Slitherine

800 points a side in 25mm on an 8x5 table with 40mm MUs

Cole took the earlier period Judeans with a mighty phalanx.

4x 8 heavy Foot Average Protected drilled Offensive spear
1x4 Superior drilled armoured Cav lancers
2x8 Average undrilled unprotected light Foot Bow
2x6 Average Light Horse light spear bow drilled
1xBG LF sling
1xBG LF Jav
Some Nabateans... I didn't keep track!

1xIC
1xFC
1xTC

I took the Bosporons this time, with a strong infantry contingent.

3x4 Superior Armoured Lancer cav (undrilled)
2x6 Average LH Bow, swordsman (undrilled)
1x4 as above
1x6 Average Medium foot, Armoured, Light Spear, Swordsman (Olbian Militia)
1x8 Thracians Medium foot Protected, Offensive Spear
2x8 Sindii Archers Medium Foot Unprotected 1/2 Light Spear, Bow
3xLF (various flavours)

1xIC
1xFC
2xTC

I lost initiative and we littered the board with terrain. Cole chose a double sized hill and some brush, while I chose a gentle hill (that didn't make it onto the table) and some "uneven" broken ground. I felt that all of the r=terrain worked to my favour, and Cole apparently thought the same. Only one of us would turn out to be right.




This illustrates the opening Phases. My opponent had taken a flank march consisting of one BG of armoured Cav. He missed the part where he needed a general with it. I let it go in the interest of moving on and the dice gods responded to my chivalrous instinct by bringing his flank march on at the first legal instant....

Glancing at the set up, you can see that my plan was to smash his right with my left, as my cavalry was all better than his. with numbers and quality and an 8 base BG of Sindii archers (MI) to blow holes in his LH, I moved forward confidently. My center (all MF) hung back, looking for the cav to win the game and happy in their rough terrain where the HF offensive spearmen would be sharply disadvantaged.

That's not the game we played, however. Cole's flank march came on promptly and rolled up my left, forcing a cav unit to retire an evade move (I rolled long) and then intimidating my LH. I praised the Gods that I had posted my reserve Cav on the left. The Armoured Cav who "evaded" from the flank march were now hit in front by a column and in the flank by his LH when my second unit of LH chose to evade rather than be caught in the flank. Probably a poor decision--I should have sacrificed my LH.

In the center, as soon as his Flank March came on, Eumenes (general of the center) decided to push forward and tie up his center to prevent disaster. This had so many unexpected consequences I can't describe them... In short, with the help of my flanking LH and LI, the center went forward across a great deal of table and the LH and archers cleared the hilltop terrain that should have been the anchor for my opponents HI line.




Now the battle is fully developed. Due to nothing but luck and the fantastic efforts of Satyrus, my IC, my left has not collapsed. Instead, the Armoured Cav who took the flank march on the chin are slowly dieing, as I set up a counter punch. I took the LH who evaded the initial assault and chose to reinforce success rather than failure, so they rode PAST the desperate melee on the left and linked up with my second Cav unit, who had lost a base to his 6 dice of shooting and become disrupted, but been rallied by the IC. The charged every turn, and my opponent chose to have his LH evade rather face the Cav every turn. In effect, 2/3s of my left simply ignored the flank march and pushed on. This was, to me, the best decision I made all game, as the battle wasn't going to be won or lost in the leftmost engagement.
On the left of the center, my Bowmen and light troops clear the brushy hill. On the far right, my light troops and his are locked in a fairly equal shooting contest where neither side has much to gain by melee. But on the right of the center, my LI javelin men crest the steep hill and turn his flank, setting up to bury his reserve cav under their javelins. On his turn, his drilled cav show their stuff by facing and moving away, but the threat to his left is real, and the steep hill is proving a disadvantage.

Cole now elected to throw his center forward and batter me down with his better infantry. He wheeled his line to prevent my right hand archers and the javs on the hill from flanking him.



My dice had been average all game, and so had Cole's, but at this point, my additional general and Tyche-Fortuna combined to end the game quickly. On my left, my beleaguered Cav unit finally routed, but it had held long enough, and the counter-punch from my reserve with the IC in the front rank knocked the enemy LH to fragmented in one blow (after everyone passed their Cohesion tests!) My Cav and LH continued to push his LH to the very edge of the table, spelling the doom of his whole right flank. On the hill, my Sindii archers charged his LI and caught it, routing them and then routing the fragmented friends behind them and sweeping towards his camp. On his left of center, my archers, aided by the javelin men ion the steep slopes, rolled superb dice and landed something like six hits on one of his phalanx units, killing a base and disrupting them, while my center MI stood fast, waiting to let the flanks do their best. To add insult to injury, my rightmost skirmishers (a poor unit and an average unit) who had missed all game suddenly rolled a fist full of fives and shot one of his Skirmisher units to fragmented, changing the situation on my far right completely in two shooting phases, from a stalemate to a walkover.

On his last turn, Cole charged with the Heavy Foot in range, the leftmost unit of his phalanx from my perspective, and they were beaten at impact and beaten badly in melee, as my Olbian militia rolled good dice and had better overlaps.
At this point we had played 3.5 hours and elected to call the game, as we both had to go back to real life and there was nothing left in it for Cole. He had two BGs routed, 2 Fragmented, and 2 about to exit the table on my Impact phase, and no place he could win. I had one in rout.

Comments: 40mm MUs are large! An IC is a god at 40mm, with a massive command span. Terrain choices are large--as large as Warrior and larger than I remember from DBM. Despite a lifetime of playing with 40MM MUs I was taken aback at least once by how far units went on evades,a nd Cole's whole right was lost to evades off table (or would have been) because there was so much less space than with 25mm MUs.

On the other hand, I liked the terrain size a great deal, and (hey, I benefited from it!) the command spans are part of the game. On small thing we did do was to use 1.25" MUs for set up zones, making the set up exactly to scale with 15mm. Frankly, I found this to work brilliantly, and I'd recommend it to those playing 40mm MUs.
On the third hand, in terrain placement, I noted that terrain could now slide by 480mm--that's half a meter! Good god!

Altogether, a great game. Or I should say, another great game. Haven't had a bad one yet, win or lose.

I'll close with some photos.

Thanks for the good report Christian! Great pics and what not, what did you use for the battlefield layouts?

For my own part I had a good time despite being a bit run down after a long week. Some subsequent reading has revealed we made more than a couple more errors on the flank march (the first we've played), which can be chalked up as a learning experience.

On the MU's I was less thrilled by the 40mm MU's. I don't in any way think they ruined the game, but the feel was so different from the 1" MUs on 6x4 that some parts were not at all the same game. I also felt that the terrain pieces seemed gigantic (a small piece is the size of a large terrain piece in Warrior/7th, which I felt was an over-terrained game).

A key illustration of the problem was that despite using 1.25" MUs for deployment, I was able to move my entire skirmish line into shooting range with Christian's on my first turn. That just didn't sit right with me. On a 6x4 with 1" MUs you're looking at turn 3 or 4 before the lines are engaging, and that makes for a bit of pre game maneuver as opposed to the lines pretty much laying up as deployed.

So, I'm going to advocate for our next game to be played with 1.25" MUs and see how that feels.

Have fun!
Cole

I confess I haven't seen a reason to try a flank march yet. Seems to iffy to me at this point.

I think only cav & LH armies will rely on flank marches

Based on the game above...

I think the lesson that I'm learning from FoG is that no single move is decisive, and that victory always comes as the death of a thousand cuts. This is a big change from Warrior, with it's all or nothing melee commitment (7th edition, even 6th edition--how many melees run more than a turn?). Likewise, in DBM, I found that the point of commitment--the place where you through in your knights lead by your general, for instance--was either decisive, or you lost the game. Not always, but often.
But in FoG, nothing happens immediately, and reacting to an existing situation is usually too slow unless 1) you have drilled troops or 2) you see the situation before it reaches crisis and react early. This calls for a different style. I like it, but it is different.
I thought that Cole's flank march would be decisive. Luckily, instead of throwing in the towel, I tried to isolate the damage and build a local counter punch while moving on twith my plan. To my amazement, this worked. I'm not sure that I'm altogether happy that a unit of Bosporon Lancers can not only resist an identical block of Nabateans while tanking some LH in the flank, but WIN the impact phase. (I rolled well, but not outside of expected utility, as Mike P. would say). It took 3 melee phases for them to rout--long enough to bring up the reserves and put them in.

The whole interrelation between Cav, LH, LF, and MF is so delicate that I don't quite have it all down yet... but it sure works. More games...

C.

He failed to engage you frontally before his flank march showed up. ( too early it seems) It became a fairly even 1 vs 1 fight

stecal wrote:He failed to engage you frontally before his flank march showed up. ( too early it seems) It became a fairly even 1 vs 1 fight

I concur. LH just don't throw a lot of dice.

Yeah, but I was engaged to the front by his Cav and to the flank by his LH. On the initial dice I WON. I had to roll well, but not outside of expected utility...

Saw the same thing happen last night in a doubles game. In both cases, the outnumbers and flanked unit WAS routed--but it took three to five phases to do it.

I'm not saying that's bad--I'm just saying that for cavalry, that's REALLY different from other games and takes some getting used to...

You have to plan for fights going on for a while, I think. Even though my Romans have gutted the Germans several times, its never fast. And one turn of Yatzee could push things one way or the other.

Being superior helps, though.