FoG Competition Wargame 4

In house wargaming against Mr. VTM !

So, Id lost 2, won one, but felt I was starting to get to grips with the rules and army. My confidence against Medieval armies had evaporated however, and so I was most pleased to see another classical army up against me - club-mate Martin Van Tols Greeky looking Phyrrics

 As well as having a similar taste for manly fashions like short skirts and bare legs, the Phyrric army lacked my nemesis from the previous game - knights, armoured impact foot, and armoured light horse. So this was good news, and even better was that I had already beaten Martin and this army with mine in a practice game only a week or so earlier. So respectability threatened again ! 

With the terrain falling irritatingly in the middle of the table (rather a reverse of the last game) I decided to try out the tactics I'd just witnessed, and concentrate my forces in a relatively secure part of the field - away from where I guessed (correctly) that the rather scary pikes would be deployed. I could then swing round and overwhelm the rest of the army with my superior numbers of skirmishers and superior quality of medium foot, whilst hopefully avoiding the pikemen entirely.

The Pikemen looked a long way away. And that was where I wanted to keep them.

Both sides had spotted the advantage of holding the orchard that sat right in the middle of the battlefield, and so both sets of medium foot were charging towards it. This was exactly what I had hoped would happen, as mine were better, and there were more of them. I also pushed all my skirmishers into the front of a traffic jam, hoping to intimidate the Phyrrics into giving up a flank as well.

Hannibal found himself leading the initial attack, in that subtle way only a 28mm figure in a 15mm game who has been painted with a pink cloak can do. 

I was starting to think that this concentration of forces trick might actually have something going for it as I squeezed even more troops into the apparently too narrow to bother with gap. The issue was going to be choosing who to charge with first! 

Those pikemen were advancing steadily, however I had a deep formation of spearmen - including some superior armored veterans, and both their flanks were well protected by difficult terrain swarming with my troops. Things were looking up at last ... 

In the plantation I even had the luxury of rear support from my astonishingly well painted Spanish (ie I'd done them, and my stuff usually looks a bit rubbish). The Bruttians had been placed next to the spears as being drilled they were more likely to be able to easily turn onto the flanks of the pikemen once they had (of course) won in the plantation

Soon it was all kicking off, and even the trees had to make room to move aside and allow the fighting to take place. My secret weapon of having mounted troops charging in as well to give the enemy a bad morale effect when they lost failed spectacularly to work, and my cavalry took a casualty and lost the combat!!

The picture looked much better with the return of the trees, but much worse given my cavalry had by now broken off! 

Out in the wild steppes of Phyrria, as my confidence grew exponentially I decided to see if a massive blob of skirmishers could take on a smaller blob of light horse, and moved up, shot and totally failed to disrupt them, and then quaked in fear as they charged in

Well, at least this part of the plan was still working. My stationary spearmen were nowhere near fighting any pikemen

... but this part wasn't at all - the Phyrric light horse had stood up to the missile fire and combat from my massed infantry with impunity, and this had allowed a unit of proper cavalry to come steaming in an devastate my poor Nubian bowmen ! Hannibal only just had time to urge a unit to step into the breach. Luckily the only one to hand was elephants!! 

But the fighting in the plantation was now definitely tipping my way - with 2 of the three units of Phyrric peltasts gone, my troops charged on and into their reserve line - virtually unscathed, the Gauls and Bruttians were going to sweep away the last line in moments!  This was my plan coming together - after we had finished off the last unit we would be free to turn onto the flank of the by now committed phalanx!! 

Well....the Bruttians would have been ready ... but the fight had taken a little too long, and the pikes had advanced a little too quickly, and the Phyrric general decided to try his hand at throwing his only available unit - some cavalry - into the plantation to hit the Bruttians in the flank. Which is when both commanders discovered that plantations are not particularly bad for cavalry, and in fact with the Bruttians fighting in 2 directions as well, they were actually quite a good place to be indeed! It was bad news for the Bruttians - and it was down to the undrilled Spaniards to make a 90 degree turn and nail the phalanx.....

...who were by now "fully committed" to combat against my deep formations of spearmen. The Spanish couldn't miss an opportunity like this, and charged in and broke the pikemen, who turned and fled through their own lines causing disruption as they went..

By now we'd managed to squeeze all our combined armies into 1/4 of the table - well, what was left of them anyway. Things looked fairly good, with the fleeing pikemen creating an opportunity that surely I could follow up on? But my Spanish were hard to maneuver, and my spearmen were largely pinned - and it was the Phyrric turn, so if their spearmen could execute a turn it would be rather different. with the Bruttians having passed on their lesson at the hands of the plantation-loving cavalry my Gallic warband was starting to get worried. 

And rightly so as the rampaging cavalry continued their spectacular rolling up of my line of only-moments-before victorious mercenaries! The Gauls broke in moments, and a beleaguered general was soon forced to throw a badly mauled cavalry unit into try and stem the tide. 

Those tricksy Phyrrics had also pulled of a must-do maneuver, and had been able to turn their spearmen around - moments after they had been burst through by a full pike phalanx they still retained the presence of mind to about face and then start giving out a good kicking to my own North African spearmen ! If only the slow and unwieldy Spaniards had been in a slightly different place... but surely things were still in my favour overall....?

But then, just as had happened in our practice game, the veteran Carthaginian spearmen simply gave in and fled, with an unrecoverable 1,1 morale test roll making their cohesion implode, and scaring the beejeezus out of the rest of my army as they fled with an almost sonic boom! Now a unit of Phyrric pikemen were unengaged in the middle of the line, with only the taunting of my Celtiberians to worry about - but not worry too much, as they daren't fight pikemen in the open when they themselves were on steep slopes.

What else could go wrong from here? 

Well, maybe the African spearmen supported by the Spanish could lose to the equal quality and equal numbers of Greek spearmen who they had initially hit whilst they were still disrupted?

By now Hannibal was desperately hanging on, and was forced into the ignominious task of rescuing broken skirmisher units to try and prevent half the army from being broken, as triumphant Greek cavalry imperiously strode across the battlefield

The Greek spearmen were in hot pursuit of the Africans and saw the baggage as the solution to their "how do we get half the army" problem... 

Eventually, with both sides well bloodied and exhausted, the Carthaginians finally cracked - as their eroded army, bereft of much of its strike power, finally sank beneath the waves of the sea of defeat. 

Post Game Analysis

Yet more learning all round, this time on the effects of terrain. The battle had been unfolding almost entirely to plan up until the point that the Greek cavalry swept through the plantation and skittled over the pivotal section of my army and strategy. This highlighted again the difficulties of getting some types of troops to turn around, especially when they are more inclined to pursue enemies to their front! 

Post Game Analysis from Hannibal

Well, this is becoming a bit of a pattern isn't it? Lets face it, you didn't read the damn rules - and even though I am on record as saying Phyrrus was the greatest general in history, with enemies who don't read the terrain rules, he hardly had much of a challenge from you in this game did he? 

You also forgot to mention that you threw away 2 light infantry units in an experimental attempt to take on light horse - when you knew full well the odds were against you. Under these rules, ALL units count and so you were actually storing up trouble for yourself - and boy did those chickens come home to roost ! If they had been kept safe you might have had a few more bounds to play with your capital troops.  I would not have made such a stupid mistake, period.

last game VS Gauls follows here 

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