Tibetan vs French Ordonnance

The day before the ITC I had the opportunity to play a friendly game with Jim Gibson. I used for the very first time my brand new Tibetan army, and so did Jim that had an army lent to him, using French Ordonnace for the first time with a list made by someone else. Neverless we are both experienced gamers, so I was sure the game would have been interesting, and so it was.

My Tibetan army is a four regular corps version, so I tried to exploit the better command and control to hit the flanks of the enemy army. This was a necessity because the enemy KnS and BwS frontally would have smashed every element in my army.

I attacked and put a 2FE GH to have an open battlefield.

Jim did not close the battlefield much, so I thought the terrain was quite good for me. I gave the high pip dice to my extreme right corps that had the task to operate alone to avoid an enemy army wheel to fight on the short side. My other corps had the goal to attack on the left flank trying to roll the enemy BwS and then the center.

Jim used the rocky flat as a pivot for its bowmen S, while the Kn and BwI would push forward, He gave the lower pip to the righ wing KnS corps, whil ethe bw had the higher die.

I tried to sneak around both flanks, while Jim took an upslope position on the large GH

My plan was to gain a marked superiority on the enemy BwS flank and roll them

Jim tried to help the flank sending there some RKnS from the center, while using the Rocky flat as support area to protect his flank

In the meantime on the right flank my higher pip dice was gaining a good tactical position versus the lowest enemy pip die corps

Once in position I attacked. On the right I killed the psiloi protecting the RKnS flank that withdrew to avoid to expose their back. On the left side I was forced to commit my cataphracts in the rough going to engage part of the enemy archers.

This is the turn before the impact. I sent forward as fast as possible the RCvS to explot a gap in the enemy line. I did not use LhF because the were too fragile to survive enemy shooting

Losses started to mount for both of us. Jim was able to commit some RKnS near the RF. On the large GH I sacrificed some LhF to split up even more the enemy corps. Now I had just to wait for some 1s to the command pip die to engage the RKnS

The combat was quite bloody. The BwS near the table edge were in danger because engaged by a lot of enemy troops, while in the rocky flat the combat was much more even

I broke the enemy BwS corps, and had my CiC corps disheartened. I luckily survived an enemy general KnS charge on a cataphract in RF that would have broken my corps too. 2S against 1I. Jim rolled 5, but I did the same. Lucky.

On the right flank Jim had very low pip but was able to reorganize the troops. This is the final stage: Jim tried a desperate KnS charge against my CvO. He could destroy my corps and transmit the additional FE to win the game. He just needed the right combination of results that did not came. The tibetan countecharge broke the french: 22-3

A very nice game, that probably in a tournament I would have played in another way. I took too many risks, because the match up was terrible for me.