Slitherine

well not wuite loose, but they didnt win ; )

Same army as before for the Romans
This time they faced off against their worst nightmare........... Visigoths!

3 TC's
6 x 8 HI impact foot
2 x 6 LF bw
1 x 6 LF jav
1 x 4 LH
2 x 4 Cav Lancers Superior
Dacian Ally, TC, 1x8 MF impactfoot, 1x4 LH, 1 x 4 LF jav
Unfortunately for the Romans, the terrain fell mainly on the Visigoth side of the table, centrally, from the Goth viewpoint, large clear right flank, rough terrin in centre, and mainly open left flank, and with the Goths getting the first mvoe this meant the Romans would have to fight mainly in the open surely a thrashing was heading their way .


Goth deployment
4 x 6 HI covered the wide open expanse of the right flank, Romans faced these off with LH
Dacian MF into the central rough going romans faced these off with the superior bw
Lancers and 2 more HI on the left flank


Initial moves.........

Goths ran in hard and fast on the left and centre, with a gental amble with the large HI line on the open right, flank marched a LH and TC to get into the roman rear but it never came on.

Romans pushed forwards along the line, the LH mass on the right shooting at the large HI line, the HI were too big to cause enough cohesion tests and some charges resulted in the LH loosing ground gradually and some disrupted markers creeping into play.

The Dacian ally in the centre ran at the bow line with his sole MF impact foot unit...........he fancied his chances for sure!

On the Goth left, a HI unit hugged the table edge as it moved forwards covering the lancers deployment from reserve in column into a line in front of the protected MF............in front of the HI loomed the Roma Superios Cataphracts........ the future looked bleak for the warrior foot.......

Its clobberin time!

Goths tempt the cats out of position when the cats fail to restrain a charge on some LH placed in front of them, the resulted charge leaves the Cats flank open to the table edge hugging warrior who wade into the cats flank with a giant sigh of relief!

The Dacians romp through the superior bw units in short order and catch and destroy both units in the pursuit!

HI and lancer units on left flank take down 2 more MF units in the open..........

on the right the HI line is still pushing the Romans back with little loss.........

Game end

The roman second line hits the pursueing lancers in the flank and takes a unit down.............. but its all too little too late, the Romans have lost 7 Bgs, the Goths only 1................

Sounds like the Romans can be beaten?............. not really, we played for 4.5 hrs, the Goths are alledgely a good army to take the Romans down, the Roman player had never played them before, the Goth player wrote both lists..........yet still the best result was only after 4.5hrs of gaming......... and still the Roman army was not broken..............

Things we learned:

1. MF with bw get mullered by MF impact foot!

2. HI impact foot can take the Roman swarm MFs down in the open

3. The 19BGs can not be beaten in 3.5 hrs unless the Roman player lets it


We are swapping armies for the next game, with the Romans taking on the Goths, this will be the last Bat Rep of my swarm Romans as I wont be using them in this format again, no point as theres no game in an army that cannot be beaten in the time!
jon

Jon,

Thanks for the battle report. Interesting reading. The Visigoths did well against the Dominate 'swarm' IMHO. 7 Roman Battle groups routed or destroyed to only one Gothic is certainly a major victory as both the rules and I would define one

Cheers,

Dale

yep, I know what you mean, and in this game the Goths had the edge on frontal match ups........... some important points though:

Overall, its an interesting game, much better than any barbarian onto Late Roman I have playe in any other set of rules, and I felt therefore a real plus for the rules and list writers, as this pair of historical armies interacted very well against each other on the table............interestingly, historical match ups(not refights) of Macedonians against Late Persians, and Romans against Sassanids alogn with Carthaginians against Barbarians have also provided very good games)......... anyway, in this game the Romans are more complex to win with for a newbie, hence our decision to swap them over next game rather than change armies completely.

1. the terrain was almost ideal for the goths, it coudlnt have been much better.

2. we played 4.5hrs, and up until the last turn it was pretty evens, a big last turn for the Goths (after 4hrs of playing) gave them another 4 units, so in a tourney situation, a draw.

3. The Roman player was unfamilier with the rules, the army list and the concept of the Swarm army, this effected the Roman deployment and game plan, which relied on historical reserve lines..........

4. The swarms can 'do their thing' against most opponents successfully, wereas the Visigoths, I feel, are probably not an open tourney army.

5. MF impact foot went straight through MF bw, this is first time we had seen a 'one round' knock out blw in FOG, combat normally being a longer affair!

6. As an exercise in testing the Swarms effectiveness for tourney play.......... it again confirmed all my thoughts, the swarm is very hard to beat in 3.5hrs, even in this case with a lot against them as per above, tihs makes it a 'safe' army for tourney play. the Goths are not so complex to play at first glance, but they certainly deliver exactly what they promise a 5' battleline of HI coming straight at you! the Dacian ally is a must I felt, just to contest that one peice of terrain that you just know is going to be crucial..........

7. in tourney terms, this result would not have been enough to win a tourney, the need to break opponents armies to get the bonuc 5pts makes this 7from19BGs result lacking a little.......

jon

To win a competition you can nearly always have a draw or minor loss in your results - it is very rare that you'll need to break all your opponents in a 4 or more round competition.

This is one area that the "swarm" may suffer in - if people view it as unbreakable they may be inclined to accept a draw (or similar close result) aganst it and if it has 2 or more such games it will be out of the running and those with competition winning asperations will then drop it if they see this as being a likely thing - only dullards whose primary aim is not to lose games regardless will continue with it under such circumstances.

See you piont Nick, its strength could be its weakness............

TBH, I dont know enough about the game still learning, and after Britcon I needed to know more about this army, so bought it and painted it up............. its a lot of fun to play with, very aggressive and manouverable and it plays a different, and very tactical way, to other armies I have used.......

Its not for me personally, but I can see why it works so well now.

The Goths on the other hand! now theres an army thats gonna win games big

jon

I was the oppo running the Romans against Jon and I have still a complete newbie even after a dozen games . I manged to predeloy the terrain to delay and disrupt the main warbands attack .

But misdeployed the Roman infantry units . I should have reduced my flanks more and supported them with the javelin units instead of putting all my light horse weighted on one flank to harrass the main warbands . I also held the main HI in reserve near my camp without deploying in the rough ground as POA in impact and mele to meet the Goths head on and disrupt them etc .

This was the most educational game for me since the predeployment of terrain etc . was still a mystery to me before , since i was allways played with preset terrain . I saw how the terrain can dictate the army's performance in FOG which for me is something new and has me thinking about how it will affect my Teutonic Knights Army list when the Ottoman Turks list comes out next week .