Welcome to Mapucheland

This year I have decided to play the tournament in Padova, dedicated to the fourth period, with a weird army. Thanks to the Apocalipto events in our club, I have some mesoamerican armies that I never dared to use outside of their historical setting.

Mapuche is one of these armies. The miniatures from Lurkio are quite fine, and the painter made an excellent job, with no ponchos alike.

So all I needed was a list and a decent way to play it.

I expected to face PkS, BwS and BdS, all of them killers of IPkF and expecially IBwO. I needed a way to deal with these enemies.

I decided to use size, terrain and stratagems to balance the struggle.

The army was huge with many 1/2 ME troops, at 100,5ME:

C1- CiC IPkF, 20 IPkF, 12 IBwO - 28ME

C2- SG IPkF, 20 IPkF, 12 IBwO - 28ME

C3- SG IPkF, 12 IPkF, 12 IBwO, 1 IBtI - 24,5ME

C4- SG IPkF, 12 IPsO - 12ME

C5- 8 IBgI - 8ME

Stratagems: Ambush and Concealed Command

Ag0 gave me the opportunity to defend and move first, set up good terrain to use my infantry and avoid being targeted by enemy picking out my troop thanks to CC and ambush. Ambush let me also deploy some IBwO on the flank sectors were I could meet softer targets.

Above all the goal was to wrong foot enemy in deployment stage.

IPkF were expendable shock troops, to be supported by massed archery, hopefully to weaken the enemy before the clash. The psiloi corps had the task to flank march or force a combat in a difficult going feature, using its pip die

While the army seemed solid, it had not much punch. Aggressivity was the key.

This was the theory, and these the games

GAME 1

GAME 2

GAME 3

GAME 4

In the end I was delighted and also a bit amazed by the army performance. I ended the tournament reaching the second place with 77 points. Once more at the club we discussed about how is true that every army can have its chance.

Mapuche has some limits, the bigger I found was the problem I faced invading enemy lands. Not to mention I did not face PkS. By the way I enjoyed the games, and for once I had not to worry much to suffer several 1-6 in combat, having so many troops.