Slitherine

Playing at the club last night with Medieval Danish against Dominate Roman. The Roman foot deploy facing my main foot block, I advance my foot and try to get them past some terrain as I hav a BG of heavy weapon crossbow facing legionaries but I have pike in reserve (an uneven hill messed up my deployment area). Anyway, my HW BG gets caught by lancers (who my crossbow fail to force a single cohesion test on) and I am disrupted. The same lancers step forward into a BG of cavalry I have trried (wrongly) to move over the hill. Then one of my pike BG's is shot disrupted by 4 slingers and I end up failing my test and charging the legionaries (dead pike BG ).

Over with the fight against the lancers though things are looking better, I hold, bolster my troops, move to threaten the flank, fragment a BG of horse archers with a couple of good crossbow volleys and things are looking up. The Lancers break when I hit them in the flank, the horse archers break when the pusuers run into them, a BG of legionaries is then hit in the flank and another pursues my broken pike into the front of another of my pike BG's while the other victorious legion is pususing my dead pike. Things have now gone from poor to excellent. I an 2 attrition points down and my opponent is down 7 with three BG's teetering so a good chance of 10. I get all three teetering BG's but the broken horse archers rally 8-2 to me and everything looks good.

At this point I start to assume that attacking with a slight advantage is good enough. Either numbers or a POA in melee seem reasonable and I stop focusing on killing enemy BG's by ganging up on them. Three bounds later my army is broken

The morals of this sad tale:

Once you have your enemy on the ropes hit them even harder to make sure of things.
If a plan was working why change it just to hurry along the inevitable victory
Never enter an even fight unless there is no option.

The highlight of the game was a BG of 8 average armoured foot 1/2 heavy weapon and 1/2 crossbow swordsmen charging a BG of 4 average protected lights spear swordsmen. Both sides had generals. I went fragmented on impact and broke in the melee

I look at this much like my early DBM days, the dice are pointing out my mistakes, now if only I could get DBM out of my head and start getting used to the totally different tempo of a FoG game

Yours still learning

Hammy

hammy wrote:*snip*

The morals of this sad tale:

*snip*
If a plan was working why change it just to hurry along the inevitable victory

This is the one that gets me every time. When I find myself in contention at a tournament I always have to remind myself not to have a brain cramp. Sometimes it works.

The highlight of the game was a BG of 8 average armoured foot 1/2 heavy weapon and 1/2 crossbow swordsmen charging a BG of 4 average protected lights spear swordsmen. Both sides had generals. I went fragmented on impact and broke in the melee

This sounds like a fight very much to your advantage. Bad dice rather than bad decision-making. Take comfort.

I look at this much like my early DBM days, the dice are pointing out my mistakes, now if only I could get DBM out of my head and start getting used to the totally different tempo of a FoG game

I can't wait to jump on the learning curve.

Enviously,

Marc

babyshark wrote:

hammy wrote:

The highlight of the game was a BG of 8 average armoured foot 1/2 heavy weapon and 1/2 crossbow swordsmen charging a BG of 4 average protected lights spear swordsmen. Both sides had generals. I went fragmented on impact and broke in the melee

This sounds like a fight very much to your advantage. Bad dice rather than bad decision-making. Take comfort.

Bad dice yes but had I made a better decision a couple of turns earlier it wouldn't have come to this.

I am currently reliving all the horrors of my early DBM tournaments. The "Hammy moment" is back with avengance.

Aaaah - the wonders of afterthought.

Take my example of how to screw up a battle plan:

I advance with a BG of Companion cavalry (superior) supported to the flank by a BG of Cretan archers (superior)
I move to cretans across the front of the Companions to take the fire from 6 LH bowmen.
The LF retire and some Visigoth foot (IF/Sw) advance in their place.
In the interbound Alexander (IC) moves out of range to be with some pikes that MAY get into combat in 2 moves time.

Now my plan comes home to roost....

The Companions fail their CMT not to charge by 1 (where was Alexander?)
They burst through the Cretans and DISR them.
The companions lose the impact phase and become DISR
The cretans move back outside of 3" (just in case!)
After the melee phase the Companions are FRG'd - They break off
The enemy LF advance back through the visigoths and shoot at the Companions causing 2 hits
The Companions fail their CT and break.
The Cretans take a test for the Companions breaking and go down to FRG
The Companions route through the Cretans causing them to drop a cohesion level - they Break.

I have now lost 2 superior BG's purely because I moved Alexander to somewhere where he wasn't needed.


I'm still kicking myself.

terrys wrote:....snip...

I have now lost 2 superior BG's purely because I moved Alexander to somewhere where he wasn't needed.

Still, under DBM Alexander ALWAYS dies...

Amazing. Sounds just like a DBM Doubles partner I used to have...

Julian

The Companions route through the Cretans causing them to drop a cohesion level - they Break.

I thought only troops burst through dropped a cohesion level? Isn't this a legal interpenetration?

Pete

petedalby wrote:

The Companions route through the Cretans causing them to drop a cohesion level - they Break.

I thought only troops burst through dropped a cohesion level? Isn't this a legal interpenetration?

Pete

You are right Pete.

I mentioned that to Terry at the time but he was convinced that Mounted could't interpenetrate psiloi only vice versa. Might have saved him although it went pear shaped pretty much everywhere except the main pike block which butchered my visigoths in rapid time.

Si

My excuse is that I haven't had much experience moving routing troops.........

OK - The Cretans should have been left fragmented. Since I had no general available to steady them, it wouldn't have made much difference.
I replaced them with something else for Warfare.