Tamil vs Sui Chinese

On friday before the ITC 2015 I finally had the opportunity to play with Herbert Wong from Yellow Dragons. He used its Sui Chinese army in a modified and experimental version to not disclose his tournament list (that was quite innovative). I had with me a Tamil Indian army, that is quite handy because it can be fielded in three army periods and thus it was my last ditch defence in case of last minute drops out for the tournament. By the way I like Tamil, having a soft spot for elephant armies.

I defended and tried to put terrain features to channel the fight and protect my flanks from enemy manouver. Herbert picked a 2FE wood and this surprised me. He wanted a straight head on fight relying on the shooting, but that was my doctrine too. I just needed to coordinate my corps for a massive shock action, and not having to worry about enemy manouvering on flanks was a big plus for me.

I had two ambush in the woods on the flanks just to anchor my line.

Sui tried to infiltrate its psiloi on the right, but these first stopped and then eliminated by tamil skirmishers in ambush

Once Tamil closed to enemy line, they were targeted by a lot of shooting that inflicted modest casualties. It was far worst the disorder in my lines, but this was countered by the IBdF impetuosity, that let me charge at will.

Once in close combat, I had some hot dice that speeded the destruction. Anyway it was just a matter of time, with so many combat rolls, all with quick kills, by indian side. The chinese cavalry was wary to engage because of elephants positioned along all the combat line.

Sui army structure, with two big corps and a small one, kept it in combat albeit the losses were severe

Finally I was able to engage and destroy the sui artillery, to have more freedom of action with the right wing elephants

The battle suddenly ended when a couple of elephants, in comtact with enemy disheartened troops in their bound, burst through the enemy infantry line and could charge sui kinghts. It was the tip needed to break the chinese army, heavily attritioned.

The chinese experiment failed. Infantry wall was not tough enough to resist the indian attack. I think it needed a powerful flanking action by the good quality sui cavalry, to divert pips and troops from the front.

It was nice to play with Herbert, a very good player with interesting ideas about tactics and armies. Herbert using Sui finished at 2nd place in his pool at ITC.