Slitherine

So, there we were... standing on top of a hill in a perfect defensive posture. At the bottom of said hill stood the pride of the leaderless Crusader knights. Our noble general moved to the front of the formation and taunted the knights to charge our shield wall.

"Come on, if you're man enough" he said (in Danish).

They lowered their ineffective lances and charged headlong into the fray. Our front ranks dropped to one knee and braced the butts of their spears against the foot of the second rank. The second rank spearmen placed their knees in shoulder blades of the men in front of them supporting their formation.

With a resounding crash the Crusaders hit. The noise was temendous, but the execution equally tremendous. When the dust had settled we had lost a few brave souls but a great many Knights and horses lay dead and wounded at our feet. With only three quarters of their original number remaining they withdrew again to the base of the hill.

Again we steadied our line ready for a secondary assault.

They came again in a second wave. Disrupted from their previous attempts and again without leadership we felt this would be an easy victory. Their lances found their mark. Their swords smashed our mail. We wavered, then feld the field. An amazing turn around.

(Game terms)

4 x Knights/Armoured/Undrilled/Superior/-/Lance/Swordsmen without a general
vs
8 x Heavy Foot/Protected/Undrilled/Average/-/Offensive Spearmen/Spearmen with a general on a hill.

The knights attempt to not charge and fail.

After impact and melee they are disrupted and lose a casualty and withdraw to the bottom of the hill again.
After the Danes turn the knights are still disrupted and charge in their turn agai
On Impact the knights are double disadvantaged (Hill & Spear vs nothing) and have 4 dice vs the spear double advantaged and 6 dice. The Crusaders get more hits than the Spearmen, but that's ok, coz now they are stuck in combat against disrupted infantry... I don't mind as I have an overlap, a hill, and a general.
In Melee the knights get 1 hit vs 0. The Danes roll snake eyes for their cohesion test and break.

Unbelievable!

Except they shouldn't have broken as you can only drop one level because you didn't lose the melee by two hits....

However, being Fragmented spearmen against Knights is not pretty and you would probably have broken in the next melee.

dave_r wrote:Except they shouldn't have broken as you can only drop one level because you didn't lose the melee by two hits....

However, being Fragmented spearmen against Knights is not pretty and you would probably have broken in the next melee.

Yes, very good point. I normally would have picked that up, but I was doing the teaching so trying to do too much stuff. Either which way, it was a good thing for him to break me as I was the veteran player and him the noob. But don't worry, I still kicked his arse everywhere else in the game. That's how you keep them keen isn't it? Kick seven shades of poo out of them to keep them interested?

My favorite moment of a recent fight between Thracians and ER Sarmatians was a charge by a BG of lancers into my medium foot. ++(sup) vs --, He rolls nothing but 2s. Only Big Al (the North Greek) has been able to tame my Thracians.

If only my Thracians had ever been so lucky they might have made a reappearance in my army. Now if only I could do something like that with my scythed chariots.... used them 3 times every game they are in its a waste of 30 points..not to mention the cost of buying them

You are probably not using enough Thracians. My army is nothing but. I use the very traditional deployment of a line of skirmishing javilinmen in the first line, the rhomphia armed peltasts in the second, the 2 BGs of armored cav as rear support, and clouds of LH and LF to contest the flanks. All TC commanders. I'm still +2.

Selucids can only have 6 Thracians so used all I could get. Definately not enough.