Christopher Milne  - May 5, 2005 2:30 am (#9763 Total: 9764)  

OTT last night 

Glen Nugent paid me a visit for another Great Battle of History, this
time Ayn Jalut from Devil's Horsemen. Since I'd had the benefit of
recently soloing this scenario (and also Liegnitz from the same game), I
took the disfavoured Mongol rearguard and prepared to fight over what
looks like a pretty grim part of the Middle East. 

Following my previous experience with this battle, I had a thought of
dismounting my heavy cavalry and then using my light cavalry's feigned
retreat tactic to lure the Mameluk HC onto my infantry. Alas, after the
obligatory early skirmish between our light cavalry vanguards, Glen blew
this idea to kingdom come by concentrating his HC against my left flank.
My light cavalry screen feigned retreat to disrupt his units, but the
Mameluks were not so obliging as I had hoped. Seizing the initiative to
get a double move, he hammered my small Syrian contingent (of dubious
loyalty in any case) and opened up a nasty hole on that flank. 

I reacted by moving more light cavalry to that side to screen my heavy
cavalry while they realigned to meet this threat. In addition, I hoped
that they'd be able to inflict some damage and again disrupt his
formation with feigned retreat. In the event, this was partially
successful, and I launched my heavy cavalry in to take advantage before
he could reform his lines. 

At this point, the battle of the all-cavalry armies became remarkably
like a nice phalanx push, with a swirling melee that rapidly got very
confused. I began to get the worst of it, thanks to a few disastrous
rolls, but I had few tactical options remaining other than to soldier
on, since my remaining unengaged light cavalry was screening Glen's much
larger force with their potentially devastating shower fire capability.
Unfortunately, luck didn't favour the unimaginative, and I continued to
get poor rolls on crucial combats, and I accumulated enough rout points
to allow Glen to win through a process of steady attrition and picking
on weakened units. 

In the end, a fairly comfortable Mameluk victory (he had a safety margin
of about 50 rout points when I reached my limit), although there were a
number of badly battered units on his side. 

We struggled to see how the Mongols could pull off a victory against
that tactic unless Sultan Qutuz (the Mameluk army commander) fails a few
seizure rolls and allows the Mongol light cavalry to disrupt his
formation with feigned retreats. Perhaps more experience will give us an
idea - we'd like to have a go at the Battle of the Indus, the massive
clash between the Mongols and the Khwarazmians, but that would require a
major investment of time. In addition, we're both thinking of having a
go at the big Alesia campaign scenario one weekend - I just need to make
sure I've got the space and time to leave it set up for a while.