I took Gupta Indians to Challenge.
My army was
4 x 3 Elephants: Tribal Loose, Average, Protected, Shove
3 x 3 Spearmen & 6 Archers: Tribal Loose, Average, 1/3 Protected, Short Spear; 2/3 Unprotected Experienced Bow
1 x 9 Javelinmen: Tribal Loose, Average, Protected, Unskilled Javelin
1 x 4 Indian cavalry: Formed Loose, Average, Protected, Unskilled Javelin
2 x 4 Indian cavarly: Formed Loose, Poor, Protected, Unskilled Javelin, Combat Shy
2 x 6 Lancers: Formed Loose, Superior, Protected, Charging Lancer, Melee Expert
An army that has 13 TuGs and breaks on 7.
Game 1 vs Champa
Hats off to Roger Pitfield for fielding 2 to a base Elephants that looked brilliant. The Champa had 15 elephants, 4 lots of 3 normal ones and 1 lot of 3 with bolt shooters. Terrain didn't affect either side. Roger deployed all his elephants in a big block on his left flank, so I attacked with my lancers on the other flank! Elephant combats don't last long when your opponent rolls a skull on the opening green vs green dice... I quickly lost two elephant units but my bigger foot units pinned the rest of Roger's infantry whilst my lancers broke through and turned on his flanks.
15 pts
Game 2 vs Northern Song
Stephen was using a very powerful Northern Song army. Nothing really worked for me. My archers were outshot by crossbowmen. I used my cavalry poorly and my lancers went down to crossbow/polearm units. In trying to get extra points I went down to a defeat.
4 pts
Game 3 vs Rajput Indian and Tibetan ally
A good match for me. My lancers outmatched Peter's lancers. My elephants and foot combined to defeat Peter's elephants (okay so I got a bit lucky as well as Elephant vs Elephant is always going to be chancy). My protected spear allowed my archers to outshoot Peter's unprotected archers and my elephants neutralised the Tibetan cataphracts.
15 pts
Game 4 vs Takeda Japanese
A cagey game this. I was worried by all the long spear, the lancers and the pirates with their powerbow. Cid was more worried by my army than I thought he should have been although to be fair he had some dreadful cards slowing him down. This allowed me to work around his left flank. When his left flank pirates advanced and I had to stop them with my lancers I felt justified in being worried. They threw plenty of skulls with green dice and my lancers never had a chance to break off. Fortunately my other flank was progressing well so when we ran out of time I had done reasonably well. Given more time I might have even had an outright win.
8 pts
Overall 42 points and tied 7th out of 20. The Gupta is an interesting army. The lancers give you some punch. Mixing the elephants and the foot provides quite a good threat, but manouvre is not their strength. Line them up and advance is the best you can hope for really. Stars of the weekend were the Javelinmen who despite having only unskilled javelin proved remarkably resilient and the poor cavalry who proved really attractive bait to my opponents and generally managed to avoid dying. At a miserly 156 pts for the TuG (yes TuG not element!) they showed that not everything has to be superior with multiple weapons to play a useful role.
Thanks to my opponents for some great games.
Richard
Interesting read - thanks. I particularly like the note on the poor cavalry. I am hoping to run Post Abbasid Seljuk soon and aim to have 10 Tribal Loose, poor, unprotected, combat shy Ayyarun at a princely 100 points for the TUG!
HH
In my first game the poor cavalry charged an average unit in the flank. Yellow vs White (Flank +4: Poor & Combat Shy 2) - I missed. My opponent then turned, was Yellow to my White and rolled a skull! Fortunately my lancers broke the unit at this point, saving my blushes...
In my last game they actually broke a unit with unskilled shooting (they got a wound) - admittedly after it had been charged in the rear by an elephant unit...
At least my guys were protected. Poor and unprotected is not a good recipe if you get shot at...
Richard
Or charged when combat shy by average, experienced samurai archers, as the War Doctor found out!
Not often they go in as a unit of 6 and beat up an 8! :D
My report is going up later, but thank you Richard for all your hard work with umpiring all us nutters!
Quote from: lionheartrjc on April 29, 2019, 04:16:07 PM
In my first game the poor cavalry charged an average unit in the flank. Yellow vs White (Flank +4: Poor & Combat Shy 2) - I missed. My opponent then turned, was Yellow to my White and rolled a skull! Fortunately my lancers broke the unit at this point, saving my blushes...
In my last game they actually broke a unit with unskilled shooting (they got a wound) - admittedly after it had been charged in the rear by an elephant unit...
At least my guys were protected. Poor and unprotected is not a good recipe if you get shot at...
Richard
They will be well away from any hostiles!