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Mortem et Gloriam - Ak Koyunlu (White Sheep Turkoman) vs Seljuk Turks

 Okay, slight historical mismatch, but it was an army I knew I could put out straight away against Neil's beautifully painted Seljuks. It's roughly the same patch of land, it will do, only 350 years out...
Oh, and it's a chance to use this true Legend as my Legendary CinC!


This is, along with my Tudors, is one of my least successful armies. I am useless with horse archers and mounted skirmishers. I am not a horse lord like Nik nor Paul, so this was going to be tight.

My list, only 9 unit, squeak!


Well, after a strategic intercept. this is also a good start. I was attacking, on the plains, in 'Nomral' terrain, and I'm not used to this many scouting cards. White/Black =0%, Green = 10%, Yellow is 20% and Red is 40%. So Neil scores 100, I score 140, so rather outscout him by 40%.

Neil heads to the safety of a hill on the right, avoiding the terrain on the left, and basically we both ignored the left-hand side of the table! He deployed in two lines, lights to the front, heavies (including exceptional cavalry (ulp)) in the second line.

My plan, such as it was, was to pin to the front with my skilled and experienced shooters, avoid the Exceptionals, and sweep in from the left with my lancers.

Hold, on, a, minute... Neil has his skirmishers in two ranks. That's not good for him! He's firing at -1, even with skilled. Hoping he switches his flexibles soon? 

Oh, you've noticed my generals. The Farmer (mediocre), Blitzer (competent), and Timmy (Talented).
 

Timmy, with skilled archers (+1 to shooting), closes to 0.0001 BW of Neil's 4 base strong skirmishers, who are unprotected, so within a BW gift me a further a +1 to shooting as well, and we roll four yellow dice. It's almost as good as my Samurai archers, anyway, four yellows should be lethal.
Yellow dice, typical!

Just to rub salt into the wounds, Blitzer and his two units of experienced shooters, firing at over 1BW, so no upgrades, shooting four white dice do a Gaukroger and kill two bases straight out!

The next turn, out of sheer embarressment, make up for it by rolling this! There was a four base unit right in front of us before this shot (2-0).

While Blitzer and co move up to within a BW, needing three wound equivalent to break the unit, and roll three green dice... Oh come on!

So, where have we got to?  I am pushing Neil back into the corner on the right, hoping to get the shots in to kill those two units. Neil has sneaked through a gap with two skirmishers, one of whom was lined up with the flank of my lancers who had been caught by Neil's exceptional cavalry. Shawn and his guard were engaged with a unit of Skirmishers. Neil tried to force back my average short spear cavalry on left as my other lancers move to engage the superiors that are in his front.

Shawn charges in. My slightly beaten up cavalry retire fron Neil's superiors quickly, while his exceptionals keep chewing lumps out of my right-hand lancers, aided by a flank charge by his skirmishers. I tried to catch them to stop them, but fell short, badly.

Shawn and his friends smashed into the cavalry (they had switched flexible to loose), superior (+1) with  short spear (+1) and (+2) for a legendary general. Guess which file missed? The lancers and Neil's superior cavalry were hitting each other, lots.

At this point, it became obvious that things were going very badly for the Seljuks, Neil couldn't hit for toffee, even when he was up. My experienced shooting cavalry were breaking the two units in front of Blitzer. Timmy was bringing his skilled shooters back to threaten the flanks of Neil's skirmishers and then his exceptionals (who had failed to kill my average lancers). Shawn and co broke through (4-0) were into the backfield. To their left my average cavalry was going to come back to threaten his superiors flank as they were getting beaten by my lancers.


We called it there. We talked it through and figured it would have been 15-4 to the Ak Koyunlu and Shawn. A good game, and my dice had been great. Somehow, I had managed to get horse archers to work, now if I could build a similar list I might use it for 'God Wills It' later in the year. 

Or something else...

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