Game 5 - vs Patrician Roman:
Another wonderful meal saw (surprisingly) a lot of red wine drunk, together with a number of courses including rather good grilled vegetables, a decent piece of steak (just for a change) and an ice cream desert.
The usual Italian 8-30/9-30 start (plus the hour change to Summer time - ouch!) saw me take on Waynio Dario from exotic and glamorous Pinner. Well, Patricians run by a Brit ? What could this possibly be?
Waynio kept his capital troops back, redeploying them behind a LH screen to put all 8 Kn into my Teutons. Even outnumbered, the Teutons looked good for their position - with flank support from wagons from two commands narrowing the frontage and shooting the Romans back (including the rather Mongol-looking Roman general seen here on the right of the picture) it seemed OK.
West of the road the Lh(S) in the Roman command started out spread across the large patch of RGo and I half thought about wading in for a 0-0 crapshoot and relying on the tactic of "my command breaks on 8.5, yours on 6.5" but thought better of it (ie realized I was still a bit p-ssed from last night just in time) , and that was pretty much it for that side of the table for the rest of the game.
The Teutons fought manfully but eventually a supported auxilia managed to kill off the right hand wagon, causing a rather difficult problem, and a lone Roman Lh(f) snuck round the now-open flank to angle himself to successfully prevent the recoils of 2 Teutons. Feeling smug, the LH was then surprised to be hit square in the rear by 2 Teuton Lh (and it would have been 3 were the Teutonic pips better), and found himself turned with his recoil blocked by the 2 Roman Kn who had followed up their successes against the Teutons. 2-1 and no recoil to take out 3 elements - but in the story of the Teutons game, they failed :-(
Eventually
the Teutonic general also fell, and the command again failed to roll enough to
survive and the Roman knights turned their attention to the wagons, attempting
to dismount to do so. Unfortunately, the game was not being played 2 years ago,
and so they were unable to do so.
Waynio then resorted to desperately checking the army lists to see if they provided him any salvation... no !
By now the Lithuanian CinC and tiddler was closing in on the Romans right flank auxilia and LH - and the base edge!
With a flurry of poor pips the Liths were unable to capitalize on this position to claw back a command - a 4-6 defeat, leaving Waynio to play Simon Hall on the top table in Round 6 and me on Table 2 .....
