Slitherine

Swarm Romans along the lines of:
3 TCs
1x4 cats
3 legion
7 aux
5 lh
1 skirms
2 bow

Sassanids
IC
3 Tc
4 Bw cav
1 Cat
3 bw LH
1 skirm bw
1 skirm sling
2 elephants units

Terrain was spread around the board, with the romans going for more rough and the sassanids open spaces and open fields.......... when all was done, there was some pieces around the edges, and one piece of rough in the middle of the table

Depolyment
Romans went for a strong LFlank and centre, with all LH covering the flank
Sassanids matched it with be cav, El opposite the roman strong LF

Initial Moves

Romans pushed the legions forwards on the left, and the armoured MF through the rough in the middle, sassanids pushed the Elephants forwards supported by some LH, both sides' cats were covereing the open flank of the rough.......

Position after manouvering ended up with (from the Roman sides perspective) left flank of bw, Ax, and legion was fronted by bw cav, Lh and ele, but the roman swarm has 3 rear supporting MF. In the centre the roman armoured MF pushed straight through the sassanid skirms without loss, skirms evading charges but always loosing ground, romans swarm had 2 spare MF here too.......... on the open roman right flank, 4 roman LH and 1 bw unit were clarting about with 2 sass cav, 1 LH........

First Contacts
Some nifty sassanid charges cost the romans a unit of Lh on the right flank as it was caught by some sass Lh and the hit in the flank by bw cav............. but the roman right was still holding strong and some good shooting and combats took down a sassanid Lh in reply.............

In the centre, the 2 cat units fought aech other to disrupted status, but a spare roman MF had manouvered onto the flank opened by the armoured Mf pushing through the rough going.

On the Roman left, the legions proved resistanct to bw cav shooting and continued to puch forwards again opening up the flank of the far left flank to more Mf in reserve

On the far laft flank, the elephants took down a unit of roman bw and continued on into the poor roman MF at the end of the line.

Its all happening!

Roman right flank stabilises with one Lh unit lost each, the skirmishing continues.....

The Sassanids Cats are hit in the flank by the MF, drop to fragged and get mullered in the impact, the pursuits take them below min strength and theyre gone, the attached general is also killed in the pursuit

The Sassanid ele on the left flank are also hit in the flank by some other spare roman MFs...... they too get mullered in the combats and loose a base to umlucky dice, below min theyre gone! panic tests for friends broken results in the supporting sassanid Lh failing on both counts and both units drop a level......... this proove critical as the roman LH charges into them and in the resulting combat wins both! one units of sassnid LH breaks on snake eyes! the other drops another level, but breaks once it sees its friends running.................

They think its all over.............

............ and they were right, games ends, total time including set up 3hrs.


Overall
Sassanids were defeated, Romans lost 2 Bgs from 19......... in hindsight neither needed to be lost. no big swings of luck to change the game.


Good fun, and another FOG game which was thoroughly enjoyable...........

jon

How did you find the Roman Swarm then? Is it beatable?

Incidentally, why aren't you doing the Northern Doubles?

Found the swarm an absolutely awesome army............ aggressive and manouverable, resilient and all round, the extra units are simply worth double their points cost.......... and I didnt even milk it either, took plenty of opn terrain troops to allow a more balanced game and Roman army............ still cant see them getting beaten unless the owning player wants to take lots of chances!

No northern doubles for me as its just too far to travel for 2 games..... shame as its always good to see everyone again.

jon

Jon nice report , i been looking at this guy's report with the Teutonic knights I like the build http://mattheppe.googlepages.com/battlereport8aug08 could i borrow your DBM book you showed me ? I think i could do a list like this guys with some more added foot units . Regards Darren .

No problem Darren, can pick it up on Friday........ game still on?

jon

Yeah no probs I can make tomorrow about 2pm again ? So you haven't been called in yet for work , no chance of it happening tomorrow then if you're going to be called in then ? I suppose you won't know untill friday . Anyway if not I'll see you about 2pm mate , regards Darren .

Thanks for the battle report! I'm working on a Dominate Roman army once Khurasan gets their new range out to supplement the couple of BGs of unpainted minis I already had. I've been fascinated with the discussions on the Dominate 'swarm army'. Might be worth trying against a friend of mine's Sassanid army in the future

I do wonder how such an armored MF version of the Dominate army will do against another of their historical opponents, namely a Germanic foot army such as Early Vandal or Frankish and all the HF impact foot in large BGs such an host will bring to bear.

Cheers,

Dale

cheers Gents, I was wondering if the bat reps are of any interest to anyone!

Ive got a German Impact foot HI army ready to go to try itout.............. my gut feel is that the Romans will trade a small MF unit frontally to force the germans to pursue, the pursuit opens up the flanks of the large high points cost HI unit to the swarms of cheap MF lurking in the second line.......... with the flanks hit the combat should be short!

just Theory of Glory though, nothing like trying it out to see what happens..........

Darren, no work yet, can do Friday PM............ Dom Rom versus Germans any good for you? (you can be the Dom Roms if you want!)

jon

Yeah no probs i'll give the romans a go ! All that discipline might help me hold a stable battle line whem it comes to impact and melee. See you later . Darren .

Yeah no probs see you later .