Jan and I played our first competitive game under 2.0 last night in the RINIWA league. Thanks to Amazon I hadn't received my copy yet but Jan had had a chance to read them and some of the other key points had been highlighted on DBMMList.



My Early Bulgar list was:

1: 1xC-in-C, Irr Kn(F), 3xIrr Kn(F), 11xIrr LH(S), 6xIrr Ax(I)

2: 1xS-Gen, Irr Kn(F), 46xIrr Ax(I), 10xIrr Ps(O)

3: 1xS-Gen, Irr Kn(F), 3xIrr Kn(F), 10xIrr LH(S), 8xIrr Ax(I)

Bg: 5xIrr Bge(I)



Jan's Fatimids were:

A: 1xS-Gen, Reg Cv(S), 2xReg Cv(S), 2xIrr Cv(O), 1xIrr LH(O), 6xReg Bd(I), 4xReg Ax(S), 2xReg Ps(O)

B: 1xC-in-C, Reg Cv(S), 3xIrr Kn(I), 1xIrr LH(O), 8xIrr Bw(I), 8xIrr Sp(I), 4xIrr Ps(O), 4xReg Pk(I), 2xReg Bd(I), 2xIrr Hd(O)

C: 1xS-Gen, Reg Cv(S), 2xReg Cv(S), 2xIrr Cv(O), 12xReg Ax(S), 4xReg Ps(O), 2xReg Bd(X)

Bg: 6xIrr Bge(F)



I invaded in Winter with risk of rain. The only significant terrain pieces were a BUA and 2 patches of RF on Jan's right, with other pieces scattered around the edges. A lateral road was muddy at the start of the game, but then dried up.



Jan deployed A on his right in the terrain, B in the centre and C on his left, with PIP priority running A,B,C. I deployed 1,2,3 from right to left. My left was refused and my right overlapped Jan's left significantly, so he used his initial moves to extend his left wing further to his flank, moving the infantry from his right wing across to his centre to plug the resulting gap. My plan was to overwhelm his left wing, use the massed 4-deep Slavs in the centre as an expendable sponge to absorb his centre and push my left wing around his right through the terrain. I advanced, my left wing initially falling behind due to low PIPs, and made contact before his redeployed right wing had got into position.



The battle really broke down into three parts:



On my right I attacked Jan's Ax frontally with some LH while the Kn and more LH worked around his flank. A counter-attack by his Cv caused me some losses, but eventually I got into his rear before reinforcements from his right wing could arrive and killed his general to break his left wing. However he rolled high enough to stop the command from fleeing so I couldn't exploit.



On my left I had some initial success and killed a few elements but a few Bw, Ps and Bd proved stubborn opponents in the terrain and my attack stalled.



In the centre the massed Ax(I) proved effective enough against Jan's thinner line of Bd(I), though the new rule forcing them to follow up did hurt a lot as they ended up pursuing into overlapped positions, then dying. Being (I) didn't help, obviously, but in most cases they would have died as quickly if (O) and the fact that I could field 50% more men and ME made them a bargain, and in overall ME terms I'd say they killed about as many as they lost (including one Kn(I) killed in a straight up fight). Eventually they became disheartened but Jan's centre was itself close to becoming so.



At that point we had to stop as we'd reached our time limit. Play was slower than usual as we had to keep checking the published rules to make sure we were playing them correctly, but as that. I'd lost exactly 20% whilst Jan had lost 39.5% making it 14-11.