My first FoG win (in any flavour)

[timmy1]

After more losing games of FoG than I care to count, I have finally won one. My most frequent FoG opponent is John Davis, the Society of Ancient 2009 Champion. He usually rips my army apart in very short order. So to mark the occasion of my first victory I thought I would bore you all with a brief report.

The game was 15mm, 800 points a side. I used Principate Roman 260AD, John used Classical Indian 100BC. As I was using a borrowed list that the owner plans to use, I will not share the details, suffice it to say that it was a Principate take on the Marginally Less Morally Bankrupt Dominate Roman Swarm theory. From memory John’s list contained 5 BG of Elephants, 5 of Bow/Sword Medium foot, 2 of Light Spear/Sword Medium foot, and 4 BG of mounted and light troops. There was an IC and 2 TC. As all the troops were undrilled I was confident of being able to out manoeuvre the Indians.

With a good roll I obtained Pre-Battle initiative and choose Tropical from the Indian list. All the material terrain fell in my half, two forests on the left, a small impassable feature on the middle of my baseline and marsh on my right table edge. That rather scuppered my plan to use Auxilia to hold the flanks and attack down the middle. Most everything I faced was going to be equal in close combat if I got shot up on the way in, especially the Elephants, so I deployed LH on the left to delay, and Auxilia to protect the flank of the Legionaries from the Bowmen while using the impact foot to try and blunt the effect of the Elephants. MF in the open vs. Elephants I did not fancy so was glad of the initiative. John deployed with the MF on his left in front of the baggage, bowmen to the fore while attacking with the Elephants down the middle and the other mounted on the right to turn my left flank.

With the benefit of being drilled and more commanders I foolishly imagined I could manoeuvre the Romans more quickly than the Indians. Ha! All game I passed just 3 CMTs but I think John passed all but 4. Having to fight a larger army without the benefit I should have had from being drilled was not what I had planned.

The game developed in 3 distinct phases. Could I delay enough on the left, and hold the Elephants in the centre while getting enough of the armoured Auxilia into the opposing MF quickly enough to win?

On the left, my LH delayed his mounted long enough (while losing a BG) so he was never able to redeploy to the opposite flank in time to have an impact. Cheesey moment was when one BG of Roman LH took losses and then hid in the forest to avoid destruction by the more numerous and effective Indian mounted troops.

In the Centre, there were a couple of mistakes made by both players but Elephant vs. Legion combat was bloody. Unless the legion won the impact they would have to get lucky to win, or get the supporting LF into the Elephants quickly. Two bounds after impact 2 BG of Auxilia and 2 of Legion were broken and being pursued by Elephants. Eventually they all died, aside from one that got trapped against the impassable terrain on my baseline. However I did get lucky in one combat, causing 3 hits on one disrupted Elephant BG. John failed both the Cohesion test (badly) and the death roll. This started the domino effect and soon 3 Elephant BG were routing. John never succeeded in rallying any of them. At this stage I was 3 Attrition Points from losing but John was about 10 away.

On the right, I finally got to grips with the MF bow. I kept my line together quite well to prevent the Indian bowmen from concentrating their fire but even so I was lucky. In 4 bounds of receiving shooting from 5 BG, I did not lose base and only failed 2 CTs. I then discovered that the MF Bowmen with Sword and rear support were not quite as fragile as I had expected. The Roman Auxilia were very much getting worst of things until the Legion BGs that had pursued the broken Elephants joined in. This forced one of the Bowmen to redeploy such that they no longer had rear support and this proved key. In two bounds the Indians saw 3 BG of MF and 1 LF BG broken.

The Roman now followed up into the supporting line just in front of the Indian camp. I then discovered that the Indian Javelinmen MF in 6s were the equal of 4 base BG of Auxilia. Everywhere that John was up in POA he rolled poorly and everywhere that he was down he rolled spectacularly well. My fragmented Auxilia BG finally bolstered on about the 5th attempt but one of my Auxilia BG broke as it followed up into the supports. We were now both a point or two away from defeat but I had a disrupted BG of 4 Auxilia bases fighting 6 bases of Bowmen. John rolled 3 hits from 6 dice, so I need to hit with all 3 of mine, which I did. That was too close a call. I then got two Legion BG and an Auxilia BG into the other BG of Javelinmen and it was all over.

This was a game that looked as if it was going to be very much one-sided on paper but the more I learnt about the Classical Indian list the tougher it seemed. I think John’s list will do really well against mounted armies. I think I need to make some tweaks to the list I used, to suit my style of play but I would like to thank MrMadAxeMan for the idea. My own lists had never won me a game of FoG, now I have. I really enjoyed the game even at the times when it was too tense.

Two things that were new to me occurred during the game. The first was the double drop from failing a CT. I had never seen it before but it occurred about 4 times in the game, 3 times to my opponent. The effect is devastating.

Also for the first time I saw the Benny Hill phase, where troops winning on one flank seem to take forever to redeploy to the other flanks and slippery LH can really take a long time to catch. I am not proud that my LH hid in a forest but as their death would have cost me the game they were going to stay there no matter what.

My opponent (re?)learnt two rules to do with the definitions of rear support and threatened flank. Fortunately neither of them proved crucial.

Finally, in light of the recent debates about Command and Control in FoG, I kept a careful eye out for where commanders were useful and where they are not. I think that the balance was about right but you do need to plan well to make most use of them. Certainly having 2 commanders bolstering and boosting my main strike force, 1 rallying broken troops and 1 keeping the flank protection in place was key. Yes it is a lot of points spent but I think very worthwhile. It seemed historical and certainly I would have lost without the commanders. What was apparent during this game that seemed to be missing from the current debate is that with the width of a game relative to the depth, troops that have won on one flank take a long time to deploy to the other. The only real way to make this work is have a commander to sweep everyone together and use second moves. To prevent this I had to drop a couple of BG from my attack on the Indian left to prevent the mounted right from second moving across. It succeeded but might not have done had the Indian left held for another turn.

All-in-all a game of FoG that I really enjoyed and now I can’t wait for the next one. I need to get some more toys so that I can do the MBDR swarm sometime in the future (handy that Salute is just around the corner, me thinks).

[Skullzgrinda]

Well done!

Good report and it sounds like a nail biter game! Nothing wrong with with putting you horse in the woods.

It worked in "Gladiator"!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=331clHFs ... re=related