The adventures of Saint Gerontius and the Christian Nubians

- Phil Malthus.

With the usual shortage of Kiwis willing to spend a paltry $3000 for a weekends wargaming in Switzerland, I made up a quarter of the NZ unrepresentative team for the Nations Cup there this year. Our team was Angus Osborne (capt), Dave Madigan, myself, and Duncan Richards, but alas Duncan had to withdraw due to pressure of work, and after a flurry of panicky phone calls (Steve Ladanyi & Greg Jennings were unavailable on financial grounds), we roped in an English wargamer, Jeremy Morgan, who at least has 3 Kiwi (& 1 Aussie) grandparents ... well, I said it was a panic :)

The Grandson format has 4 players per team, one per time period (roughly per Army List Book). Angus took his Huns for Bk 2, Dave had his prized Later Hungarians, Jer brought his Skythians for Bk 1, and I dusted off my Christian Nubians - having last year taken Kushans and struggled against a sea of Patricians, I wanted to avoid Bk 2 myself!

Scoring btw is 3 points if you break the enemy army without breaking yourself, 2pts if you break an enemy command and have a 20% difference in elements lost, 0 pts if your army breaks & you don't break his, and 1pt otherwise, which - given it's totalled across 4 players - can lead to some wide swings in the leader board (as you will see later).

My list:
CinC with 4 CvS, 9 Light Horse and 7 Psiloi skirmishers
Subgeneral with 20 Warband and 7 Psiloi skirmishers
Subgeneral with 6 Camels (Superior), 8 Bow (O), and 3 Light horse
Beja ally with 3 CavO, 6 Light horse, 4 Bow (I), and 2 Auxilia

Game 1: defending in winter vs Alan Cutner, Later Pre Islamic Arab (strong winds blowing from my left)

This one looked pretty grim from the start. Playing UK#2, who placed 2nd last year, and facing an army that does the same things as mine, but is bigger and wider. The terrain was negligible, with both sides having such similar armies - a couple of patches of scrub on the right, halfway between the armies. I deployed with the Beja allies on my left, then the CinC with the court nobles and light horse, then the warband, and finally the Camels and archers on the far right, amid the scrub. Alan had a command of Camels and Light horse facing my left, then another of Camels, blades and archers facing the CinC, a nomad ally of Light Horse and skirmishers facing the warband, and another command of blade, archers and Camels facing my right (perfect deployment for him!). Jer wandered over to have a look, and muttered '0-10', a judgement I pretty much agreed with.

However, it didn't turn out like that. On the left, the Beja pranced forward, then had to fall back again pretty smartly under the combined threat of camels and light horse; while the CinC lured his camels forward with more light horse. The Warband started shoving his nomad allies back (slow work), while on the right, the opposing camels manoeuvred to fight each other.

I slowed up the advance of his camels on the left by bringing up the Beja archers (only 4 Bw(I), it's true, but it was enough to bluff him for a bit), while I used the CinC's cavalry to lure his central camels forward - I threatened the Blades with them, so he had to commit the Camels to cover them: but I'd made sure to have a bolthole to pull the cavalry back into, then whacked the Camels with my skirmishers (who, having an overlap on both ends, chewed them up pretty thoroughly, tho it took a while).

The warband meanwhile gradually shoved the nomads back, picking off a couple of overrash light horse, and drove a column of skirmishers off in confusion, then peeled half of them towards the right, to threaten the blades in that direction. I reinforced the rest of the warband with the CinC's light horse, who had been pulled safely out of the way. On the far right, the Camels were still manoeuvring & and threatening each other, but my archers had come up to face off against his, and - having the wind behind their shoulder, and being a higher grade anyway, started chewing holes in his line of archers.

As the Camberley on the right finally approached a clash, my archers kept pecking away more holes in his (and fortuitously also killed a couple of blades that ventured into range), with the result that his command broke before the camels actually got into action!

At this point, with finishing time approaching, I threw everything I could at his centre - I had 3 shots at killing a nomad Light horse (none of whom could recoil), and the CinC led his cavalry into the central Blade force, giving three chances of killing an enemy element - alas, none of these came off (any one of them would have broken either the nomads or the othercentral command, and given me a 10-0 win). On counting up, my losses were 14% versus his 33%, so it was a 1-1 result (to get a 2-1 required that you have a 20% difference in casualties and have broken more commands of the enemy than had been broken of your own. If you broke the enemy army completely, no matter your casualties, it scored 3-0).

Still, for a game I fully expected to lose, I was moderately happy with the result. Why Alan seemed to forget about his assault on my left, where I thought I was utterly doomed, I have no idea ...

My team mates had mixed fortunes - Jer got a 2-1, Angus went down 0-3 through some truly egregious luck, and Dave also went down 0-3, so we were on a total of 3, and placed about 4th to last ... (notably the Aussies had gone down 0-12 btw!)

Game 2: defending in summer vs Khorasanian (Yonas ? of Germany#2)

The terrain was a little more significant here, though I didn't expect it to be: there were a series of large dunes on the enemy baseline, on the left, and a smaller area of dunes on the far right, also on his baseline. I thought they would be totally immaterial, but my opponent played incredibly backfootedly. I deployed with the CinC on the left, then the Archers & Camels, then the Warband, and the Beja stretched out on the right. My opponent more or less wedged himself between the dunes, and kept all his force, except 4 light horse used to slow my advance a little, right near the baseline. He had three columns of Cav (S), plus some Auxilia backed by archers near the left dunes, an elephant in the centre, and had a Dailami ally with more Auxilia garrisoning the dunes on the right. Oh, there was also a contingent of spearmen just in front of his baggage.

I shoved his light horse back fairly briskly, and sent the camels forward promptly, as fast as I could. The CinC - having nothing facing him to speak of - was pulled over to the centre, behind the Camels to give a reserve, while the warband were wheeled slightly and pointed straight at the Dailami, and the Beja demonstrated, more or less ineffectively, against the far right. He pulled two columns of cavalry over to face the Beja (rather slowly & ineptly), and brought the Dailami out to fight the warband, while the Auxilia on the left advanced very cautiously around the edge of the left-hand dunes - he also demonstrated with the other cavalry column on that flank, but as soon as my archers came up, they pulled back post-haste, into reserve, _right_ on the edge of the table.

Well, it was over fairly promptly too - the Camels shoved his light horse back onto his reserves, then gobbled them up: then they combined with the archers to fall upon his auxilia (barring a couple lost to his nelly) and stomp them fairly rapidly. THe Warband meanwhile swarmed over his Dailami and chopped them up - having two open flanks to wrap around, and considerable numerical advantage, this was hardly surprising (to me - my opponent seemed to expect to win here!). That was enough to break his army. His columns of cavalry on the right never got to engage the Beja - despite numerical and quality advantages, he would have had to advance into a U shape, and would have been flanked pdq if he'd tried it.

This round had been brighter for most of us - Angus & Jer both got 3-0's as well, but alas Dave - despite seeing the enemy list in advance - got done 0-3, by a truly _awful_ Hungarian army .. still don't really understand how he managed it :/

Round 3 - defending in summer vs Southern Dynasties Chinese (Stefano, Italy #2)

This looked moderately promising at the outset. There was a river down the left-hand side, a patch of scrub right in the middle, on my side, and a series of scrubby areas down the right hand side of the table, nearer me than my opponent.

I formed up with the CinC on the left, with the Camels & Bows behind him, the warband in the central scrub, and the Beja to the rear/right of him. Figuring the warband were a poor shot vs his foot, his knights, _and_ his elephant, the initial plan was to sit in the scrub & see if he would try bypassing them, while skirmishing on both sides... if he didn't bypass but sat there, I could manoeuvre the camels into hitting either his Blade or his Knights (ha!).

My opponent deployed with Blade, backed by Psiloi by the river, knights and cavalry in the centre, and Spear backed by Psiloi on the right.

However, the dice decided otherwise. My movement dice for the CinC & the Camels were truly appalling all game - for the CinC it was (IIRC) 1,1,1,1,1,2,1, and for the Camel command 1,2,1,3,1,2,4. The dice did average out overall, as the warband got a string of 6's, but that was little consolation.

So my left 2 commands were essentially paralysed & hung out to dry - forced to watch the Blades come up & tear apart my light horse, picking off several, while the camels reluctantly came forward. Worse, I tried to manoeuvre the CinC and his cavalry across the front of the camels - not realising my pip dearth would _continue_ - and of course they got broken up by the camels plowing through them.

With all this happening, I could see if I sat there, I would lose both commands and the game, so I decided to have a shot - a longshot I know - with the warband. They turned right, sprinted across to face the spearmen (instead of the knights!), turned back, and formed up ... my opponent remarked, a little bitterly, that they weren't Warband, they were Greenjackets, after my 4th successive 6 on their pip dice!*

So, with the end approaching on the left, I plunged in with the warband ... so much for that idea! I lost 8 of them at first contact, despite managing to get an overlap to start with. That left me with 3 commands, each 1 from breaking... the Camels, having finally got amongst his Blades, did a bit better, picking off 3 or 4 of them, but it was all too little too late - Stefano managed to both kill more Warband (I lost another 6 on the next round), and kill the CinC, to comprehensively whomp me :( ... despite which, this was prolly the game I enjoyed most this year - Stefano was a real gentleman & a pleasure to get demolished by :)

Next year I'm going to take Regulars!! .... no, really!

The rest of the team had a slightly better time - Jer was also beaten 0-3, but Angus got a 1-1 (almost a 2-1, he had the upper hand but not enough time). The real shame was Dave, who got a 1-1, but was all over his opponent like a rash. Unfortunately his opponent knew this & played so slowly that they only got 8 rounds in .. .pretty appalling from a very experienced player of his calibre.

* Well, his English wasn't up to that, but Italian gestures made up the deficit of language nicely :)

That left us with 14 points all up, and right down near the bottom (3rd to last maybe?). However, fortune smiled upon us, last round we had the very inexperienced Swiss!

Round 4 - attacking in summer vs Italian Ostrogoth (??)

A good matchup for my army anyway, and it was all rather easy. There was a steep knoll in the centre, another one on the right-centre, and a series of steep hills lining the righthand edge and the right of my base-edge. I formed up with the CinC in the wide open spaces on the left, the Camels and archers in the centre, the warband on the right-hand knoll, and the Beja to their right, but held back at the end of the valley. My opponent had three commands of identical composition, 11 knights and 8 bow (inferior). He deployed one command on my left, angled back to rest on the baseline, with archers behind the knights; the second one in the gap between the two knolls (again archers behind knights), and the third command pointing at the Beja, this time with the knights in 2 separate columns.

On the left, I sent the light horse forward to play with his knights - he advanced to counter them, and let me slip around his outside flank, and from there I could just roll up his line .. easy pickings.

In the centre, he advanced to rest his flank on the central knoll, but neglected to secure it, so I poured Psiloi up over it, and hit his knights in flank, taking out several. The rest then galloped forward, to meet my Camels frontally while the archers took advantage of the open flank he exposed. That was over just as quick.

The columns of knights on the right advanced towards the Beja, but I sent the Beja foot up to line the side of the hills - if he kept going ahead, he would get flanked there also. He elected not to, but instead swung his CInC & one column of knights across, to try and intervene in the Camel melee - this left him right at the foot of the knoll filled with Warband, who couldn't resist charging down and hitting the knights in the flank, turning them (so no recoil, as he was a block) and getting overlaps - all too easy, & all three commands broken the same turn.

My compatriots had done just as well, all scoring 3-0's, so we got a massive 12, & jumped to 26 - enough for 4th place (indeed, if the Aussies had managed to do a little better against UK#1, we would have had 3rd place, as the UK team finished on 27).

Overall, a pretty soft draw ... but next year I really should take a Regular army - that's 2 years in a row where I've lost one battle because of appalling Irregular pip dice :/