IWF Athens 2006 Game 6

Sunday afternoon, following a delightful lunch of very very cold beer and I was astounded to find that myy rather excessive scoring in game 5 had somehow catapulted me onto the 2nd table, facing Mick Bennet and a near-legendary Uber-army, the Ugaritics. 

In the overall competition, Graham Evans was already streaking away ahead of everyone else, and it was hard to see either Mick or I catching him. I had been unsure if the Lithuanians would even stack up under 3.1 as a competitive army anyway, and so being in the running for any sort of placing was a bonus anyway. With all of this in mind, several pints noticeably swimming in my bloodstream and the recent painful memory of throwing away a similar "table 2" position at the BHGS Challenge in the very recent past, I decided to not even look at the points of the people below us, and try and concentrate on playing it as a one-off game. 

I had no real idea what was going to be in the Ugaritic list - I had only fought one before back in Rome in 2004, and from what I remembered it was a heaving mass of near-all-expendable knights and Cv (S). In fact, the list Mick took (see here for the full details) was surprisingly well balanced. 

Expecting more cavalry and knights, I had chosen the list with artillery, on the basis that one more wagon may be more use than one more Teutonic knight.

 

I deployed some chunks of rough going and a wood or two as defender, and filled out my right with auxilia and wagons expecting the two adjacent RGo areas to form a motorway down which we could rush to sweep away the expected Bw(I) formation, protected on the flanks by wagons and light horse, whilst in the open ground we would go toe-to-toe with mounted with our blades, Teutons and more wagoneers.

The Ugarits failed to participate in the excellent plan however, and set out a line of blades opposite mine, and a "its better than yours and its supported by Cv (S)" mixed auxilia and fast blade formation against my auxilia, whilst the allied command of knights lurked at the back

Probably unsurprisingly, an absorbing tactical game developed, as we both maneuvered our irregularly-led armies to try and gain the best match ups. In the middle, my blades were deployed 2 deep expecting an onslaught of knights, and so had to wheel round to try and both create room to expand, and also a line of fire for my wagoneers to get into the Bw (I) behind the Ugaritic guardsmen.

 

The Ugarit Chieftain had high hopes for exploiting my lightly held right flank, and pushed a force of psiloi and charioteers through some woods on the wing 

But the meat of the battle was happening on my left, where the two auxilia formations sought to get to grips, and my three war wagons were throwing shapes to keep the cavalry out of the game. The Ugarit charioteers, initially puzzled by the appearance of the 15th Century land behemoths, came up with an effective and innovative solution however - charge them down with Cv(S) - and one wagon exploded instantly (To play "Uncle Tim's Spot the dead war wagon" choose where you think it was, and then click anywhere on the above picture!)   This loss of just one element created a problem disproportionate to its size - suddenly my light horse and cavalry were exposed to a marauding chariotry horde of what can only be described as "biblical proportions", and my pips needed to reorganize to face the onslaught of Ugaritic auxilia were being sucked away into defensive maneuvers by Cv (O) and LH. 

 

The battle in the middle was now hotting up as well, as the two lines of blades clashed as only they can -- inconclusively! The Teutons decided to join the fray, after redeploying from their original position and clattered into first one, then two Ugarit generals. 

Back on my left, the weight of numbers, and the ablation of the wagon force was starting to tell, and my auxilia were struggling manfully just to stay in the game, fighting superior numbers, a better formation, and worst of all, appalling pip dice in this crucial phase of the game 

There was a brief respite as I diced my way to an unlikely kill of two ranks of auxilia in the middle of the line, opening up an opportunity to kill two more - but again the pip dice failed me, leaving no pips to even gain an overlap, and the opportunity to exploit my good fortune fell by the wayside, and the command crumbled to break. 

But with the Teutons by now redeployed, the victorious Ugaritics had nothing left to fight, and even the allied command of knights, which had maneuvered at great expense into a commanding position in the centre was left with nothing but the flanks of wagons to chew on

More wagons were exploding in my CinC's command, demonstrating that in the horse drawn wooden technology stakes, 2 wheels was definitely best. (Click to Spot the Wagon again applies in the above picture)

 

But the remaining wooden beasties were still hanging on - would they leave opportunities for the Teutons, who had managed with some blades to start to carve some serious holes in the Ugaritic generals ? Possibly - but my run of appalling pip dice continued, and it was proving impossible for me to press home my attacks and try and claw back the command I had just lost.

 

By now, the clock was running down (we had been on early blitz since around bound 6, although neither of us thought we had been playing slowly - testament to the intense nature of the game) and with one half of the field in disarray (see above. Most of the field is a better description) , the game was crystallizing around the charge of the Teutons. Could The Master of the Order take down a Ugaritic general in Mano-a-mano combat to reclaim a 5-5 draw? 

Well, unfortunately not. So the Lithuanians recorded a 2nd 6-4 loss of the weekend, to still finish in a very creditable =11th place overall. 

Post Match Analysis

This could be seen as a result of proper military-type stuff - I had no real idea what was in the Ugaritic army, which made it hard to come up with a coherent plan. I then compounded this lack of knowledge with an incorrect guess about the likely location of a block of Bw (I), and my auxilia command was punished as a result fo Mike guessing better than I did! 

proved that they could actually be redeployed, given sufficient application and time - but arguably the tenets of 3.1 were proved correct, as they arrived a little too late to make the impact they hoped. There were opportunities for me to take the advantage and the final result could have been significantly different save for three factors:

1. if my wagons had stood up a little better against the Ugaritic mounted, 
2. f my pip dice had not had such a disastrous run in the vital phase of the game, 
3. and if I had been more bold in pressing attacks in the blade combat in the middle (where I had been perhaps overly worried about Mike doing cleverer-than-I-could-forsee "sandal of intervene" pin-breaking and flank turning maneuvers.

Hammytastic Graphos

This shows the total pips scored by both players in each bound (we did get 12 bounds in, but as my last turn was a nothing turn, I forgot to record the pips).

I was out-pipped on 8 out of 11 bounds, but the real killer was - of course - in bounds 7-9 when my dice collapsed with the low, low, scores of 1213, 1113 and 1311, with the 4th command being 7 LH who were in any case skirmishing out of the main field of play.

This was exactly the phase of the game when the two armies were starting to get to grips with each other, and with the main combat on my left, I was dealt a hand of 3 consecutive 1's

Taking only the dice for our respective left hand (as I look at it) commands, the picture is not quite so bad, but the Ugaritic 6 in bound 6 combined with their better initial matchups means they started the combat in much better shape that I did, and so were more able to ride the sequence of abysmal dice that then prevented either of us from following up any advantages that came about.

This sequence of dice did however lead to me enjoying the rather odd phenomenon of going into a series of 3 bounds of 4-minute blitz where I had nearly a full minute to spend each pip !

 

For Hard core students of Hammyism, here is one final comparison - this time showing the pip scores of the two blade commands.

Here an early advantage allowed my wagons to maneuver into a decent position, and then expand my 2 deep initial formation out over turns 5 & 6, but then as the lines closed to combat, 3 consecutive Lithuanian 1's were answered by 15 Ugaritic pips, allowing the Ugarits to deal with the threat before my command - even with the assistance of the Teutons - could press the advantage.

 

Summary

So, overall a decent weekend. I felt very happy with the performance of the Lithuanians - an ostensibly light horse army can clearly still cut it in 3.1, and at no time was I in danger of being swept from the field by hordes of advancing close order foot. I had been worried about the wagons in an environment swarming with infantry, but again they had managed to find plenty of targets, and the army had given me interesting games and tactical problems - and opportunities throughout. And I'd not mucked it up like at the BHGS Challenge !

Athens had shown itself to have an astounding and diverse array of excellent restaurants in which essentially the same menu could be ordered - perfect combinations of cheap wine and cheap kebabs, only lacking a side order of Curry sauce to make it the ideal wargames destination. Athens also boasts some of the cheapest taxis this side of a new Delhi Put-Put, and how we laughed at the poor fools walking every day as we paid 2 Euro 50 Cents between 4 of us to travel in highly dangerous and poorly maintained seatbelt free high speed terror each morning and evening!

Extensive testing also showed that all types of Athenian beer were able to be classed as "excellent", and following the close of the competition I was also able to confirm that Athenian nightlife does carry on to daylight and 7am, even on a Sunday. 

And here is the proof !

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