The Hindu Times
In my quest to use a different army in each comp this year
and also keep
a comedy element to them I chose Hindu Indian for the BHGS Challenge -
none of this use your IWF army to make sure you've had practice with it
nonsense for me :-)
My list was:
C-in-C
El(O) Irr G 1 General 26.0
El(O) Irr 3 Elephants 48.0
LH(F) Irr 1 Skirmishing Light Horse 4.0
Bd(F) Irr 7 Swordsmen 35.0
Ps(O) Irr 5 Forest Archers 10.0
Bw(I) Irr 7 Archers 21.0
Cmd Elts: 24 EEs: 21.5 Dem.Lvl: 7.5 Subtotal: 144.0
Sub-General
El(O) Irr G 1 General 26.0
Bw(I) Irr 4 Archers 12.0
Cmd Elts: 5 EEs: 5.0 Dem.Lvl: 2.0 Subtotal: 38.0
Sub-General
El(O) Irr G 1 General 26.0
Cv(S) Irr 4 Muslim Mercenary Cavalry 36.0
Cv(S) Irr 2 Cavalry 18.0
Cv(O) Irr 2 Cavalry 14.0
LH(O) Irr 1 Skirmishing Light Horse 5.0
Bw(O) Irr 6 Archers 24.0
Ps(O) Irr 1 Forest Archers 2.0
Hd(O) Irr 7 Camp Followers 7.0
Cmd Elts: 24 EEs: 20.0 Dem.Lvl: 7.0 Subtotal: 132.0
Ally-General
El(O) Irr A 1 General 21.0
El(O) Irr 2 Elephants 32.0
Cv(I) Irr 2 Cavalry 10.0
Bd(F) Irr 1 Swordsmen 5.0
Bw(I) Irr 5 Archers 15.0
Hd(O) Irr 3 Camp Followers 3.0
Cmd Elts: 14 EEs: 12.5 Dem.Lvl: 4.5 Subtotal: 86.0
Army Elts: 67 EEs: 59.0 Defeat Lvl: 29.5
The small command sub-general was named Elephant-Cid in honour of Graham
Brigg's El Cid command in his Fanatic Berbers :-)
First game matched me up against Greg Mann and his unusual choice of
Samnites. Games against Greg are always good fun and as we started the
game with a
weather and we ended up with a table with a significant sized wood in my
left sector, some small RGo patches in my centre, a large RGo hill on
Gregs base edge and a smallpiece of RGo pn Gregs left, well forward and
away from the table edge.
I deployed cavalry command on the right, C-in-C in the centre with
Elephant-Cid and the ally to his left, but staying away from the wood.
Typically it was fighting troops up front Bw(I) and Hd to the rear. Greg
placed an Etruscan ally in the centre opposite my C-in-C, a Gallic ally
to their right, a small Ax(S) command to their right to dive through the
wood and a larger Ax(S) and Cv command on his left facing my cavalry
with the rough between us.
My first bound PIPs were good and so the army lurched forward as fast as
it could following the usual Hindu Indian battle plan. The C-in-C ended
up 200p from the Etruscans covered on the left by the ally and
Elephant-Cid and on the right by the cavalry command's general and a
couple of cavalry whilst the rest of the cavalry covered the rough and
right. On Greg's turn the Etruscans were unreliable in the face of the
onrushing horde which rather limited his options, but he pushed the
small Ax command through the wood and the large one into the rough to
tie up the troops covering the flank of the C-in-C. The Etruscans became
reliable in bound 3 when I smashed into them and although they put up a
good fight the fact they were mostly (I) told and they broke after a few
bounds. All Gregs attempts to capitalise on the slightly hanging flank
of my C-in-C's command failed. In the meantime the Gauls had got into a
position to attack the ally's elephants with 4 deep Wb(O) whilst
Elephant-Cid and the ally general attacked the Gallic Cv(O) chariots who
linked the Wb to the Etruscans. The chariots resisted manfully, however,
they took losses and the Wb attacking the El were beaten by some good
dice. The Gauls broke and with them the army. I had good PIPs and good
combat dice all game which rather exacerbated Greg's unreliable ally
issue. All over quite quickly as is usual with the Hindus, 31-1.
Game 2 saw the Hindus defending against Feudal Spanish led by Dave
Parish, again no weather. Dave choses a Rd and steep hills which land
pretty much on my right as does my Wd and the H(G) I throw down as well.
The left hand 2/3 of the battle field is flat and open. I deployed the
cavalry command on the left, then Elephant-Cid, Ally and the C-in-C on
my right with most of hid Bd on a steep hill. The Spanish had a command
of 30 Ps, 4 Ax and a general facing my right, deployed on a steep hill.
Next to them was a small Andalusian ally the two commands of Kn and Ps
supported Sp - rather more Sp that I had expected, or wanted to fight.
Dave's ally started unreliable but came on stream in bound 4 - just in
time really. Fortunately for me his right had rather indifferent PIPs
and despite being led by the C-in-C could not bring it's Sp to bear on
my Cv to really cause me problems. As usual the Hindu's adopted a simple
strategy of running straight forward to get as many El in combat as
quickly as possible. The one tweak was Elephant-Cid side stepping away
from some Sp to help face off the Kn incoming on my Cv. Once again great
tactics, er sorry, great dice were the order of the day and with my
Bw(O) shooting a Kn dead first shot and Elephant-Cid being able to turn
a Kn who was next to the C-in-C the Spanish right was soo heading back
to Spain. To make matters worse for Dave his central sub-general met my
C-in-C and although the command survived this it was then relatively
immobile. The now reliable Andalusians were tied up chasing my by now
sponno Bd(F) and so were effectively out of the game. With the allied El
failing to make any headway against a supported Sp block it was left to
Elephant-Cid to take it in the flank with rather inevitable results,
breaking the Spanish army. Another quite quick game where I again had
the combat luck where I needed it. So despite it looking a bit dodgy at
set up I won 30-2.
Lat game Saturday had the Hindus again defending this time against Paul
Stovell's
of H(G) nicely across my central sector and left - very handly. There
was also a small patch of rough on Pauls right. I deployed my C-in-C on
the left, then the ally, then Elephant-Cid and finally the cavalry
command. Paul had a 2 elemnt PIP dump facing my right, 2 commands of
mixed troops facing my centre and left and an Arabo-Aramean ally
stretched along his front apart from in front of the micro-command (all
properly described and deployed I hasten to add so no floating command
issue here).
Paul made a cautious advance in his first bound which didn't give
anything away, then in my bound my ally was unreliable - must have been
getting tired. Ah, well it has to happen occasionally. So I decided to
attack as usual anyway as it seems the best thing to do with this army
:-) It soon became apparant that the luck I'd had in the first two games
had run out somewhat as single ranked Bw started to shoot my Cv(S) dead.
It also turned out that Paul could roll up 3 on demand with light troops
against El as he swiftly despatched 2 including my C-in-C - however, I
rolled high enough to save the command but the writing was on the wall
for them. However, with the ally back on line from bound 4 and
Elephant-Cid looking to cause trouble with Paul's mounted I managed to
catch and destroy the LH(F) in his micro-command thus breaking it, so I
was ahead. Of course my C-in-C's command did break although my luck
appeared to have returned in part as it held out for 4 bounds when 1/2EE
off breaking and in this time I reduced Paul's ally to close to
breaking. We now had one of those scrambles to get the opposing army. I
got Paul's ally, however, he also got my army on total losses with his
1/2EE from breaking for the same reason. Great game with some real luck
swings and also my longest of the weekend as it went to when time was
called. 8-24. (Actually at the time we thought it was a mutual break,
but I realised the following morning that I'd not added some losses in a
bound or so before and my army had gone before Paul's)
Sunday morning and feeling well placed with 69, but needing 2 good
results to get anywhere. I'm drawn against Wayne Dare who is using a
"classic" Patrician, i.e. LH, supported Ax and Kn - could be hard to
catch if he doesn't feel like fighting. Once again I'm defending and we
get a couple of woods on the right and a few inconseqential H(G). The
important factor id the one wood effectively cuts off my right sector so
I deploy to its left but it gives
attack on my relatively immobile army. I deploy my C-in-C on the right,
with some Bd(F) in the wood, the ally, Elephant-Cid and the cavalry on
the open flank with the Bw up front to extend the line (being (O)
they'll be OK).
style.
The game also began in traditional Patsy style with the LH coming
forward to delay and
right behind the screen to gang up on my C-in-C. However, I had a
cunning plan to counter this - roll stonkingly good PIPs combined with
Wayne rolling indifferent PIPs so I could keep real pressure on all his
commands :-) Add to this a hanging flank to tempt him in and we would
see. Basically the "plan" worked and I started to compress the
Patsy's
into a smaller and smaller part of the table. Wayne was also caught out
by a couple of 3.1 rules bit having not played much for the last year or
so and this meant some Bd(F) he'd hoped to catch with LH managed to flee
the odd LH and the press forward and take on some Ax in the open - the
brought on the fight with my hanging flank somewhat before Wayne could
really mass his troops. Whilst this was going on a couple of poor PIP
dice meant I was able to catch some LH with El and also Elephant-Cid
tempted 3 LH to have a pop at him when he rushed forward of the rest of
the army. This meant I collected a few LH that I probably wouldn't have
got otherwise. The decisive action, however, was when
isolated El with supported Ax, including overlap, which I promptly
stopmed and the took out a couple more to break one of his commands. As
my Cv were on top of the baggage at this point it was a simple mopping
up exercise after that to finish them off. Tey another quick game and
31-1; I'm on 100 points!
Last game and I'm on table 2 facing Dave Handley. Now as Dave is using
the same army in
I'll say is that Dave defended for the 5th time in the competition and
the table was mainly open. Once again I had all the luck - in fact when
Dave got lucky in a couple of combat early on it just made trouble for
him. I diced my way out of a couple of mistakes and nothing Dave tried
came off. I won 30-2 in 7 bounds.
So I was on 130 and the "clubhouse leader" with the top table game
still
going on. This was between Jez Evans and Graham Briggs - Early Hoplite
Greek Vs Fanatic Berber. I had great hopes that this wouldn't get
further than a 7-3 one way or the other, however, Jez beat Graham and so
finished on 133 and took first place. Terry Shaw placed 3rd.
However, 2nd place in possibly my last major GB DBM comp, and my best
ever finish in a major open comp, I am certainly not complaining :-)
Well done to Jez - a victory over Graham to win a major comp is no mean
feat