ballad about your victory.
You, sir, are a fig-witted mooncalf, a sand-addled self-flatterer with the tactical brilliance of a tethered donkey. Thy army won the day, aye - but not against a foe, only against the empty idea of one.
So I say this to thee: enjoy thy spoonful of glory, thy bowl of victory-flavoured Ben & Jerry’s. But do not expect the rest of us - veterans of Zama, of Cannae, of real battles against real foes - to kneel at the altar of thy overblown ego.
When thou findest an enemy who actually fights back, perhaps in the next and final game at this event, do send word. Until then, thou art but a camel in a mirror - impressed by thine own reflection, and wholly unaware it has never moved.
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition
Game 1 Khurasanian vs Ghaznavid
Game 2 Khurasanian vs Ottoman Empire
Game 3 Khurasanian vs Mongol Empire
Game 4 Khurasanian vs Wars of the Roses
Game 5 Khurasanian vs Mongol Empire
Game 6 Khurasanian vs French Ordonnance
Or, for our many foreign readers ..
** Game 1 Khurasanian vs Ghaznavid - In Spanish! **
** Game 2 Khurasanian vs Ottoman Empire - In German! **
** Game 3 Khurasanian vs Mongol Empire - In Portuguese! **
** Game 4 Khurasanian vs War of The Roses - In Spanish! **
** Game 4 Khurasanian vs Mongol Empire - In Spanish! **
** Game 4 Khurasanian vs French Ordonnance - In Australian! **
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