Art De La Guerre

[Hazelbark]

So after missing a few years, I got back to Cold Barrage. And with the new errata I switched at the last minute from a cunning experimental Roman list to an experimental Three Kingdom Chinese (Wei) list.

I wanted to test out a few theories and see what the polearm change meant in practical terms.

List
Cao Cao Strategist
1 HC Bow (elite)
1 HC Bow
1 MC Bow
2 LH Bow
1 Crossbow
2 LI Crossbow
4 HI Polearm with missile support

Cao Hung Ordinary
1 Crossbow
1 LI Crossbow
4 HI Polearm with missile support

Cao Ren Ordinary included
1 HC Bow (elite)*
1 HC Bow
2 LH Bow


The core plan was two blocks of 4 HI Polearm that would maneuver to close in a line and if the enemy was agile mounted the two blocks could more rapidly be shifted or mis-deployments made to matter less. Then the flanks would have the shooty Cav for harassments and enough power that a dangling flank would be picked on. Honestly, I felt like the Cav was underpowered and could end up in trouble against superior aggressive mounted. I took the missile support to toughen the foot since I wanted to be prepared for knights if the open had me meet them.

I went for corps structure that allowed me flexibility to mass all the mounted if the table warranted that. (The included small corps could be on its own flank or next to strategist at deployment). The games would develop with everyone with the cav on both wings however.

The Strategist corps has a lot of pieces and I worried that it didn’t have enough CP and I was right. As it became more engaged often, it did not have the CP to do everything I wanted. The other two corps managed fine. To make this work better probably needs a larger rethink of the main design.

Game one Mike K's Chola (Tamil)

Two pieces of rough fell nicely for the Chola to nestle between them at deployment. This sort of worked against the Chola because it incentivized the problem of deploying with flanks in the air. But Michael understood and as he saw my CV race to envelop and harass his flanks he took steps to make sure nothing too nasty occurred. This did get him to spread out some. In the vital turn, where I hoped Michael would sit, he wisely said its now or never and started to rush me. This was important because he diagnosed that I would pick his flanks apart if he gave me time. So he tried to give me no time.
He had IIRC bad CP so the natural difficulty of his army meant he protected the flanks but not ideally. Enough to stop disaster but not enough to exploit my relatively weak shooty cav. I made the mistake of forgetting my dismounts as I would have loved to have dismounted CV bow into MI Sw with missile support to absorb his rush. But he had to rush and smashed 3 El and many impact sword into polearms. I was able to have my left hooking and torturing his flank with low CP, but his other wing was largely unopposed fortunately I had that hit me 1-2 turns later. The small Cav corps successfully held that wing off for just the timing I needed.
The great crash was mostly a lot of duds thanks to missile support. In the succeeding melee round of my turn, I had two 6-1s in his favor. The ensuring rounds had some swings, but my left flank getting into him and his left being 1-2 turns late to the party allowed the grind to finish him off.

I wanted to see this exact interaction of the Elephants and support into the polearms and it worked well although my luck was a touch (not radically) better than Michael’s except his CP were pretty subpar. It was not the polearms that mattered here but he missile support and my width on the first round of impact.


Game two Dan B Three Kingdom Koreans.
History! My peeps fought his peeps. Plus or minus.

“That Dan” not this Dan invaded. He had a corps of impetuous HC; a corps with 5 cataphracts and a corps of infantry. Since he was fighting a land war in Asia, he fell for the 3rd oldest trick. He put his mostly MI over on the flank to deal with the rough and essentially almost put them out of the game and left a lovely gap between his cataphracts and foot about many UD wide and only 2 Bowmen to hold it.
The good news for him is he aced the deployment on the other wing. His HC started deployed to move to the open flank and then rush down against my CV/LH. Then his Cats were next to them and he had 9 impact widths and two more MC bow. Fortunately for me almost my whole army was available to face him.
Wisely he started rushing me. But the fast impetuous HC raced up and I moved some polearms over and crossbow away from his charge to create a shoulder for him to strike with 2 HC and his other two drifted on to chase my CV/LH to my board edge until my shooting had hits on him and then my CV swarmed back. His HC hit the polearm and actually was grinding pretty well.
A gap opened now between his HC and his Cats so I started to push into that with infantry which also let my crossbow not get ridden down.
Meanwhile the small CV corps pushed in and his two bowmen shot me up and smartly moved up to stop the two HC bow hoping to buy time for the foot Corps to swing in. “That Dan” was worried about an ambush in a plantation and while he was playing find the zucchini, I got a critical turn to spare. My included general had two hits and was Zoc’d unable to retreat so naturally he charged the bow. The two bow would die but they and his foot shooters took out a HC and LH but again a small price to pay to keep ¼ of his army out of the game. Meanwhile the general and LH finished advancing over where the bow had been.
Back on the other flank 2 polearm assisted the 3 CV and 2 LH to finish off his 4 HC.
Meanwhile the Cataphracts stopped unsure whether the new polearm rules should be tested and now their flanks were being picked apart and the polearm line was wider and it seemed increasing daunting so he waited for Korean Grouchy’s infantry to arrive to save the day. The HC dead. The LH went through to his camp and his army broke before the Cats had to be dealt with completely.
Had “that Dan” put his infantry In close and also fully committed the Cataphracts in support of the HC impetuous I might not have been able to take advantage of the gaps to break up and flank his forces.
As I said to “that Dan” afterwards a hard lesson I had to learn was you often have to risk your army to win and the cautious moment with Cataphracts should be reconsidered. Certainly, there is a time to be cautious, but he had a good position even without his infantry then he paused his center which gave me breathing room.

Game three
Phil G and the Scots Gallowglass.

The Scots isles are a list I’ve looked at before. An infinite number of HI 2HW and plenty of highland MI sword with bow. The highlanders are internal and very cool, but they are vulnerable to aggressive play. I hoped to see all of them. But Phil went for what I consider a wiser approach and hired every John Scotsman with a big sharp axe and his cousin. Also, the Scots only have mountains so when I attacked, I had to risk a terrain mess.

Terrain fell heavily on one flank again and the Scots did not have a great anchor. They did have 12 HI widths (4 elite) plus some mediocre reserves and then 3-4 highlanders and some MI 2hw to hold the terrain wing.

Phil set the Gallowglass back a little to avoid getting in the 4UD to prevent a 2nd move but misjudged it. He kicked himself on this because it opened the possibility my CV wing could turn his flank. In reality Phil would still get the moves into to prevent his line being flanked but the price was he had to push forward in a way that partially kinked his battle like between the corps. His MI corps was off again too far and one of the big Scottish mountains was in the way. I understand why he was there, because there was a clear right hook that a fast moving small, mounted corps could take that would get into his rear if it was left wide open. But the price was high in my view.

His 12+ 2hw and my 8 polearm meant that once armies closed the rolling up was going to get bloody very fast and even HI were going to take lots of hits and die fast. I was a bit horrified. Essentially, he had a HI width that offset more than my main two corps. And HC bow isn’t going to run down HI anytime soon…or so I believed. If he got his highlanders on line I was in trouble. So I viewed the clock as a dangerous thing for me.

I raced up the Cavalry to start shooting and pin the Scots, hoping to freeze the main line and get some CV past the flank to support the polearms striking. Phil’s move to shut that off wasn’t as parade ground as he hoped but it worked. What the Scots didn’t count on (And for five centuries the English would teach them) was missile fire. It was a bonnie blue clear day and our Chinese arrows fell with devastating effect. The very first full turn of volley fire saw 7 hits on the Scots. Phil gulped and shoved forward. Again he was required to close off the flank and chase off my skirmishers. But they returned and laid more shots. When the LI crossbow are doing hits to your HI elite you curse the lack of the Scottish wind. The missile fire just stayed devastating. I contemplated about facing my polearms and retiring to let the missile firm do more damage. I figured Phil would then halt not being under threat so I was still going to have to risk the close action. To say the missile fire died down would by a lie. Phil was good natured, but every shooting phase just was unfailingly brutal. Before the lines fully closed two of the Scots HI died from bow fire. A LI was also dead and the Scots had a further scattering of hits that put him on something like 12-13 cohesion losses. Phil knew he had to close and it was getting grim. To compound it the Scottish CP were thin. I am not sure he ever had more than a 3 roll, but if he did it was too little and the wrong time. He was left with a choice of mostly stand and get shot or charge (and get shot).
His MI highland wing tried to swing in but it was slow and he got some shots off at the small cavalry wing. But the mountain the fire and angle meant he just could not catch a break to build losses on me. My included general kept moving into the gallowglass and he was one that shot the HI dead. It is possible, we did not keep track, that the included elite general never missed inflicting a shooting hit. And when I stood to melee the 2nd wounded gallowglass my recollection was that went pretty well too. Cao Ren was indeed a major contributor to the tournament victory.

Now Phil’s lousy CP and the requirement to charge at an angle to protect his flank created a gap in the center. It wasn’t a yawning gap but enough. I leaped forward pinned his lines on either side and stuck a polearm in the gap to start flanking the line. Phil’s only reserve was levy that heroically were going to try and prevent this from getting real bad. Phil had to commit his reserve mediocre 2hw to replace the line where the units dropped from shooting.

Phil had to charge so my polearms, so I got the benefit of the missile support. But his shot up troops could not get enough advantages. His shot up HI charged the HC bow which stood because zero to zero as he had hits and I needed time.

Finally, Phil’s highlanders started exerting dangerous pressure. They killed a LH and CV but the general Cao Ren disengaged and was dancing to survive and avoided getting caught. The gap in the center started to rip open in Phil’s line while my right-hand polearms finally start to evaporate as Phil’s dice were not all bad. Over on my left the shooting and the holes in the Scots line also got worse until the army collapsed.

From that first fusillade I think Phil had an ominous feeling but carried on as best as his army would let him. The Scots Isle’s don’t have much of a fire brigade if the plan goes sideways.

Lessons:
To others on deployment. Don’t assume that MI deployed too far to the side can get in fast enough against a mounted army moving hard on the far flank. In each game I was kind of enough to have 95% of my army against about 75% of the enemy.

I did lose 15 or 16 out of 23 in each game. These were messy wins and not having to fight 3-4 important enemy units certainly mattered.

For me

Polearms. They are good, but as I reflect, they are basically identical to 2hW that we had in version 3. Before the errata these armies were absent. Now they are playable. I was worried they might be too powerful but being down usually at impact can often be bad. For the most part where my polearms lost in the first round, I would lose the unit unless something like a flank attack intervened. The polearm adds a dicey-ness that when you get good luck it gets better. I can see a bit more interest in elite or armor to offset the enemy polearm. But I don’t see polearms as a game changer except there will be more variety of armies on the table, which is good. I can see armored roman legions roughing up the polearms convincingly. Polearms like the Scots 2hw are very vulnerable to shooting. I can see the idea of 1-2 polearms re-emerging in the medieval armies. The are expensive as HI and I do not know how often I will field 8 again.

Missile support paid off in two ways. First everyone was nice enough to charge me so I got that which made the first round a bit of cushion. Then negating the furious charge of mounted was handy especially against Michael’s elephants.

But when you add the polearm and missile support together that is 10 points. For what could be a very defensive force.

Thanks to Walt for running the event and three gentleman opponents.

[PHGamer]

I'll be posting the flipside of this AAR in about 2 weeks time. Stay tuned!
_________________
Phil
Japanese telephones work pretty much like ours, except the person on the other end can't understand you.