Slitherine

A place for particularly humiliating, damaging or undeserved demises. Because sometimes, the only thing these men are remembered for is the spectacular way they bought it.

I have three stories that come to mind. The first was playing a Remove the Head game in multiplayer. The game was a Syracuse vs Macedon (or possibly Pyrrhus) game, and it was balanced on a knife edge. I figured I was still in with a shot... until my opponent tracked down my routing C-in-C unit, charged it and killed my general, ending the fight so quickly that I couldn't immediately understand what had happened. A cautionary tale on remembering your objectives.

The second one came during the last round of the Alexander tournament. My Macedonians charged the Indian line... and on the first turn of impact, two of my three generals promptly bit it fighting some puny Indian archers. My last general bought the farm on the final turn of battle and, despite winning the match, I was left with a leaderless army by the time the dust settled.

Finally, a recent one. Ever lost your general to a unit of skirmishers? How about losing an elephant general to a unit of skirmishers you didn't even expect to contact, on a rear charge no less. A reminder that anything can happen on a freak die roll.

Ludendorf wrote:Finally, a recent one. Ever lost your general to a unit of skirmishers? How about losing an elephant general to a unit of skirmishers you didn't even expect to contact, on a rear charge no less. A reminder that anything can happen on a freak die roll.

Didn't even kill any of the elephants. Just the general. Best bow shot ever.

In my unluckiest battle I lost 2 sub generals in the first round of charging and melee (in even fights) but the worst part was how my C-in-C pushed back an unit in the center of the enemy line for 3 tiles in as many melees and ended up being surrounded from all 8 directions.

Edit. In total I lost 75% of my leadership over a couple turns with less than 5% total casualties to my army.

During a playtest of a Gaugamela scenario I was putting together, The Persian AI opened the battle with his Chariots & Elephants. My Macedonian Cavalry & light infantry were attacking his chariots when their elephants caught up & attacked Alexander's Companion Cavalry, killing Alexander. (I can see Darius telling his aide "Write King Porus & tell him we would like to buy more elephants").
The Macedonians won the battle, but not decisively & Parmenio & Nicanor were also killed. The Persians lost Bessus near the end of the battle.