Medieval Chinese v Korean

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Paul K
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Medieval Chinese v Korean

Post by Paul K »

The 21 unit strong Chinese army was pitted against the 22 unit Korean army. The 7 units of the excellent ‘B’ class Korean cavalry was balanced with their ‘C’class infantry composed of spears, hand gunners and ‘D’ class militia. The Chinese army, in contrast had 7 units of mostly ‘C’ class cavalry but a significantly stronger infantry contingent including 3 units of ‘B’ class armoured infantry, plus ‘C’ class halberdiers and crossbow units armed with the Chinese quick firing crossbow. Both armies had 4 generals with one of the Korean generals being a hero general.
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Tim and Tony had the Koreans who deployed first and moved second. Dave and I had the Chinese and we used our first move to advance and set a strong defensive line between 2 small areas of woodland. Pushing our crossbow units forward and then in response to the Korean first move shuffling them to the sides and into the aforementioned wooded areas. Tim’s Korean light cavalry immediately threatened our left flank which pinned our infantry until our missile armed infantry shuffled across. This resulted in an extended stand-off.
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On the other wing, in contrast Dave used the 3 Chinese mounted bow units to harass the Korean Spear and militia advancing against them to good effect. The game would be won or lost in the centre where we held our Chinese heavy cavalry and armoured infantry units in reserve. The challenge was to get our ‘good stuff’ into battle and eliminate Tim and Tony’s ‘good stuff!’
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It was in the next phase of the game that Dave and I had different ideas; Dave, favouring maintaining our strong defensive line, whilst I favoured an attack using our centre and our right wing units against their weaker infantry before engaging their more challenging cavalry. In hindsight I think Dave’s defensive tactic was definitely right and my attacking idea was wrong! Sometimes patience is a virtue.
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Our attack in the centre and right met a strong well coordinated defence from Tony’s Korean infantry who used his hero general to great effect to bolster the resolve of the ‘D’ class militia units and Korean spear units which fought very well. The resulting attrition from round after round of hand-to-hand combat eventually drew in our Chinese heavy infantry and cavalry units. This created an opportunity for Tim to commit the Korean heavy cavalry into the centre catching our best infantry and a couple of our generals out of position and exposed. They had followed-up after defeating their Korean opponents only to be surrounded and eliminated by the fast moving Korean cavalry.
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The losses for both side in the middle of the field were then echoed on our right wing as the Korean light cavalry assaulted my Chinese crossbow. In response, my crossbow units shot poorly and as a result our now struggling centre was now not going to receive any support from this direction!
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Despite some notable local victories the central battle of attrition was finally won by Tim and Tony’s Koreans – we basically ran out of units and generals to throw against them! We gracefully accepted defeat.
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Game Analysis

I think in all fairness, if we had adopted Dave’s policy of holding our defensive line and letting the Koreans come to us our Chinese could have faired much better. This would have handed the initiative over to the Koreans, and they would then have had the challenging task of coordinating a game winning attack on our strong defensive line with a mixture of relatively poor quality infantry.
Kind regards
Paul

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