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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