Bosphorans vs Epirians in Toronto: First game in TO?

[korvus]

Its taken a bit to get this out, but here we go...

Despite a fairly hefty amount of snow in Toronto last Saturday, Noel (known here as Pezhetaroi) and I got together at friend's place and took Field of Glory out for a spin. It was a typical first game, in that we made some mistakes and spent a fair bit of time checking the rule book. What was atypical is that we were able to find the answers to our questions there! We ended up with a couple of fairly trivial outstanding q's, and checks on the forum simply revealed that we had failed our observation check in the rulebook and the answers were there in black and white, and that the guess' that we played with were right.

Noel played Epirians under Phyrrus the Great, and I played Bosphorans under... Vlad Dracula. So I guess we'd better make that Wallacho-Bosphorans :) We played in 28mm on a 4x6 table with 650 points. The terrain was steppe, and we had a scattering of hills and broken ground, but little else in the way of terrain. The armies were:

Phyrric:
1xInspired Commander
2xTroop Commander
3x8 Average, Drilled Pike
1x8 Poor Drilled Pike
1x6 Average Medium foot w/light spear
2x6 Average Light foot w/bow
1x2 Average Elephants
1x4 Average Light Horse w/ Javelins, Light Spear
1x4 Superior Cavalry w/ Lance, Swordsmen
1x4 Superior Cavalry w/ Light Spear, Swordsmen

Wallacho-Bosphorans

1xInspired Commander
1xField Commander
1xTroop Commander

1x6 Superior Cavalry w/Lancers, Swordsmen
4x6 Average Light Horse, Bow, Swordsmen
1x8 Average Light Infantry w/ Bow
1x8 Average Light Infantry w/ Javelins, Light Spear
1x8 Average Heavy Foot, Impact, swordsmen

My first impressions were good ones. Skirmishers really behave like skirmishers should, the first time I've seen that in a wargame. Similarly, Commanders are very much about commanding, bolstering troops, helping them make difficult maneuvers, and occasionally helping in combat. But their big role was bolstering the morale of units disordered as a result of failing cohesion tests.

Forcing cohesion tests seems to be a critical part of the game, and my bow armed light cav was my primary tool for the job. Noel deployed in a hard line of pike with skirmishers off the ends, and my primary tactic was to peel the onion, skinning off the skirmishers and cav and leaving the slow core pike vulnerable to encirclement.

Initially I pushed my light horse in battle down the table hard to seize as much ground as possible. This is critical for light horse armies against big foot armies in every game I've played before, and the same is true here. After that, I focussed the light horse on my left, leaving the light infantry to delay on the right with the heavy cav as a threat to make it look like I was serious there.

Things started off well enough. I drove off his light horse fragmented, and doubled up on a block of light infantry, disordering it, and in the following impact phase I charged the light horse into the light infantry.

Unfortunately, I forgot about the "must prolong forward rule, and I ended up fighting both the light horse (newly bolstered) and the light foot rather than routing the light foot and forcing a cohesion test on the light horse.

This dragged down into a fairly pathetic slugging match with neither side doing much of anything.

Noel lined up Phyrrus with his Companion cav, and brought them on to flank charge my poor light horse. Seeing this coming, I'd had Vlad double march the impact foot up in time to be able to intercept the charge. The companions, split between the light horse and the foot weren't able to do enough, and had to break off at the end of the turn.

This set me up on Noel's poor pike block, which had been disordered by the shooting of the other light horse, which had ganged up on it. I charged in the militia, and rolled like a god... Six hits on six dice. Noel managed to miss all his hits except one, which was a six, and had to be re-rolled because he was poor, and ended up missing as well. He rolled low on his cohesion test, and ended up at a 0, dropped two cohesion levels, and broke. This very turn both of the previously engaged light horse and infantry also broke, and things started to fall apart on the left for him.

Meanwhile, on the right, I had been forced to buy time by committing my cav against Noel's, and got tag teamed by the elephants for my trouble. We ended up both breaking due to casualties, and it was a wash there.

In the end I believe I routed 3 of Noel's units to my 1, and had another fragmented, for a 7-2 victory. It was a great game, and we're looking forward to butting heads again. FoG stood the our playtest really well, and I'd say it was well worth the money spent, and will likely supplant Warrior as the popular ruleset here in Toronto (admittedly, describing Warrior as popular is a bit of a misnomer, it is pretty seriously out of favour).

Some key observations:

- Big units are more durable, but limit the number of maneuver elements available to you. In the final analysis, I'd say bigger is better so far.
- The board size is too small in 28mm, we're going to try it on a 5x8 with 40mm MU (for play only, we'll still deploy, do terrain in inches).
- Commiting your generals to close combat is risky, as they can't save the day. Phyrrus found this out to his regret, while I peeled Vlad out of the action once I'd delivered the foot into range. Vlad did good service rallying and shifting units around, while Phyrrus did little as he was stuck fighting.

So, so far so good, I'd give the game 2 big thumbs up...


Have fun!
Cole

[stecal]

Thats great Cole. Bob & I are playing FOG as often as we can down here too. Really blowing the dust off these 15 year old armies.

[shall]

Great to see so much fun being hand in the snow!

Si

[korvus]

Thanks guys!

It turns out I broke my elbow when I slipped and fell leaving the house. Fortunately I wasn't carrying my miniatures at the time!

Cole
Looking foward to playing Friday

[wakeful11]

Well if you want some help from an experienced player - just shout - 18 months and counting now with FOG......and am in TO

Phil Giles

[Blathergut]

phil...am slowly getting there...finally have the main body of Spanish infantry done (all 156 figs!!!!)...working on the cavalry and skirmish stuff...i might make it after all for next weekend...had hoped to maybe connect with you and run through the game once...

...hmmm....when will you be in stratford?...could maybe run through the scenario that friday night...

Dan T.