Strategists Reincarnation Death Match 16 The Importance of Preparation

The truth was, Baron had neglected a vital resource in his last battle against Xu Da, and the same could be said for his first simulation against Yue Fei. They hadn't used the manpower that came in the form of civilians. Although the simulations made up these civilians, they weren't for war, rather they were mainly used as a source to manufacture weapons if needed. After all the game couldn't give the strategists unlimited weapons, that would just spoil the fun of war. Therefore they provided civilians to help with making weapons, burying corpses, or digging trenches.

Baron was currently going to one of the few city states that occupied the land that he was going to defend. The people that lived there was already aware of the invasion by Ban Chao's army, they were also aware that should Baron's army fall to this aggressor, then these people would likely be executed. So they were very keen to help Baron in any way that they can.

Baron was glad to hear this and as soon as he finished drawing up a blueprint for the weapon he wanted to be mass produced, he immediately gave one to the leader of these people and ordered him to build as many of these weapons as possible. Then he had many of his officers do the same to the other cities that surrounded them. Within three days, all of his soldiers were helping to build these weapons in the cities. This showed just how important this weapon was in the eyes of Baron to have his troops help to build it instead of having them do combat drills and such.

With how smooth things were going for the mass production of this weapon Baron spent the rest of the preparation time coming up with strategies. He knew just how dire the circumstances were for him at this moment, but he did not have any doubts on his victory.

However, as luck would have it by the time the two week preparation time had ended, he didn't have as much of the secret weapon as he had hoped. There were some complications in the manufacturing of the contraption itself. He had planned on using metal tips on his bolts, however the only place where he could get it was in the shields and spears of his army. That was naturally not the way to go since he needed everything in his army to be in perfect working condition. He could only resort to using wood for every component of his secret weapon.

He only had three options available to him. He could fight the attacking army tomorrow without the use of this weapon. He could bring what he had managed to produce. Or he could try to stall the enemy. Baron remembered that during the actual battle of Thermopylae the spartans held the absolute in advantage in the terrain. The place they chose to fight the invaders was a narrow passageway that would limit how much enemies they had to fight. In history they managed to completely decimated the first wave of 10,000 enemies with less than 10 casualties on the first day. This showed how much of an advantage the spartans had in terms of terrain, battle tactics, and formations.

Baron reckoned he could achieve the same result as the actual battle of Thermopylae during the first few days. However if he could not finish up these preparations quick enough then his men would eventually be fatigued enough to not be able to retaliate at all. He realized that the enemy would not give him time, no matter how nicely he asked so he couldn't go down that route. In the end he decided to keep the weapon a secret and went off to war without it.

At the beginning of the first day of battle, Baron led the bulk of his army army to the main passageway where most of the fighting was going to be. He sent 2,000 out of his 7,000 soldiers to go defend other areas where Ban Chao might try to push through. Baron could not have asked for a better location to fight off the enemy. Due to there being a few other passageways that the enemy troops can sneak through, Baron had to prepare for them as well. Just before the enemy arrived and started officially started to clash, Baron was giving a speech to rile up the men.

The strategy for the defending side, Baron's troops, was simple. The passageway could only support a few men and therefore since these men were spartan and had spartan equipment the were to use the phalanx formation to defend the passageway. their spartan equipment consisted of large round metal shields, and long spears, with an extra sword at their side if the shield broke. The phalanx formation was where a group of men would get into a square formation, hold their massive round shields to all sides of them in order to defend against swords and arrows, and to stick their long spears out through the gaps in the circular shields to kill enemies. The passageway was only wide only to deploy two standard phalanx formations and therefore these men had to be rotated out to rest while others went in to plug the gap.

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Ban Chao wasn't very pleased with the selection that Baron had made. He thought that the reason Baron chose to use the random mode was an indirect way of saying that he didn't think much of Ban Chao. He wasn't very pleased with the result of the of the random settings either. Personally he preferred to be on the defending side, even in this super attack favoured mode. After all within the regular Chinese community very few could say they were as adept as him in defence.

During the two weeks of preparation, he had his massive 100,000 man army march around the battlefield to see just how many passages that he could use to slide soldiers into Baron's flank. The answer was not very many. The battlefield consisted of many hilly, mountainous, and filled with trees. On their very obvious scouting mission, some of his scouts reported that many of the trees had actually been cut down, this gave Ban Chao a bad feeling. As of now, many within the community still saw Baron as a little chump who lucked out a couple of times, but not Ban Chao. He had fought with Yue Fei, and Xu Da multiple times during his stay here. Although he won numerous times when he was on the defending side, he was absolutely routed by these two in actual open field battles.

Due to these reasons he knew just how impressive this young upstart must be to be able to achieve any victory when competing against these two, let alone an overwhelming defeat as Baron had managed to achieve. So Ban Chao did not dare to underestimate this enemy of his, even if he did have the upper hand at the moment. He devised a simple strategy so that his men would be able to carry them out without thinking too much. He spent the majority of the preparation time drilling techniques and discipline into his army and quickly the two weeks passed. Now was the time for him to show off what he had against Baron.

When he and his troops finally managed to get to the narrow passageway that was to be the site of the fiercest battle, he saw that Baron and his men were already standing there waiting for him. Ban Chao quickly organized his army and had his men shoot out volley after volley of tens of thousands of arrows. It seemed as if the day turned into the night as the countless arrows that breached the sky looked to be endless. However, Baron already had his men prepare for this by raising all of their heavy circular shields into the sky. They took minimal casualties.

Ban Chao was a little disheartened when he saw that he had basically wasted tens of thousands of arrows to virtually no effect. He thought that since Baron was new to this simulation it wouldn't be possible for him to have realized the perfect way to counter in the situation he was in, yet he did. Ban Chao had used this vey trick to decimate multiple newbies back when they just came to planet four. It worked perfectly almost every time except this time with Baron. He could start to see just why Yue Fei, and Xu Da weren't able to achieve victory over Baron.

This was only the beginning though, he wasn't completely convinced of Baron's prowess on the battlefield. With that he ordered all of his men to rush the enemy. Now, he knew that since the passageway acted as a bottleneck on his forces, his army would be absolutely decimated if the enemy played their hands right. But if they didn't, his men could easily obtain the win while only having truly fought for one day. This tactic was only meant to test out how well Baron could command his given troops. Ban Chao himself had men to spare so he didn't really care if he lost a few thousand men on the first day.

By the end of the day though, he had a completely new image of Baron. Baron managed to not only fight it out through the first day of battle, but he had only taken 15 casualties. He would've suffered even less, but he messed up on one of the tactical retreats that day which was perfectly patched up within minutes. Ban Chao on the other hand had taken grievous losses, 15,000 in fact. For every spartan soldier they killed today they had lost over a thousand of their own men.

Ban Chao knew that he could no longer underestimate Baron any longer, and he all of a sudden ordered his men to continue their attack long into the night, and then into the daylight of the next day in an attempt to tire his opponents.

Chapter end