Battle Report - Early Tang vs Early Samurai

He thought reflectively that the mouth of this mountain pass was an adequate place to wait for the approaching barbarians: a pity that the tea house was so pedestrian, tho. He summoned his subordinates for a brief postprandial repast, and outlined his plans.

"Here we are ... this bowl of rice is the hills on the left, the pile of napkins there is the hills on the right, and this dish of fish sauce stands for the hillock in the centre of the field. I expect the barbarians will have lots of crazy cavalry, and insanely brave footmen, but intelligence has really bobbled this one, so we're not sure of anything, except that he'll have some damned hillmen to hold the bad going."

"We'll use the formation of 'Two Herons pecking at the rice', to start with. Pu ki, you take the left here - put your skirmishers on the end of the line, form your cavalry beside them, and keep the Pu Ping archers behind, so they can move to face his knights - and for Buddha's sake, stop sniffing at that garlic sauce, you look as though it's making you
sick."

" I'll form up beside you with my cavalry, and the rest of the Pu Ping behind in another column. Llap Gok, you take your turks and cover my right - you should ride forward between the hillock and the valleys' edge, and grab all that open space on the right. If you can get behind him, I'm sure your boys will enjoy looting the baggage."

"Ri'in Tsin Tsin, your lancers can go into reserve - sit them in column behind me. Have you finished with that duck, by the way?"

His generals scattered to arrange their deployment, Pu ki stopping to briefly vomit into a soup tureen, and Lo Fat watched the enemy deploy. "Damn, I forgot to tell them to make sure their baggage was all filed and sorted by the troopers' names!"

First came the hillmen, bronze helmets shining, looking almost as tight and disciplined as Koreans. They had a cloud of light horse behind them. Next, he saw a deep column of foot deploy. "Ah, those will be the mad-charging hairies", he muttered, nibbling on some dim sum. But closer inspection revealed they were well-disciplined, well-ordered troops in
uniform. "Ah, they must be the fable legionaries, like the ones grandpa got in trade from Parthiaia long ago".

Strangely, there was next a wide gap, then more hillmen deployed, obviously intent on storming the hillock in midfield. Behind them, finally, were the crazed horsemen - but fewer, and more uniformed, than Lo Fat had expected. Finally, another fog of light horse covered the barbarian left, deployed close to the knights and hillmen.

Lo Fat, his survey finished, signalled a change of formation, to the "Seven Noodles cast against the Paper Wall", while the Romans tramped slowly forward. He watched carefully as the light horse on the left galloped forward, then skirted the valley walls, crushing the first of the Roman horse archers. This drew the rest of the Roman light horse forward, to smash Pu ki's light horse away: but the resulting tangled melee held up the advance of the hillmen, greivously, while the noble Turfan lancers moved from reserve, over to face them.

Looking right, he paused in his savouring of the excellent hot and sour soup, seeing the enemy knights canter forward, aimed directly at his Pu Ping. Casting a libation of soup on the ground, he prayed that Buddha smile on his fortune cookies. His own cavalry were driving straight forward, into the legions, and  the whole there congealed into a solid
glob going nowhere, rather like the dread 'porridge' of the damn western barbarians.

Squinting against the fierce winds, he saw that Llap Gok was making headway against the Roman left, forcing it back to defend its' camp, and gradually exerting escalating pressure, and casualties, on it. Then came the charge of the Roman knights - forward they drove into an arrow storm, then half of them turned and fled. The rest piled into the Pu
Ping, and Lo Fat winced, awaiting the worst. But nothing happened! The knights struggled valiantly, fortune smiling on them just enough to survive, but not enough to win.

On the left, though, the Turfan were in place at last, and unleashed. Their mad charge crushed the straggling remnants amongst the enemy light horse, then rode straight over the first of the hillmen without a pause. As the hillmen took to their heels in terror, Lo Fat smiled, and joined the struggle to his front, encouraging his men with a waved pigs' trotter - "On, on, my brave boys, on to glory".

The legion, stubborn and resistant, still stuck at their task, but then came the shrieks of terror from the Roman left - the Turks had swept away the last of their opponents, and were galloping madly for the Roman baggage: and the knights and hillmen to that side had fled the field. The legion, stubborn as ever, formed a square, but then yielded to Lo Fat, who offered lenient terms so he could lead his men to the baggage before the Turks nabbed it all: it was imperative that the Roman dispatches, and their head cook, be taken into custody.

For the Chinese:
1.     Given the constricted field, a flank march would've gotten better use out of the all-mounted forces being used.

For the Romans:
1.     Dont charge BwX with KnF
2.     Dont get your light horse pinned between the enemy and your own Auxilia
3.     Even LhS cant stand up to LhS + CvS for very long