The Swansea earthquake and catastrophic snow drifts may have deterred some of the Tercio from gaming but not the Titan of Accountancy, Dave ‘the cataphract’ Lowrie. Despite the usual five or six cars blocking the Bridge into Wales, despite this massive pile-up of pleasure seekers into the Principality, by five o ‘clock we were transported to the plains of Central Asia.
Dave has been investing in some very nice Khurasan miniatures from the United States. I would be commanding the armies of the Later Tang; a crafty mix of heavy cavalry with bow and a large number of halberd armed heavy foot. Despite being out scouted by the Nepalese skirmishers, I occupied the half of the table with a good mix of fields and plantations.
My plan was to absorb the Tibetan charge whilst rolling up the Steppe knights from my left. The archers in the central plantation were pretty safe but Dave was wise to the plan and screened by left with mounted archers. That meant that valuable time would have to be devoted to bringing the left wing troops to bear.
Within two moves the two armies were within bow shot. My regular reader will no doubt be aware how I have fallen out of love with “shooty-cavalry”, you just don’t have enough time to wear down Knights or in this case cataphracts. The Tibetan armour is just too good in L’art de la Guerre. My choice would be to switch to crossbow armed horse. This means that the target armour is a maximum of just a single point. After one shot, the Chinese horse were falling back to join the nervous Chinese foot.
It was Dave’s poor command dice that slowed his subject foot archers in the gully. My light horse threatened the flank of the advancing cataphracts but you would have to be a brave skirmisher to assault a cataphract.
When the two lines did meet, the results were decidedly mixed for the Chinese. The heavy Chinese horse faced elite cataphracts and the Tibetans have armour advantage. It was the lowly halberdiers of the Chinese foot that unhorsed more cataphracts. The bowmen in the plantation had seen off Dave’s horse and turned the Tibetan flank.
The photo above shows the sorry tale of later combat rounds. The weak link was definately the Chinese horse. Within two turns the nasty Tibetans were through and nothing stood between them and the camp except some irate peasants!
Aetius adds; amongst Cardiff gamers it would be traditional at this point to begin insulting one’s opponent and threatening them with extreme violence. Many of the Tercio are now under therapy , or in prison, so I offer a more socially acceptable alternative. Charge everything into contact to enable one to pretend to be interested in Star Wars legion with the Chinese teenagers on the table opposite. This not only cements the Tercio’s reputation for multiculturalism but also denies your opponent the awkward ” what you did wrong” debrief.
Cavalry in a field with a flank threatened? Genius! Can this standard of play be bettered? All thoughts are going toward the competition season which is hotting up nicely. My thanks to Mr Mackie for making myself the poster boy for the Devises L’art de la Guerre competition in July. I hope the paperatzi don’t make this photo go viral as a living embodiment of the amount of mental power that is needed to compete at this level😆
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Despertaferres 
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