Just a bit of fun

I have just finished a rather interesting test game (I use the word “test” because I am still getting to grips with the rules but also because the word “solo” just sounds sad!) which initially surprised me in getting a result with absolutely no melee/contact involved!

The two armies involved were Huns (with Ostrogoth allies) and Tibetans (with Nepalese allies), so lots of horses and lots of bows. I played 400pts a side and limited the table to 4’6” x 3’ to prevent too much flank movement by all of that light horse.

The Huns planned to hold the left flank with light horse and attack on the right flank with the heavy Goth cavalry. The Tibetans plan was to push forward with the Nepalese on their own right and hold back the heavy Tibetan cavalry facing the Goths and shoot them up and weaken them before engaging in contact (both the Nepalese and the Tibetan cavalry were bow armed).

I don’t want to bore you with a blow by blow account of the whole game (even though it was quite short – only 5 bounds) but here are a few points of interest where comments would be welcome.

First off I sent my Hun’s on the left flank forward in a double move. Although the CinC was in the group they still manage to get disordered! That meant that I really needed to get eh initiative at the start of the next bound to rectify the position before the Nepalese cavalry came up. I had an expert general so I thought that should not be too much of a problem. What did I throw for initiative? Double one! You will appreciate that I had to say “Oh bother” or something like it! But that’s part of what I like about Impetus. There is always a surprise.

Despite this set back over the next few moves the Hun’s sorted themselves out and by weight of numbers managed to cause the Nepalese to rout with fire alone. The ability of one Hun unit to interpenetrate another and so concentrate fire helped enormously.  Of course the Nepalese Cavalry should have got stuck in a lot quicker. They relied too much on their own bows.

Breaking the Nepalese caused the whole Tibetan army to rout. The commands where split 50/50 on VU. Perhaps that was not a good idea either?

The Tibetans themselves had only managed to get off one shot at the slowly advancing Goths who dared not speed their advance for fear of disorder. With hind sight they might as well have risked it as the Tibetan fire and previous small attacks from Tibetan light horse ended up disordering most of the Goth cavalry, and even taking fresh status off of two units.

I had started the game with the two armies each 30U from the centre line but I think I would have been better off using the 15U as stated for a 90cm table in the Advanced rules. I shall certainly try that next time.

Well done if you have read this far. Hope you’re not too bored but I just wanted to get e few thoughts down on paper.

I shall be trying the same combination again but using a 15U from the centre line as a start position and putting those heavy Tibetan cavalry into large units!

Most people are better off getting stuck in when faced with bow armed light cavalry :-)

Jim