The Worlds in Charleroi 2016
Italian Condotta - Florence vs Seleukid
Game 1 Italian Condotta - Florence vs Condotta Italian
Game 2 Italian Condotta - Florence vs Medieval Scots
Game 3 Italian Condotta - Florence vs Han Chinese
Game 4 Italian Condotta - Florence vs Late Roman
Game 5 Italian Condotta - Florence vs Seleukid
Game 6 Italian Condotta - Florence vs Italian Condotta - Venice
Like a beautiful vista appearing over the crest of a hill which you have just sweated buckets climbing, the beautiful sunlit uplands of success cast their light on the Condotta, who dared to dream of a renaissance of their own, and the theoretical possibility of ending on 3 victories and mid table mediocrity!
And this was the city of rebirth, of the eventual triumph of beauty and goodness out of the soot and grime of tireless polluting industry... if the Italians could engineer a recover as strong, consistent and startling as Charleroi's architecture there surely would be 2 more wins to come!
The next army to stand in the path of the gloriously reinvigorated juggernaut that was the Florentine Condotta was a post-Alexandrian Successor Seleukid army. The lists for the Italian Condotta - Florence and Seleukid from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Charleroi can be seen here in the L'Art de la Guerre Wiki.
Seleucid. Pikes! Elephants! Good Charging Cavalry! Light Horse! Peltasts! Bowmen! Swiss Army Knife! Cuddly Toy! Interesting allied contingents! Cataphracts! Goblin Teasmaid! The Seleukids have almost everything a general could want, and so much choice that it becomes a real challenge not ot mess it up...
The lesson again learned from Game 3, the Free Company were safely in the centre this time again, with Knights on the right and bowmen on the left where they expected to find enemy cavalry on the wide open space on that side of the map. The Greek Successors had a core of pikemen, flanked by 2 elephant Death Star (I think its the new cool thing) formations of Elephants flanked by supporting troops capable of acting independently, and some other stuff. It was immediately apparent that the Knights were in entirely the wrong place.
With a flimsy skirmish screen creeping forward the Condotta dithered whilst the Knights sought to swiftly redeploy to the other flank behind the line of infantry. The Successors looked on in amusement as the incompetence of the enemy deployment...
Leaving one knight behind seemed like a good idea, and fairly soon the column of Knights had redeployed across the entire frontage of the Condotta army to swing back into the front line and find themselves basically facing another Elephant. Just like the ones they had just run away from. Oh well...
What's Going on Here Then?
Hoping to find themselves against Peltasts, but forgetting about the possibility of Elephants, Florence's Knights have redeployed away from danger but in so doing have left one flank of the whole army dangerously undermanned. In the centre, with their right flank already weakened by the movement of the Knights the Condottieri halberdiers are racing to engage the enemy Pikes as quickly as possible, hoping to win through before the problem of their insecure flank becomes terminal. On the left the Seleukids were hoping to probe for gaps and infintrate some of their Companions behind the Condotta, but the arrival of the Italian Knights appears to hae put paid to that plan.
The Successors were walking confidently forward, spotting that the opposition facing their elephants had basically run away leaving a gaping empty flank... but as they advanced into the teeth of a handful of Longbow units the fall of arrowshot achieved uncanny accuracy and a Peltast succumbed to shooting and was removed, leaving a small but embarrassingly positioned hole in the Greek army's front line. With halberdiers making a bee-line for the Greek pikemen the sudden loss of potential flank support was perhaps a bigger issue than it initially looked...
Both sides had parts of the battle line where they were extremely keen to get into combat at close quarters with the enemy - halberdiers chased down Pikemen, elephants swung round to close in on English Longbowmen, and any number of mercenaries with any number of pointy and sharp-hooked implements zeroes in on another elephant, keen as mustard to shoot away the enemy skirmisher so they could start pinging away at the pachyderm.
Pictures of Hellenistic Troops in 15mm from my Ancients Photo Directory
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The Companions had no real role to play against a wall of pikes and spears, and so were reduced to the ignominy of trying to look inconspicuous and sneak round the edge of the Condotta army unnoticed. But a lone handgunner was blocking their march moves and taunting them from the safety of a rough hill, stopping them in their tracks and allowing Longbowmen to interdict them from extreme range to add insult to injury.
Seleukids on coins
The almost total lack of Italian troops on the right, together with the out-of-command range distance now separating the remaining Knight from his redeployed boss meant that the Condpotta nobleman had become a static target which the Selukid elephants had gratefully latched onto. This did not look like a good matchup, and the only good part of this battle was that it saved the flanks of the real Mercenary infantry for a few more turns...
What's Going on Here Then?
The thinned out Condotta right flank has been smashed into by the full weight of the seleukid death-star Elephant formations, but in leaving so few isolated units the Condotta have accidentally managed to fragment the Greeks formations as well, as they split up their men to chase down targets of opportunity - this may damage their command and control later on. The Seleikids attempts to sneak round the left end of the Italian line has been rebuffed, and the Free Company men are now as good as engaged with the Pike Phalanx in the centre. The ability of the Seleukids to quickly and efficiently mop up the Condotta right is the key action in the batte right now, as it holds the key to the survival of the Italian centre.
No-one lasts long when the odds are that much against you. This flank was now looking like a baggage-munching opportunity for the Greeks
War Elephants
With the elephant-induced debacle unfurling at a rate of knots, the time had come for desperate measures - or, using the closest thing I had to a mobile reserve to try and repeat a matchup which had just failed spectacularly in the hope that it might this time come up with an statistically improbable and entirely different outcome - yes, the redeployed knights were now redeploying again back towards the enemy elephants!
Seleukid Pikemen
With the halberdiers now trading blows with the Seleukid pikemen defending this flank was of vital importance - but as the enemy elephants has advanced and pursued they had also become separated from their supporting infantry, creating opportunities for brave Condotta infantry to strike a blow for freedom, liberty and the superiority of mid-renaissance era military technology (and, in this case, rather retro javelins). The LF charged in, supported by their mates.
L'Art de la Guerre hint - You know I've said repeatedly that Light Foot can't attack real battle troops in the open? Turns out that this isn't entirely correct, and they can attack enemy elephants. But that's it. I think.
It was all hands to the pump in the effort to delay the demise of the camp..
The two armies were reforming on a new line of combat, cobbling together disparate units into ad-hoc battle lines in a series of increasingly frantic attempts to generate overlaps wherever they could.
What's Going on Here Then?
The Condotta right flank is now a scene of desparation for both armies, as the badly eroded Seleukids race to try and get past the makeshift defencive lines hastily cobbled together by the Florentines. The Free Company men are making good if steady progress in eroding the Phalanx and the seleukids have also lost some units in the melee on this flank. As the Italians run out of bodies to throw in to the breach the Condottieri camp is now added to the list of Seleukid targets. Elsewhere on the other flank the mass of Condotta forces are finally starting to build a position from which to attack the bastion of Seleukid elephants and foot that guards the other flank of the Phalanx.
The Greeks were within millimetres (or milli-cubits probably) of capturing the camp and striking a 4-hit blow to the morale of the 20-hit Condotta army!
But the Greeks also had their own problems, with the once-solid line of pikemen now a ragged formation of battered individuals with insecure flanks as their nemesis, halberdiers, chewed them up apace.
Boom! Scratch one Elephant in a fabulous victory for Light Foot javelinmen!!
Boom Boom in the Room! Scratch Two Elephants! The remaining units of Greek and Indian mercenary bowmen suddenly realise exactly how exposed they now were with Italian infantry, all shooting-capable, swarming around them on an otherwise-barren field. And the Knights had found a proper opponent - they had scooted off to the bottom right of the frame to block the Persian LH from eating the pasta mountain that was the Italian camp.
What's Going on Here Then?
The Free Company have managed to chew through the Phalanx before surrendering their flank, and in fact a more robust than expected rearguard action on this side of the battlefield has also seen the glass-hammer Elephants of Seleucus fall one by one to a series of muggings by Condotta skirmishers, leaving the Greeks with surprisingly few troops on this side of the field. On the other flank weight of numbers has eventually counted and the other set of Selukid elephants and supporting infantry have also been unzipped. The Florentines have taken heavy damage across the line as well, and both sides now teeter on the brink of defeat and victory at the same time.
With a big slice of pikemen now gone, the other elephant on the other flank had become an easy target for the Italians to overwhelm - it too was overrun, this time with pikemen in the flank, and suddenly the Seleukid right wing consisted on one, shocked, Peltast carrying a single wound and a rather worried expression.
The much-redeployed knights had finally found a target and, using their General to add +1, had wiped out the threat to the baggage as the penultimate pikeman also fell to a flank attack from the now rampant halberdiers. With the Condotta only moments away from defeat, the Greek army itself collapsed - another win for the Condotta!!!
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition, or read on for the post match summaries from the Generals involved, as well as another episode of legendary expert analysis from Hannibal
Post Match Summary from the Italian Condotta - Florence Commander
At last I am on a roll, and victories follow victories as surely as flatulence follows an evening of moules and high wheat content beer. For quite some time here I was fearful of the damage that so many elephants could do to a medieval army such as the one I command, but ultimately the neat rules mechanic of not allowing elephants to rally off any hits, and also my chaps sterling work in stripping away their flanking supporters saw to the pachyderms, and after that the battle was mine to win.
The most significant action in this particular war was probably when my Longbowmen shot away a supporting Peltast, creating a gap which the Seleukids were always struggling to fill as the aggressive advance of Hawksmoors halberdiers had by then pinned the pikemen and prevented them from shuffling up to close the space between them and the elephants. The overlaps this allowed me to generate on both the elephants and the pike proved in the end decisive
My knights did much walking and running, which like to think was them causing threat all across the board and forcing the enemy to respond, but really saving the baggage from destruction was the most important thing they did all day as it was this which kept my army on table long enough to record a winning casualty on the enemy before slipping ourselves to defeat.
Still, a 5th game, a second win, and yet again a totally different strategic and tactical challenge in the shape of a 5th, very different army for us to face. Despite the defeats yesterday I am really enjoying the myriad challenges and subtleties of this new game in Europe, and I am sure that with one more inevitable win under my belt this will go down as a great weekend.
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
I am astonished to find myself writing analysis of a victory here, as for great swathes of the game I was sharpening my quill in the anticipation of an obituary for your talent, not a renaissance. The deployment you manufactured was so obviously wrong I can only imagine that the obscure fruit-based beers you imbibed the previous evening had some sort of delayed effect - how does a mounted command find itself deployed hard up against a strip of woodland whilst a set of pedestrians hang like an invitation in the vast plains of Central Asia on your other flank?
Your knights must be regretting signing up for your Condottieri band, especially in this continuing extreme heat as they are surely not used to such tramping and marching before they, occasionally, manage to find opponents worth taking on? Here they soaked up pips like your undergarments must soak up the emissions wrought by dreams of fear and imminent death every night as you sleep, yet still they ended up doing little of positive note - for the crème of Italian Chivalry to be thrown in, penny packet style, in a desperate defence of your wide-open baggage train is inditement enough, but when the opposition is Elephants the ignominy and waste of capability knows no bounds.
The good point to take from this game is that you managed to get your halberdiers into the enemy pikemen, and unlike in Game 2 they did manage to wreak, eventually, some carnage on their target of choice. But this too was touch and go, and once the halberdiers were engaged it only highlighted how paltry were the combat capabilities of the troops supposedly tasked with defending their flanks whilst the choppers did their grisly work - Longbowmen are for shooting in ADLG, this is not FoG where they can go toe to toe with real soldiery for any length of time as well.
At the final reckoning there will be many elephant steaks roasted on the fires of your encampment this lunchtime, and many trophies hung from discarded Makedonian pikes, I just hope that the bloated and complacent state your men will now be in will not be replicated by your undersized yet still usually complacent brain in the next and thankfully final game
Click here for the report of the next game in this competition
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Game 1 Italian Condotta - Florence vs Condotta Italian
Game 2 Italian Condotta - Florence vs Medieval Scots
Game 3 Italian Condotta - Florence vs Han Chinese
Game 4 Italian Condotta - Florence vs Late Roman
Game 5 Italian Condotta - Florence vs Seleukid
Game 6 Italian Condotta - Florence vs Italian Condotta - Venice
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