Slitherine

Had another game last night, my first against Phil (plewis66) at the club.

My Visigoths fought Phil's Romans. The battle mainly boiled down to the Visigoths taking advantage of their better scouting (and a decent initiative roll) to allow them to focus most of the Visigoth army on half the Roman army. The Roman cavalry and two BG's of legionaries were up against two BG's of Visigoth warriors, one of Carpi, warriors, one of falxmen, one of Visigoth nobles and one of Huns plus three BG's of light foot archers.

The archers managed to disrupt one of the cavalry BG's and when they charged one of them was intercepted by my noble lancers while the light foot archers evaded through my medium and heavy foot. The cavalry that were not fighting my lancers were then charged by the Carpi warriors and evaded but due to a poor variable move result ended up being caught and broken. This drew one of the legionary BG's into a fight with the Carpi foot who held on magnificently aided by rear support and a general with but not fighting with the BG. The cavalry and lancers were joined by the Huns and this fight dragged on. Both sides went disrupted and had time to rally before the Huns were charged by the other legionary BG. The Huns lost a base but didn't get disrupted before they broke off.

The Carpi warriors fighting the legionaries were joined by the falxmen and a series of heroic combat and / or CT rolls (again aided by rear support and the general) kept this fight going with both sides gradually suffering losses. Eventually the Romans were down to 4 bases against 5 warriors and 2 falxmen and a huge combat roll by the Carpi saw the Romans loose by 2 (well 3 actually), drop to fragmented and loose another base. The next bound these Romans broke.

The Cavalry melee continued and a BG of Visigoth warriors threw themselves into the mix only to go disrupted on impact The Huns came back to cover the flank of the lancers and reduce the overlap and when the legionaries charged the Huns the cavalry were left isolated and rapidly broke. The lancers were rallied from their pursuit, the second BG of visigoth foot put itself in the way of the legionaries and distracted them long enough for the lancers to hit them in the rea and the Huns to hit them in the flank.

With the loss of a BG of foot archers on the other flank Phil's army had picked up enough AP's to break. I lost one BG of foot archers in the centre who got too bold in front of some legionaries and the flaxmen who failed a CMT to turn to their flank after the legionaries broke so ended up being flank charged by a BG of auxilia.

Including a significant amount of explanation and chat with the MAWS WAB crowd who are just getting in to the beta program the game completed in 3 hours.. I believe that we bith had great fun and there were only a couple of minir rules questions specifically:

When contracting into (or wheeling) a column do you end up with a kinked column ala DBM or do the rear elements whip round into place?

Also when Phil's cavalry were fighting my mounted we had a situation like:

cccc
xnnhh
xnnhh

c= cavalry, n= nobles and h=huns. The cavalry lost and lost a base, the nobles had inflicted two hits and the huns one. the loss therfore should come from in front of the nobles and thus make a gap in the BG. Does it reform bu taking the unengaged base to fight the nobles or the one fighting the Huns sliding to make things a group again or does the owner of the BG have the choice.

I did try to have a quick check in the rules but as my rules this time have decided that everything after P17 is on P18 it makes it hard to find things Phil has a theory that if you click on the contents table (or do pretty much anything with the file other than print it) before you print you can end up with the references getting messed up.

Still it was another great game and I went home from the club feeling thoroughly enthused.

Hammy

It was a good game, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. What was sisgnificant for me, is that this time I was learning more about tactics than rules. The result was exacerbated by a couple of blunders on my part. Specifically, deploying two BGs of Legionaries away from the main battle line, to try to support cavalry on a flank, Accepting a charge from Hammy's LF on my (outnumbered) LF, and breaking a BG of Legionaries off an overlap with my Cavalry, to attempt to charge Hammy's Hun Cavalry, who being entirely in single rank, evaded.

Also, I wasted time by attempting to wheel a full BL to bring them across to the flank where all the action was, whereas splitting the line would have enabled the section nearer the action to arrive sooner, and the remander to act as a second wave and rear support. Also, I need more (some!) light horse to drive off the skirmishers perfectly reasnoably using delay tactics against this type of manoeuvre.

This game lead me to realise a difference between WHFB and AoW in terms of the overall objective: In WHFB, you are pretty much trying to inflict losses across the whole army, whereas in AoW, you are trying to break/fragment enough BGs to cause a rout.

The game was 32-0 in AoW, and would have been a minor victory, and close to a draw, in WHFB! It felt a bit weird to loose the game so heavily with so many army points, and all my generals, still at large...but that's something for me to get used to...it seems to be a feature of all the ancients rulesets I've come across (and admittedly is more realistic than fighting down to the last 25% or less of combatants, as can happen in WHFB).

The game moved very quickly. Now we are getting properly to grips with the rules, it is becoming apparent that the game is fast, engaging and fun. The three hours of this game flew by, helped, we both felt, by the fact that the players whose bound it isn't still has so much to do, and is completely involved in the game in pretty much every phase of every bound. In fact, it's only your opponents movement phase where you are just a spectator; every other phase of the game, you are just as involved if it is your opponents bound as if it is your own. That's an enormous plus for the appeal of the game.

When contracting into (or wheeling) a column do you end up with a kinked column ala DBM or do the rear elements whip round into place?

Yes it kinks. Look at allowed formations IIRC.

Also when Phil's cavalry were fighting my mounted we had a situation like:

cccc
xnnhh
xnnhh

c= cavalry, n= nobles and h=huns. The cavalry lost and lost a base, the nobles had inflicted two hits and the huns one. the loss therfore should come from in front of the nobles and thus make a gap in the BG. Does it reform bu taking the unengaged base to fight the nobles or the one fighting the Huns sliding to make things a group again or does the owner of the BG have the choice.

I don't think we have yet specfied the words but what we are doing is remove one opposite n and then the c player schoose how to regain his BG integrity = avoiding the mystery X perhaps...

Si