Monday Night Mayhem

I managed a spot of Monday night mayhem at central London last week.  My Early Imperial Romans had their first outing of 2014  against Simon's Early Successors.   It is a fairly even fight between legions and pike blocks. So it is often down to who can utilise their other units best to get the upper hand. For this game I made some simple promises to myself which were to make a plan and  then stick to it. Easy enough one would think. 

Thankfully my deployment forced Simon to squeeze his army into just under half the board. This caused him serious problems in organising his battle line and meant he could not take advantage of his superior numbers and quality on the right flank. 

I had to  readjust my line to attempt to counter his strong flank. In doing this I over advanced on the left and did not leave enough space for my cavalry  to  put pressure on the right. 

 On the left was where the skirmishers met for their own private skirmish. Simon had two units of light horse against a unit of horse archers and a battle group of slingers. I used my advantage of greater range and focused my attacks on individual enemy battle groups to try to gain some sort of advantage. Luckily it worked out in my favour.

I had in reserve some roman cavalry to chase down one of Simon light horse units and then  swing around to the rear of his pikes.

The combat  between the main bodies of troops was pretty conclusive within a couple of rounds this was mainly due to really great dice which resulting in Simon’s pike blocks fracturing before he had the opportunity  to bring to bear this superior forces on the right flank. In the end I was pleased to claim a welcome victory, losing only a single base.        

Roma Vincit

Well Monday's game is done and the miracle occurred, I beat Alan’s Early Successor army by 1.8 points. Giving me my first Field of Glory victory 10.9 points to 9.1.

Any post battle analysis has to start by giving credit to Andy the owner of the Mid Republican Roman army I was using, firstly for the army, and secondly for the useful advise he dispensed after our tournament encounter and again directly before the game.

In previous games I managed to get my Roman cavalry killed with alarming regularity. So this time I dispensed with them opting for a battle group of Numidian Light Horse and an extra group of medium foot Italian allies.

The light horse paid dividends due to their manoeuvrability. Despite being placed on the right flank they managed to race across the field in front to the main battle line and intercept a battle group of elephants which were bearing down on the end of the line of legionnaires. This made all the difference to the end result because it occupied the elephants so they thought better of charging the legionnaires.

The deployment at the start of the game.

Despite losing the set up initiative roll at the beginning, the terrain fell in my favour providing me with a steep hill on the right flank and a large section of rough ground towards my left flank. In the centre I had a nice gentle hill to place a defensive line of legionnaires on and nullify Alan’s pike force since I didn’t think they would fancy attacking up hill.

Once my position was set I only had to worry about my flanks which were covered by a couple of battle-groups of superior legionnaires and a mix of light foot and auxiliaries.

The first rounds of fighting resulted in me losing a battle group of light foot on the left who ran away at the first sign of trouble. I made no impression against Alan’s light horse on the right. As a novice player I found myself out numbered in the in the shooting and combat phases so opted to pull out my remaining light troops and attempt to rally them.

On the right flank I moved forward a superior legionnaire battle group which had a couple of charges at the light horse. They managed to isolate themselves, at the time this worried me. Nevertheless, in retrospect I think this was a good thing to do since it kept his light horse in check, away from my main line and forced Alan to move troops across to counter them. Being superior they took a fair bit of punishment before they broke and ran.

The end positions to the from Alan's side of the table. you notice my legionnaires exiting on the fare left of the table and Alans battle groups breaking and exiting on the right.

However, it was on the left flank that the battle was decided. After having my velites chased from the rough ground by a combination of light and medium foot my other superior legionnaires stood up to charges first, from medium foot and then from superior cavalry both of which broke on their line. Alan’s light foot over ran its support and ended up being chased around my rear by triari. By the end of the game they found themselves in a precarious position of being surrounded on three sides by triari with velites closing on their position.

Alan's light foot finding themselves in a slightly unsavoury position by end of the game.

So far in the B4AD tournament I am one win and one loss. I was informed that I need to win the next game and score at least 25 points to displace Andy form second place in the group as Alan progresses to the next round being top of the group on points accrued despite my result. Naturally I will be supporting Alan to go all the way and win the tournament so I can claim a victory over the champion at the group stages!!

Photo credits : Alan.