Northern Han vs Carolingian

When playing later Tang I usually pick a southern state, to use the IElS or the numerous Ax. Northern Han is a very different army, because it has a lot of good quality cavalry to bolster the mass of low quality infantry that form the list core. This is the army list I used in this game. I think is an interesting organization, that can be very effective and cope with every kind of opponent if the different parts of the army support each other.

My opponent used a Carolingian army, a classical list with an infantry center, an aquitanian corps and the CiC leading the strike force made by IKnF.

I was the attacker and unusually I didn't choose any terrain to set up, because I wanted to see how my mass of infantry would behave without any useful terrain feature. The Carolingian placed minimal terrain wanting an open flat battlefield. He deployed in a linear formation, with few reserves. His goal was to try to outflank me, or force my infantry to not deploy in deep formations.

My army was large enough to not suffer much a stretched deployment.

On first turn the Carolingian manouvered the IKnF from higher pip dice CiC corps to avoid the BwO and PkF in front of them, trying to target the chinese IBdF in the center

The manouver was executed hastily, using all pips avalaible, without movng at all any other troops to form a reserve, a screen or a flank protection. Imho a bad start for the carolingian and a recipe for disaster.

Han advanced on the left, where they had a marked quality superiority over the enemies, preparing to receive the IKnF attack on the right. The PkF wheeled to advance and flank attack the enemy formation should this stay still.

Carolingians IKnF took some casualties from archer fire on the right, and thei formation was disordered. On the left han ILhS attacked the enemy RKnF with flanks supported by RCvS

Frankish CiC corps was soon in a serious situation, fragmented and attacked by several sides.

Chinese attack versus the Aquitanian corps was at first unsuccesfull, and Han had to engage more and more CvS to try to break through the household carolingian cavalry.

Caballari were surrounded and overwhelmed. The Carolingian CiC corps broke that bound.

Carolingian RKnF on the left wing defended well, Han troops suffered more losses for no gain.

While the fight raged on the left, the heavy infantry clashed in the center.

Frankish IBdI were slowly giving ground when suddenly the Carolingian left collapsed. A huge gap was tore by the Han. This was the game turning point.

In very short time the chinese exploited the opportunity and broke the Aquitanian corps, winning the game.

In this battle we could see how different is a Carolingian army fielding RKnF instead of IKnF. The Frankish played an unwise game, with an attack that was a nearly suicide. The speed of execution was more than hampered by lack of support and coordination, wasting a whole command. The rest of the frankish army fought well, but the situation was very critical from the beginning.