TTS AAR: Khurasanians versus Sassanid Persians
/With the annual To The Smallest 15mm tournament only a couple of weeks away, it was time to get in some practice games, especially as ‘Smallest uses a 10cm grid rather than the more usual 15cm one, meaning a larger playing area, bigger armies (160 vs 130-140 points) and some specific rule changes.
Sid, the tournament organiser, had already published diagrams of the intended table set ups (each representing a different historical battlefield) so for this game we elected to fight over Beneventum in southern Italy, the last battle of the Pyrrhic War fought between the forces of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus in Greece, and the Romans, led by consul Manius Curius Dentatus (the result was a strategic Roman victory and Pyrrhus was forced to return to Tarentum, and later to Epirus).
I was going to use a Khurasanian army (a mix of two commands of Arabic infantry and two commands of Turkic cavalry) and would, for this first practice game, face Si’s Sassanid Persians.
I didn’t want to risk my cavalry getting entangled in the woods to my left, so controversially deployed (L to R) a command of infantry, a command of cavalry, a command of infantry, and a command of cavalry. All my plans were then promptly kicked into touch as Si played the This Way Effendi strategum on me, meaning my troops on the left were pushed back three boxes leaving a hole at that end of the line!
Initial deployment seen from behind the Persian lines
“Don’t listen to him, with his effendis and all that: the battlefield is this way!”
Fortunately I had won the scouting, so I was able to restablish my line before the Sassanids could take advantage, but the delay meant that I could only watch as the Persian horsemen thundered towards me.
Unfortunately for Si, the luck was really with me and had seriously deserted him for this game: I couldn’t fail an activation, miss with a bow, or flunk a melee hit and the Sassanids couldn’t save a thing.
My initial volley of arrows disordered three of four of his units, and when my Ghilman horsemen followed up, they cut through the enemy like a lance through butter! Things were so good that I even sent my infantry forward on the attack, not something you often see when spearmen face heavy cavalry!
The Persian right flank was forced to withdraw, my lancers burst through the Persian centre, and the Sassanid left was reduced to a couple of units of horse archers trying to hold up the Khurasanian high tide!
The climax came quickly: all the holes in the Sassanid line meant that my light Turkoman light cavalry could find the flanks of the heavier Persian horse, and it was soon all over for an emphatic 14-0 victory for the Khurasanians.
Much as I would love to chalk this up to my brilliant strategy and tactics, it was one of those games where everything went my way. On to the next one…
