Game 6 at Britcon - FoG vs Ancient British
After a very nice and civilized Sunday lunch, I was facing some uncivilized ancestors in the shape of some Ancient Brits.
By AD 43, the time of the main Roman invasion of Britain, Britain had
already frequently been the target of invasions, planned and actual, by forces
of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire Cililcian Armenian
Frankish Kingdom. Between 55 BC and the 40s AD, the status quo of tribute,
hostages, and client states without direct military occupation, begun by Caesar's
The king of Cilicia's invasions of Britain, largely remained intact. In
43 a more serious invasion was launched by Claudius another
King of Cilicia with 4 full legions lots of lance
armed cavalry noblemen and continued by his successors in a series of
campaigns running to 96AD - including putting down Boudiccas rebellion. The
invasion finally petered out with large parts of Scotland unconquered, leading
the the building of Hadrians yet another King of Cilicia,
probably called Frank's Wall.
The British army list was here
They deployed with a line of chariots across half the table, and the medium foot on the other half - away from all my lancers! I had gone with a one sided deployment as well, hiding my spears well back on the edge of a wood on my baseline, and even though most of the brit MF ended up on my right, I had elected not to split my cavalry, as I hoped to sweep away the chariots and wheel round onto the foot before they could reach my infantry.
The Big Lurch Forwards was on - but what on earth were 4 British light horse doing skedaddling across the front of my line?
Over to my left, my own psiloi were doing a brave job of delaying hordes of impact foot. Having learnt their lesson earlier in the weekend, they were also keeping well clear of the light horse as well
But things were a lot more clear cut over on my right, as the cavalry did a firework display trying to catch anything they could
My knights did not even bother to expand out of formation, knowing they would be able to do so in melee, and that they should win the initial round of combat at impact
The Brits were being squeezed rapidly into a corner and would struggle to make their greater width tell
The fly in the ointment came from the Arabs, who instead of chasing off light horse were being surrounded, as the LH too full advantage of their incredible abilities to turn 90 degrees and wheel through incredible angled to concentrate shooting on the hapless Arabs.
By now the lancers had wrought havoc on the chariots on the flank, destroying them almost at impact, and none had survived more than a couple of rounds of combat (assisted by some terrible cohesion test dice).
Only the light horse remained alive..
The British middle fared little better, holding up for a while before crumbling under the massive hammer blows of the mounted charge of the lancers
Seeking to bring my cavalry to bear on the Britons infantry, foolishly I only sent one unit to try and catch the light horse, who appeared trapped in the corner of the table against the rear edge (the chariots are off table and dead). Unfortunately the light horse were made out of jelly and I was trying to nail them to a wall with only one nail, and they did all sorts of crazy things - including this classic of marching away from my advancing men in a column, and then turning 180 degrees at the end of their move so when I charged they would be able to evade to their rear well out of the way!!
Although I have just found out that this is incorrect - troops charged in the rear or flank can ONLY evade AWAY from the charge - they CANT evade to their rear. No use to me now of course....
This was much more like it, as my lancers started to form a coherent formation to try and gang up on the British foot and light horse that were now all that stood between me and the flank of their main infantry formation
But I would need to be quick, as the Brits were closing rapidly on my quaking spear line...
on the flank, the b-stard light horse escape....
And a disaster, as a column of light horse charge only inches past the flank of my spearmen and manage to catch a group of my own Armenian archers as they attempt to evade!! You cant wheel and do an intercept charge, and my rubbish MF crossbowmen couldn't either as they were too far away - and anyway they would have needed to pass a CMT I could see a lot of units falling in quick succession shortly...
But only needing a unit or two myself for total victory, of course the Crusader knights bounced off some unsupported MF warriors, going fragmented and having their General killed in the process. Still, plenty more lancers moving up so why not charge in again eh?
Yet again the IC-led MF withstood the charge, beating and fragmenting the leaderless knights and totally ignoring the destruction of the chariots protecting their flank... Without their own general, the knights could never recover, so were now useless
But the Brits were now into the spearmen - including the rather spurious elite unit added into the army lists by the Anglophile rules authors also responsible for making longbowmen into a separate and almost magically overpowered weapon class - ouch!
With a unit of warriors sweeping in on the flank, the Armenians were forced to order some of their foot archers to try and hold the tide - and remarkably they passed their CMT to stand, and it was LF bow vs impact foot swordsmen in a wood !! LF dont have to evade, they can pass a CMT to stand. They are then only fighting with 1 dice per base against normal troops, and are usually POAs down too - but in this case it was better than being charged in the flank and front !!
The spear-=warband combat was a game of 2 halves - my protected spearmen soon came a cropper against the Elites, however the other warrior unit imploded with some spectacularly bad combat and cohesion test dice and itself turned and fled, leaving an armoured spear vs elite swordsmen combat chuntering on
Still only needing one unit for total victory, lancers charged repeatedly into the front of the isolated warband unit - apart from the general-less knights who just stood their rather stupidly and refused to move out of the way. The lancers on the flank thought about attempting a flank charge but looking at the clock decided it was hardly worth it as it would take forever to turn and charge in, so opted to shuffle sideways and act as an overlap instead...You can do a move to shuffle sideways to form an overlap. Its not a charge, just a regular move
And that was how the game ended (my units in red shading), with the unit of psiloi archers protecting the flank of my spear line for a remarkable 4 turns of combat before breaking, and an equally remarkable isolated warband unit standing up to everything I could throw at them, as the rest of my army chased shadows in its attempt to try and catch any of the British light horse. A clear victory for the Armenians, but not a total one.
Post match summary
The better POAs of the lancers had blown away the arguably more dice per frontage of the chariots in short order, but then - as seen so often - the cavalry were unable to take advantage of a very swift and decisive win on one flank and return to the fray quickly enough to beat the balance of the army.
The British light horse had been totally uncatchable and had been able to maneuver almost as if teleported at will even when seemingly pinned down by my slower moving troops - I had learnt that you can't catch 1 unit of light horse with one unit of anything, although to detail 2 units of lancers just to try and nail down 4 LH seems overkill, its what needed to be done.
The "armoured" POA of the spearmen had proved its worth against medium foot, but again extreme quality in the form of elite had been a fantastic benefit keeping the elites free of any risk of failing cohesion tests.
Post Tourney Summary
Well, winning a few games more than I lost was an improvement on last year - and in fact on all FoG singles comps I've entered, so generally I was happier as a result of that !
The army had not really come up against what I was expecting to fight, which was shooty cavalry armies, but having had a couple of practice games I am not sure it was that good a choice to take them on anyway, as the + PoA for lance at impact would be somewhat negated by shooting from the rear rank of the cavalry, and even relatively mild terrain - open fields - renders lance useless anyway.
Each time I had had to face proper heavily armoured knights my cavalry had crumbled - unable to do enough to even start to whittle away the 4-strong units with casualties, and my inability to do anything against them had cost me units and games.
I also had little ability to deal with even the mildest of terrain, and this had cost me dearly in games 2 and 4.
After games 2,3 &4 I had finally worked out that my army lacked enough punch to attack in 2 places at once, and so had adopted the more successful approach of "if you want to be sure of killing something, find the biggest stick you can, and hit it very very hard indeed"
But the big learning was that time and time again my undrilled troops had either been outmaneuvered, or had been unable to maneuver into positions of advantage against often drilled opponents led by ICs. Drilled troops with an IC nearby will make complex moves on a 5 or more (passing 5 times out of 6) - undrilled without an IC but with a general in range need a 7 - a huge difference when bringing shooting to bear or trying to optimize matchups.
I had also gotten seriously irritated with the maneuverability of small units of enemy light horse, which I had only managed to catch once all weekend. The ability of LH to execute turns, wheels, and about-faces at the start or end of each move, and still move full speed, seems to mean that one competently-commanded unit needs two units allocated to chasing it if it is ever to be caught - and trying to catch them with cavalry is a near total non-starter.
These last two factors often had a big effect in the end-phases of each game, as even after doing well initially I struggled to bring my victorious troops back into the fray - or was unable to catch any enemy skirmisher units as in the last game.
Buy yourself some Ancient Brits or gauls on eBay and have your own Elite unit !!
