Oy, gevalt! or The Chosen People of the Steppes Come a Cropper

Frank and I were due to meet up on Monday night, but we hadn't settled on a definite plan of action, so I brought both Wings of War and DBA troops. When I got there (feeling a bit seedy), Frank had already had a couple of jousts with other Knights of the Sky, so he and I decided to play a little DBA.

He had recently acquired a Khazar army, and I had recently read Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road, so I looked through my armies to find someone who could fight them. I picked the Ummayad Arabs (I would have preferred Arab Conquest, but didn't have enough plausible foot), and we rolled for role. Despite his low aggression (the peace-loving Torah-readers have only a 1 Agg), Frank won the roll; perhaps the Khazars were seeking to reclaim land they believed was theirs?

As the defender in arid terrain, I laid out a diagonal string of rough/steep hill/rough with some spaces in between, hoping to disrupt his deployment and movement to contact and force him to put most of his large number of LH on on flank where I could keep an eye on them. To encourage that, I put my camp behind one of the rough patches nearest my edge, covered it with two Bow, strung a line of Spear backed by a Psiloi to the right of that, and put the mounted force, my cavalry (incl. general) and my few LH in my center and right.

He put some light horse to his left, his war wagon (general), cavalry, and remaining LH in his center, and his foot (ps, horde) behind and between the two in some rough, with his camp behind them.

I hoped to draw him forward into a nice bit of flat ground below the hill, where I could fight his mounted troops with mine and my spear, with my bow coming up over the hill, while staving off his LH with mine long enough to win in the center, doing so fast enough t hat his wagontrain wouldn't be able to come up and participate.

Frank had forgotten that his WWg only moved 200p, so he let his horse surge forward past it, much to my delight. He sent Ps out to contest the hill, but I figured that 2 Bw vs. 1 Ps in BG was odds I would accept, and my archers pressed forward, stringing bows and checking their points and fletchings.

We started a LH skirmish, and I could see I'd need to support it with at least one of my cav. At first I thought I'd cover his line with the others, but an unexpected victory against his LH (Frank's eternal bad dice luck biting him again) and some fortunate pip rolling for me meant that, with his center unwilling to play with my Cav+ Sp, the Cav would have to go in alone. My LH took out one of his Ps that ahd ventured forth to support his failing LH flank, my general killed off another LH, and I managed to pick off one of his center units for the win.

A bitter blow for the Khazars' first outing, but I have a feeling that Frank enjoyed the rest of the evening more than I did. "Seedy" had turned to "rotten", and I bowed out and headed home, just about making it before succumbing to the dread lurgy that had me spending the next two days staying close to the Porcelain Victory Throne of the Ummayads. :-(