Field of Glory in The Roman World - 2010

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Having taken Early Romans to the last couple of editions of Warfare in 2008 and 2009 with little or no success, this year an extended period allowed me to take the far more successful Dominate Roman version. The logic behind the choice was threefold - the army was theoretically more capable of dealing with LH armies as it could move faster than the Early Romans, and cover more of the table, I'd also hardly played much FoG in recent months so an army I'd used before seemed a better idea, and finally I had some new infantry bowmen and a few more LH that had never seen battle, and who I wanted to give a run out to in a revised version of my previous MLMBDR army list. The list had been tweaked with a view to giving it more ability to chase down LH armies, with the addition of an extra infantry bow unit, one more Auxilia unit, and 2 lots of Supwperior LH bowmen too - these were swapped out for 2 units of legions, 4 Poor LH and the downgrading of the CinC IC to a TC. This made the army better at shooting, and faster across the table - both good for bringing LH to battle.

Pictures of Romans from my Ancients Photo Directory

My first opponents list was Early Aechemenid Persian

Here's the game.... I have embedded short video commentary from Garibaldi and Napoleon throughout as well - the first one is here

Nothing changes - lucky old me eh?

The Persians had 2 blocks of Sparabara, and 2 lots of Immortals, plus a few spearmen, backed up with some decent cavalry. I had weighted my left, hoping to crush that side of the 12BG Persian army whilst bottling up the cavalry and half the Immortals on my right.

Loads of legions and auxilia pile forwards on my left.

4 Superior LH were quickly deployed to act as the cork in the bottle on the right

The Roman LH kept the Persians out of the rough going whilst the Roman bowmen moved up menacingly. Once the bow got into the rough going they would become incredibly difficult for the Persian cavalry wing to shift

The Persian left would clearly find it very difficult to get into the game

The Persian right was anchored by a very weak unit of 6 Thracians - even the Roman LH fancied their chances here.

Withe far stronger troops moving up behind them, the Roman LH evaded from a Persian charge that they could easily have risked standing against

The cork in the bottle was starting to be unscrewed as the Persian cavalry opened up with their bows

There were so many Romans on the left that the main problem was fitting them all in

3 Legions were moving inexorably forwards - across one of the few bits of open ground on the table. The Persians would not be able to ignore them for long

Auxilia running for a more interesting part of the table...

13 units against just 7

After taking heavy shelling, the Roman LH were forced backwards - however a lone auxiia unit lurks in the enclosed field at the far right of shot. Will the Persians be able to get past them too?

In a move reminiscent of the great days of DBM, the Roman Auxilia raise the legendary battle cry "You're Pinned!"

With almost everything on the Roman side shooting, the Persians start to pick up yellow disrupted markers

The Persian mounted troops are forced back, leaving the Thracians dangerously exposed. And even as they evade, the Persian cavalry cannot get out of range of the deadly Roman Archers. The new boys are doing well!

In the middle, the Romans furiously redeployed as the Persian Sparabara and Armoured Greek Spearmen moved up - but on the left the Immortals have come out of teh field they had been using for cover

The Persians are drawn into a bout of impressive yet ineffectual shooting against the Auxilia unit hiding in the cover of the field

3 Legions get ready to go into bat for the Romans

The LH manage to escape the Pin, allowing the Immortals to move up to threaten the Roman LH

Not an indeal way to charge, but Superior Skilled Sword Impact Foot Legions led by a General are prettty good to throw at mostly anything

They Immortals lose at Impact and go Disrupted - as do the Persian Guard cavalry from shooting. Suddenly the Persians have too few Generals to go round

The demise of the Immortals knocks a huge hole in the Persian line, causing consternation in the Sparabara too

The Auxiia bottling up the right flank finally go disrupted as the Immortals join in the shooting gallery

The Thracians have by now routed, and the Persian right wing starts to unravel as the Guard Cavalry are forced back too under legionary charges and a hail of arrows

2 units of Auxilia go in against the Sparabara, but things go badly at impact with one going fragmented

Well, they had held up two of the best units of the Persian army for a while...

But not for much longer !

The Immortals recover from rout, and the Sparabara are holding on - and whilst a Guard Cavalry unit is in rout, the rest of the Persian army now looks like it may simply be too fast at evading for the Romans to catch them!

Shooting power allows the Romans to reach out and inflict waver tests on the Persians from a distance, cracking their resolve

The Immortals have fully recovered from rout - they are clearly so tough they will to be beaten twice as the jaws of the Roman army snap shut

Auxilia engage in a holding action as the Persian left wing finally starts to swing round into the rear of the advancing Roman army

A desparate struggle ensues

It gets even more desparate, however by now the Persians camp has been looted, and along with 1 Sparabara, 2 Cavalry, 1 LH, the Thracians and the Immortals again the Persians collapse to defeat - a victory for Rome!

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Post Match Summary

Despite my services as IC being dispensed with, I must admit to being satisfied with the performance of my nominated minions in this outing for the revamped and slightly more Morally Bankrupt version of this army

The Generals in play managed to avoid the tedious "deploy across the table in a line" approach = although the fact there was actually some terrain on table which allowed them to formulate a plan based on a reasonable guess as to where the enemy might be deployed did help in that respect I have no doubt.

What was satisfying was that the new units seemed to add quite a bit to the army, as the ability to shoot and inflict cohesion tests on the enemy without risking themselves made a big impact on the outcome - the Persian Cavalry were essentially defeated by shooting alone, as were the Thracians, whereas in combat, even against the legions, the odds would have been much closer. Anyways, a good start - roll on the next game

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Hannibal's Post Match Analysis

Units thrown away whilst delaying the enemy, allowing the Immortals time and space to fully recover, ending up having to fight some Armoured Spearmen? How on earth can these things be regarded as part of a succesful plan you spanner?

And what about the first legionary charge - OK it worked, but you had all the time in the world there, why not wait for the second unit to move up - oh, it was an impetuous charge eh? No such thing in my book, just an incorrect decision to not take an IC in a tourney where even though your troops are all armoured, you know you will still face a lot of shooting. An IC would have prevented that charge, and maybe could even have saved a couple of yoru units - most of which you barely managed to get ito combat anyway as you had too many to fit into the areas of the table you occupied.

I think you should have wrapped this game up with far lighter losses - 21 is a lot of points, but its not 24 or 25. Those few units could come back to haunt you later in the weekend.

....OK - roll on error-strewn game No2 please.....

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