Roll Call 04 Part 2

So, 2 wins under Hannibals belt, and game 3 looming towards me out of the, well, late afternoon rather than approaching night to be fair, but still, it was eroding drinking time. 

My opponents were Indians:

The terrain fell with a large patch of RGo in the middle of the field, and a gentle hill over to my left. I wood (just out of sight) on my right provided a relatively secure flank. Even though this left me unsure which side the Indians would concentrate on, I was relatively sure there woudl be a blob of bowmen in the RGo, so aimed my warband at it, and prayed they would get into contact through the arrow storm. 

The Indians chose to create a wall of wagons, with a rather overtaxed LH (O) being offered the task of slowing down my cavalry (well, it did have 2!) command, and then a wall of bows lined up across the middle, with a right hook of elephants and chariots aiming to sweep off the hill and nail me before I could overrun the bowmen with warband and spears. 

The usual Lurch Forwards brought me into proximity almost immediately, with the screening Ps (S) holding up manfully and refusing to die to rather ineffective shooting. The elephants right hook discovered that it could not move with cavalry for 1 pip, and slowly advanced upon the retreating Numidians. 

  The Indian bowfire continued to prove ineffective, and the warband closed the distance between the two lines with relatively light losses of only 2-3 elements. 

Soon they were in amongst the Indian bowmen, and there could only be one winner. The warband overran the command to their front, and started to focus their attention on the central bow block, as the spearmen also closed in , catching the Indians between a spearwall and a Celtic face. Ka-boom ! 10-0 to the Carthos!! 

Game 4 vs Carthaginians

Putting all these army lists up on a website is sometimes a mixed blessing. The Carthaginians I was fighting on Sunday morning were a shaved-down version of the list I took to Warfare 03, with two commands of warband against my one, and 4 elephants on the field. This however means the non-allied Numidians were in the same command as the spears, with a traditional Numidian ally making up the numbers.

With the enemy Numidians spending most of the game facing off my cavalry command across a piece of RGo, the game played out in the middle. A long amount of reshuffling and rearranging took place on both sides, as we attempted to get elephants into warband, auxilia into elephants and spears into, well, each others spears really. My warband did another amazing maneuver, seen here redeploying across to the right behind my battle line of elephants and psiloi, with the elephant from the cavalry command doing likewise . 

Hannibal's spears also had the opportunity to split themselves into 2 groups, and my Numidians shaped up to take on the enemies non-allied friends and family, boosted by the vague advantages of having a general in the middle of the line and some Ax (I) as reinforcements (erm...?).

Meanwhile the opposing forces stood looking on in amazement at this formation dancing, unsure as to commit the warband or not.

Finally, after much mucking about, we started to get into combat in about bound 5 or 6. The game swiftly changed from a bloodless battle to a bloody one, as the first round of melees saw an almost unbroken line of 21 contiguous combats across the entire frontage of both armies (I would have got in with all 22, but was 1 pip short!!)

After this it became a game of push and shove, with my Numidians teetering on the edge of defeat (and "double-overlapped oops might be dead general-itis") on many occasions, but finally the slightly greater size of my warband command, and getting a file of them into the end of the opposing Carthaginian spear line told, and the opposing Hannibals were Hannibolloxed ! 10-0 (or maybe 9-1?) to me!

Game 5 - vs Kappadocians

The rather large stash of points I had accumulated by now meant I needed 5 BHGS points (or a 9-1 defeat) to be uncatchable in first place, and given that I needed to be at Heathrow airport by 6pm to catch a plane, so ideally needing to leave 30 minutes before the official end time of the game this was indeed a good position to be in !

The terrain placed a large steep hill on my flank, which meant I would be creating and would have to defend a large exposed flank as I raced across the table to try and get my spears and warband in amongst the squishy stuff lurking towards the Kappadocian baseline, and this was how the game developed.

With the Numidians and the cavalry on the open flank, my warband raced down the middle at high speed, with the spearmen in single ranks chasing off the odd LH and then resorting to a staring match with a host of auxilia in Command 1 who were hiding in a wood at the back of the board.

The Kappadocians swung round to attack the opening flank with a wall of cavalry, and I was left to rely on the lone elephant and 2 Cv (O) of the cavalry command, plus the ability of 13 Numidian Lh to stay just out of charge range (or to be waiting, with overlaps) to hold on.

In their desire to be groovy fast moving cavalry though, the Kappadocians found that they had left a hole in the pivot point of their line - and the only thing to stuff into it was Sp (O).

The Gallic warband decided in the interests of me catching my flight that this was an opportunity not to be missed, and launched a series of slightly sub-optimal attacks (ie without overlaps, sometimes overlapped, and often in risky recoil situations) into the Kappadocian spear block. Success!

The spearmen crumbled, and then it was a question of throwing even more caution to the wind (there was a lot of "Cartho Caution" out there blowing about already to be fair!) to quickly get the final few elements to take the army over the required %age losses, and then even more rash moves to go for the outrageous total victory.

Sp (I) pushed into the wood to take on auxilia, psiloi threw themselves at LH, LH waded into non-recoil situations against flanked Cv (O) and (S)...

The big win however was not to be, and first the warband command crumbled, and then finally the it was the Numidians who keeled over as 2 Ax (I) rashly attacked the Kappdocian CinC out of the steep hill, and were slightly trampled. 1-9 defeat, but enough to pick up (or for someone else to pick up) the big trophy! Another success for the men from North Africa !

game over!

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