The Rus At Burton

  A Mad Hatters Tea Party  Over the years we’ve had so many disasters at Burton, travel and accommodation, that its now par for the course. This year was particularly good.

 Planning on leaving London early to miss the traffic, we duly convened at Chez Porter at 4pm. Oh, 3 of us did. Mick was delayed at work, and turned up at 6, so we set of at , erm, 6:01 – ideal time to be hitting the North Circular, M1 Northbound…...

 … but it actually wasn’t that bad – until we left the M1 on the 511 and ran into some of the thickest fog I think any of us had ever seen – it was so thick I even didn’t have to slow down for the speed cameras whilst going through some of the outlying villages!.

 Arriving at the hotel also provided us with an early test of the stoic attitude that using Rus tends to breed. Apparently our booking was only for Friday night. Oh well…. Only one thing for it – Nutters All Night Disco here we come…...

Then came possibly one of the least good Chinese meals ever (i.e. least good since last year when we went to the same Chinese). I say least good, as in it wasn’t “bad”, but all the dishes tasted exactly the same. Pork, Beef, Chicken and Prawns – even the Duck course was virtually indistinguishable. The best that could be said for it was that some of the dishes were a dark brown, and some were a beigey-tan sort of colour. Maybe it would have made quite good basing material ?.

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The Games  The next morning we arrived bright and early, wearing our tasteful team shirts and Viking helmets (well, it is Burton). For the competition we had taken 1018 Rus, with Poles & Pechenegs, in order to allow us to wear the Viking helmets, use my Rus/Viking army, but have more fun than just doing our usual “plan A” Rus + Bulgars. We’d thought about Vikings, but without the option to use Med German Kn(I) wedges (out of the timeframe of the competition) we weren’t sure it would be interesting enough compared to Poles & Pechenegs..

 Our first game was against a Uighur & Tibetan army. For some reason (i.e. I was still pissed from the night before) I forgot to write down their army composition, however roughly it was like this:  .

Command 1 18 Sp (I) 9 Ps (O) 1 Cv General 3 LH (F) 2 More Things – maybe more LH ?

Command 2 Tibetans 1 Reg Tibetan General 9 Irreg Tibetan Kn (X)

Command 3 LH (S) General 18 Sp (I) 9 Ps (O)

Command 4 About 7 Cv (S) Cv (S) CinC General Lots of LH (F) 3-4 Horde Some Psiloi

 We deployed with (left to right) Poles, CinC, Pechenegs, Rus Sub, and faced C4, C2, C1 and C3 was on a flank march on our left. I was commanding our right flank,.

I started of by launching the mounted spear block and Cv (I) to try and harass the odd LH in front of C1. The plan was to use the extra move of the mounted Sp to pin the Uighur line back as far as we could, burn their pips keeping their LH safe whilst the 2^nd rank could catch up later.  This might have worked however the initial dice of the Uighurs were great, and the flank march arrived immediately – on my side. Meanwhile some of the Tibetans (only 4) started redeploying to gang up on me as well – ouch! The Pecheneg LH quickly redeployed to face off the flank march whilst the WWg attempted to get to grips with the Kn (X)

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 Micks game ->: On our left Mick was pushing forwards with a spear wall, with the Poles gradually echeloning out of the only Rgo on table which protected their flank as the Uighur CinC mounted a delaying action. We were relieved to see the flank march almost totally lacking in LH, but still there was very little we could do about it, with my Rus command now effectively fighting 2 Uighurs and the Tibetans. Unable to redeploy against the flank attack I pressed forwards, hoping to get as many spear as possible past them, and rely on my 11.5 break point to save me whilst the WWg damaged the Tibetans beyond repair and Mick pushed the Uighur CinC off the table..

<- My Game !  Well, probably best to say that it “nearly” worked – Mick did push the CinC off table, I got 3 of the Tibetans (eventually) and had a couple of chances to shoot the 4^th,  but the single line of mounted spears never received their reinforcements in time and a combination of Uighur spears, Tibetans and the inexorable rolling up of my flank means the Rus sub general went down (fighting) in the end. A 6-4 to us, just 1 Tibetan off a 9-1, but the early arrival of the flank march meant we were probably lucky to last out long enough to even get close to the Tibetans ! .

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