Well, last night at the club I took on Tim’s Khmers with my Sub-Roman British.

My army was as follows:

Command 1: 25.5 ME

General as Irr Cv (O)

5 Irr Cv (O)

2 Irr LH (O)

19 Irr Sp (I)

2 Irr Ps (O)

2 Irr Bg (I)

Command 2: 22.5 ME

Ally as Irr Cv (O)

3 Irr Cv (O)

19 Irr Sp (I)

4 Irr Ps (O)

1 Irr Hd (I)

2 Irr Bg (I)

Command 3: 25.5 ME

Ally as Irr Cv (O)

5 Irr Cv (O)

2 Irr LH (O)

19 Irr Sp (I)

2 Irr Ps (O)

1 Irr Hd (I)

2 Irr Bg (I)

Command 4: 15 ME

Ally as Irr Cv (O)

2 Irr Cv (O)

10 Irr Sp (I)

2 Irr Bg (I)

Tim had two Khmer commands, each with an Ele (O) general, 2 Ele, 4 Reg Ax (S), 4 Reg Ps (O) and a couple of other elements. He also had a Cham ally with an Ele (O) general, 1 Ele (O), 12 Wb (F), 2 Ax (S), and a couple of Ps. Finally, he had a Vietnamese ally, with a Cv (O) general, plus some Bw (O) and (I), Bd (O) and (I), Ax (I) and 4 Sh (I). The commands were all between about 16 and 21 ME.

I invaded in summer, and placed a river, which went from my right table edge (near my corner) to Tim’s table edge, about a third of the way along. Tim placed a wood which ended up on the left edge near the centre line, and a large patch of rough which ended up in the front centre of Tim’s deployment zone. The two rough hills he placed had no effect on the game.

Tim deployed first, with his two Khmer commands on his right, then the Cham command, and the Vietnamese on his left. I deployed commands 1, 2 and 3 across the board as left, centre and right, and sent command 4 flank marching on my left. The Sp were in three ranks, except on my far right flank where they were in two ranks. The Cv in commands 1 and 2 were in reserve, while command 3’s were out on the flank. My plan was to advance across the board, and try to combine the C-in-C’s command with the flank marchers to put greatest pressure on his right flank. The weather was mist, and although I had the chance to start the battle with Tim in camp, I decided to wait for sunrise.

Tim’s Vietnamese were unreliable, but he advanced the rest of his army steadily through the mist. Then my command 3, facing his Vietnamese, turned out to be unreliable too. Because of the mist, it took a few PIPs to deploy command 1’s Cv from out behind the Sp, and this, combined with generally poor PIPs for command 1, meant I never had any spare to try to activate the right wing. I hoped that the Cham would come close enough to activate them, particularly if Tim lost control of his Wb. So, with both wings’ infantry motionless, command 2 also stayed put, except for sending out the Hd to tempt the Wb, and the Ps to get in the way of the Elephants of the centre Khmer command, which included an Ele (X).

Tim was happy to advance steadily, but finally rolled low enough PIPs to make the mist clear when he was about two moves from my line. He shifted a couple of Ax from his centre Khmer command across to deal with the Ps I’d placed in front of his Ele. But I then charged the Ax with my Sp and killed them. Then Tim charged his Ele in, and started to carve his way into the Sp, with the Ele (X) being particularly effective. Their main weakness was that with a couple of dead Ax, his Ele were vulnerable on their flank. He covered the gap for a few bounds with a plucky Ps, but eventually my Sp drove it off, opening the Ele up to a flank attack.

The Cham Wb eventually overran the Hd, though two 6-1s in my favour caused a minor sensation. I counter-attacked the advanced Wb, killing it, but the Wb then returned the favour. The combat between the Wb and Sp was quite deadly, as we were both usually able to start combat against a double-overlapped opponent. As a result, although the Wb took out a few Sp, the Sp also knocked over several Wb.

On my left, I lined my Cv up to face the Khmer right wing Ax, while the Sp took on the Ele. After a couple of unsuccessful bounds, the Cv killed an Ax, again forcing Tim to plug the gap with spare Ps. Further down the line, though, the Khmer C-in-C blasted his way through three ranks of Sp, to emerge facing a lone Ps and a Sp overlap.

The Cham advance brought them close enough to activate my right wing. But the following bound, Tim’s third or fourth attempt to activate his Vietnamese also worked, and they raced forward to cover the flank of the Cham. I cheerfully advanced command 3’s troops towards the Vietnamese too.

After 8 unsuccessful attempts, I lost the flank march. But fortunately my PIPs improved dramatically at this point, and for the rest of the game I nearly always had enough PIPs to do what I wanted to do.

The first command to collapse was the centre Khmer command, after I managed to kill the general and the Ele next to him, along with another Ax/Ps combo. In fact, their losses were bad enough that they went straight to shattered. Their breaking was just short of enough to break the Cham command, though they soon became disheartened.

My right wing also suffered heavily, as the Cham Ele and Wb knocked over several Sp, as did the Vietnamese Ax and Bd. I eventually managed to charge the Sp and Cv into his infantry, and caused a few casualties in return to both the Cham and Vietnamese, but it only took a couple of bounds to push my right wing to disheartened.

Then it all happened in a rush. A couple of Cham Wb broke through my Sp line, where they encountered the Cv of command 2. Other Wb got hit in the flank by Sp which had seen off the Khmer centre. This was finally enough to break the Cham command. And on my left wing, my brave Ps, having survived about 6 bounds of combat against the Khmer C-in-C, killed him with a 5-1, while Sp and Cv killed another Ele, which broke that command. The Vietnamese were close to being disheartened.

18-7 to me, in another very enjoyable game for which I must thank Tim.

Just in case anyone missed it, my army contained no (S) elements. On top of that, the Ele had QK against my Sp in both bounds, while the Wb and Ax (S) had QK against my Sp in his bounds. I also had an unreliable ally, plus a flank march that didn’t turn up. Of the 57 Sp I had on the table, I lost 29. My right wing was 1 ME from breaking, and my centre was 0.5 ME from becoming disheartened. The left wing lost about 3.5 ME, so wasn’t in serious trouble. Nevertheless, the loss of the flank march alone put me one-third of the way to army break.

I’d like to politely suggest there’s not a lot wrong with Irr Sp (I), nor with armies containing no (S) elements, nor with armies containing a lot of troops whose enemy QK them.