I was now to meet a more historical opponent a Northern Tang army under their revered leader Lee Sanders,
Do not trust the Chinese as they will claim I invaded them ! Being a tricky chinese he went for mountains and got a protected flank
I think most of my opponents were wondering how to tackle my not so manoeuvrable thin cats and so deployed not too "forward" . Having an open center was always a pleasure for me.
Notice that the Tang Guard Cavalry is deployed to the back; I will have, once again, to go for it !
Confident allies that's good
What I did here is mixing 2 allies. The internal allied general deployed with a Cataphract TUG in the middle of the 2 allied Nepalese TUGS who were facing better Tang cavalry but the Tang cavalry would struggle to beat the cataphracts
The picture is not that good, but you can see that the other cats are deployed on the right flank with the Tarim Basin ally to the rear as I wanted to keep options open
The shooty power of the Tang infantry is on his left ( my right ) . His melee expert first rank and the superior guards are not to be underestimated as I will often fight green on green .
The black painted infantry tang tug is the guard one and is his anchor
I advanced cataphract speed , no rush but a strong line
The tang army rules over the mountains which I avoided . My opinion is that he should not have gone so deeply in the mountains I could not occupy but try to shoot and shoot from the plain and make as much damage as he could before my charges .
I dreaded that moment and used my extreme right TUG as a shield but once again, must be raining
Beginning to put pressure
Now going closer and ready to engage . The rightmost cataphract is AV but I will use the 2 SUP ones to go for the guards, infantry and cavalry . The TUG that will go for the guard lancers is now 3 rank deep as to lower the chance of a disastrous shatter
That leaves a dangerous open space so as you can see the Khotanese allies are now coming to cover that flank
Here they are the TUGs are not in melee but shooting at each other
Ready for battle in the center . Note the skirmishers on the left. They are there to soften the Tang lancers
My left flank is also covered . My cats face the SUP enemy cavalry, the Nepalese the average ones ..this might get very interesting
Covering the flank
Going in vs the foot guard was painfull
So what happened here
My SUP cats managed to break the Tang foot guard and went to hit another TUG who was blocked by an AV cataphract TUG of mine which had engaged in melee 2 Tang foot UGs in the hope of blocking them and it worked more or less .
here shooting went on with a slight advantage to the Tang
Well the Tang cavalry refused to cooperate and retreated once again
So what happened here is that my cats that had engaged the infantry broke while breaking the infantry and the last SUP cats managed to break the tang guard CL ....a now very empty center
here the fight went on and I will manage on charge and melee to break the infantry TUG that's in the center. It went downhill . I will kill his first rank and after that it will be a close fight, green on green and I will make the fatal wound that will kill his army but that was because I had the bag on that turn
because on that flank things were not going to plan and he could have killed 2 of my TUGS .;so I had a small advantage bu choosing the right melee was paramount
So it would be 15-5 for me .
How where did he get that last point !
Do you remember those 2 skirmishing SUGs, all Cantabrian ..well they managed to shoot to death or more exactly he killed my SUG and his SUG survived barely ..so he got one more point
A nice game that could go very wrong but an unexpected victory but a very welcome one .
I am more and more convinced that I won because the other players were wondering how to tackle my army and because I was very agressive with it being afraid to be outmanoeuvred .