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Spartans at Burton

Page history last edited by John Hickman 11 years, 1 month ago

 

Lots to report from a pretty bloody battlefield at Burton this weekend. For

those that don't know Burton is a 500 point Doubles competition. Must admit it's

pretty easy to get to and a nice venue. Its also strikes me as nicely organised,

car park tickets being issued as we left on day one in case we'd forgotten (we

had).

 

I seem to recall numbers were up slightly from last year with fourteen teams

entered, John and I had volunteered to split up to allow even numbers.

 

I went with a slightly experimental version of the Spartans. In book 2 period

this didn't look too bad.

 

Command 1 had 18 Reg Spear Superior, 6 Reg Spear Ordinary, the CinC, Four Psiloi

Inferior scouts and Four Psiloi Ordinary on anti elephant patrol.

 

Command 2 had 2 Psiloi Inferior, Four warband Ordinary Syracusans and 22 Regular

Spear Ordinary.

 

Command 3 had 16 Psiloi Superior, 2 Psiloi Ordinary, 6 Spanish Auxilia Superior,

One Light Horse Ordinary and Three Cavalry Ordinary.

 

The rough plan was for Command 2 to move out to the flank and support any attack

by the spear superior. The Psiloi were to hold any terrain while the mounted

from that command were to try to fend off knight wedges and warband. Although

the army is somewhat monotype I expected it to move reasonably fast and exert a

reasonable amount of pressure.

 

 

Game 1 Tim Child & John Hickman: Later Carthaginian

 

Something got lost in translation on this one!

Both of us were somewhat blocked by the fact that the end of the table to my

left rested on a trestle table. None of us could easily reach my left flank. I

thought we kind of agreed to deploy perhaps more on my right…. This seemed to be

confirmed when most terrain fell to the left. My only terrain of significance

was a size Two Difficult Hill in the centre on which I could anchor. The bad

news is, I barely had room to deploy the spear after taking into account the

deployment zones.

 

Things got somewhat worse when Tim and John deployed to the left, with a large

warband command in the centre. My deployment map said I was on my right so we

ended up deploying at opposite corners.

 

The game essentially saw the Carthaginians trying to get the warband into the

Spartiates. Meanwhile my Spear Ordinary command on the low PIP started to head

out to the right flank. This didn't' work well, especially as my warband went

impetuous. They heroically charged through the Spartiates and promptly held up

the opposing warband command for quite a while. On balance it probably saved the

Spartiates. Even Spear Superior don't kill many warband in their go, and warband

roll up some time or other in their go.

 

Sadly meantime the Spear ordinary were fighting the Carthaginian mounted plus

some elephants. The attrition rate on the spears was enough, partially from the

elephants but with Cavalry ordinary doing a fair amount of damage too. These

broke I think on the last bound to give Tim and John a 14-11. They probably

deserved more with the Spartiates in particular lucky to hang on.

 

Game 2 Peter Kershaw & Gordon: Slave Revolt

 

Must admit I looked forward to this game, the Slave Revolt army looked fantastic

and this was one of those games where I was curious to see what would happen.

Terrain ended up being frankly weird. My Difficult Hill fell on my rear centre

line. However on the left flank fell the slaves two rocky hills, while on my

right fell a wood and a BUA. From my point of view if I attacked on the left

flank I had to take rocky hills which didn't look feasible. I decided instead to

attack the wood with the Psiloi Command. The idea was the Spartiate Command

would hold the gap between hill and wood. The Spear ordinary Command deployed to

head off any flank march. The forward part of the hill was held by the Spanish

Auxilia, the rear of the hill the rear of the hill was held by any spare Psiloi

from the other commands.

 

Spartacus had two central commands of massed Blade inferior with a combination

of horde and Psiloi in the difficult. A cavalry and Psiloi command fielded in

reserve. There was fairly clearly a missing command…..

 

Effectively the one blade command on my right started to assault the hill. This

caused high attrition on the blade but also ended up with the Spanish being

pulled forward, often off the hill and into the open. The Spartiates went into

support and killed a fair number of blades as well. The warband from the Spear

ordinary Command had been positioned to support. After some initial success

these were bogged down I think by the general and started to die slowly.

 

Meanwhile the flank march came in on my right. It was primarily Horde Superior

front rank with Blade Inferior and Ordinary back rank.

 

The main blade command broke if I recall at a bad time with just enough losses

having been inflicted on the flank march to dishearten it. I think at about the

same time my rough terrain command either went disheartened or broke, last bound

was called as the Spear Ordinary killed off the now disheartened blades from the

flank march. 21-4 to me. With hindsight the Slave Revolt were unlucky to break

just at the last bound.

 

 

 

 

Game 3 John Saunders & Steve Coope: Palmyran

 

Palmyran something of a nightmare army for me, both the Cataphracts being a real

threat, but the terrain is an issue. I attacked and got a size one dune on the

right flank with a gap between it and the table edge. A size half orchard fell

on my base edge conveniently about 8 bases to the left of the dunes. On the

Palmyran side the significant terrain was a small rough hill opposite the dunes.

 

I fielded to corner sit initially with a view to redeploying. The spear ordinary

and spear superior were deployed behind the dunes so that either could head out

to either flank. The rough terrain command were anchored in the dunes with a

view to assaulting the rough hill.

 

Palmyrans deployed with a small size twelve command on my right. Effectively

this was the low PIP command and had four auxilia in the hill backed by I think

two psiloi. Nearby were four cavalry including the general. Centrally was a

large irregular inferior bow command backed by six cataphracts or so. Supporting

them was a mostly Roman command of blade ordinary. A mounted reserve command of

three cataphracts and some bow and light horse waited ominously on the base

edge.

 

Wargamers love to claim they were unlucky, but in this instance I actually think

I probably was. The deployment was fine but things got off to a bad start, all

four scouts died.

 

The rough terrain command assaulted the hill. I expected to take losses, but to

get some break throughs. This was my second PIP dice versus the Palmyrans

lowest. What could possibly go wrong? In discussion we all expected the Psiloi

to take the hill.

 

The Roman Auxilia were having none of it. Consistently throwing a one for PIPS

they simply chewed their way through the Psiloi frontally. Meanwhile, while they

held on the Cataphracts redeployed to get behind the flanking cavalry. Roman

Blades ominously headed towards the Spear Ordinary Command. I wasn't nervous

just yet, the gap was big enough for the spears to fight two or three deep and

the warband were fighting expendably and holding up the far left flank.

 

The battle plan as I saw it, was for the Auxilia command to break, leaving the

six cataphracts isolated to flank locks. The Spartiates had worked their way

round that flank, but frontally few cataphracts died (I think two all game)

while losses on the spear mounted steadily.

 

Things briefly looked better as the Auxilia command finally broke. Meanwhile

some of the Auxilia superior had got in to the bow inferior and I think already

killed the one.

 

At this point the evil Palmyrans threw three sixes and a four for their command

PIPS. Not only did they move around like fury, but the dust storm then arrived

after their move. In the dust storm my army decided it didn't fancy things much.

The bow inferior decided they didn't need to lap round on auxilia, they killed

both in melee frontally. This largely nullified my rough terrain command. With

that in trouble the spear ordinary moved towards the Roman Blades as time was

running out for me. My view was that the spear were in two or three ranks

whereas the blades were roughly in one and a half ranks. However the reserve

commands cataphracts were heading towards the one wing of the spears.

 

The Romans initially didn't want to fight with them mostly breaking up into

penny packets. However my next move was in the dust storm, which of course

affected all my moves, command radius and visibility. Naturally I then threw

something silly like 3,2,1 so the dust storm would vanish with only me being

penalised for it.

 

The Spear Ordinary managed a brief recovery killing quite a few blades, but then

succumbing to blades and cataphracts frontally. The game ended as a 15-10 to

Palmyra. A very hard fought game and to be fair I think each of us had

opportunities for the big win.

 

Game 4 John Fletcher : Thracian.

 

Well splitting us both up clearly didn't quite work…….

Sadly this is a battle we'd practiced on a fair bit so John knew how to play

against the Spartans. There was next to no terrain to speak of. I placed the

difficult hill centrally to anchor on. John placed a road then a BUA next to the

hill to stop me deploying there. I took a gamble and deployed in the BUA with

Spear while Psiloi held the hill. John of course had worked out I might do so

and flank marched on my right.

 

The Spartiates came out of the BUA and faced off masses of Light Horse backed by

Knight Inferior Wedges. To their left and right were massed Auxilia. An ally

command of Auxilia headed off to the hill to assault it from the side. The Spear

ordinary came out of the BUA sideways and swung round to protect the flanks of

the Spartiates. At this point the flank march of course arrived and broke up

many of the Spear Ordinary. Things looked good for the Thracians…..

 

The Spear Ordinary managed a rearguard action while the Spartiates took on the

light horse in front of the Knight wedges. This actually started to go very

well, no Spartiates dead and masses of spent light horse. Meanwhile the flank

march was fighting against one or two deep Spear Ordinary which turned into an

absolute bloodbath for both sides.

 

With so many light horse being spent the largest Thracian Command was getting

close to breaking from spent light horse alone. This also left a gap through

which Spartiates were reinforcing the flank of the Spear Ordinary. These started

to roll up the line. The flank march lost its general but the Spear Ordinary

command went disheartened in doing so. The Thracians were left there in a good

position that they couldn't exploit.

 

Although I expected to lose the spear ordinary command things were looking

steadily better for the Spartans, I think they'd lost about two Spartiates and

we were overall definitely ahead of the game. The largest Thracian command went

disheartened so John felt it was now time to throw in the knight inferior

wedges. These mostly contacted me where I was two or three ranks deep. I think

in the end I killed two of the wedges, which broke that command, however the

knights did the damage. I think it took two bounds to break the Spartiates and

the army, not every knight got a kill, but in one bound I took off three

Spartiates alone and not many armies can sustain losses of six ME in a bound for

long.

The game ended as a 16-9 with I think 45% or so of the Thracian army having been

killed.

 

Overall a close run set of games. In both the Palmyran game and the Thracian one

the Spartans were in it, vs. the Carthaginians we never really got deployed

even!

 

Thanks all for a series of good humoured games.

 

 

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