Game 4 - Phyrric
Steve Charltons legendary super-beautiful Xyston Hellenistic army was to be the opponent for my "some were painted half my lifetime ago and are a bit embarrassingly poor" rag-tag morph-tastic Carthaginians.
Tonight Matthew, they are Phyrric - all in thumbnail so you can get the un-web-enabled original pics if you so wish.
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The terrain again fell more kindly today,
especially without steep hills, and it was on a relatively clear table
that we faced up our third Phyrric of the weekend.
This time a line of spears were the soft, juicy flank presenting itself to my warband, and with my two sets of light horse facing of against a command made up largely of Psiloi. I felt confident that a bold aggressive strategy could pay off - simply wading into the psiloi could cause grievous damage to the Phyrric morale before any of the capital troops would be engaged. Mindful of this also, the Phyrric's started by throwing pips at the problem, to redeploy cavalry across the front of their army in order to counter this threat. Save for some mutual posturing and Numidian-instigated flank-threatening that created Phyrric pip wastage (significantly, to protect the cavalry who were attached to the spear command) this was the end of all interesting action on this flank. My warband lept enthusiastically to the task of charging down the spearmen, and raced across the table at them, ignoring the beautiful pike centre. Bereft of terrain and skirmishers, the Phyrric spearmens flank was defended by a lone psiloi and the inability of troops under 3.1 to roll up aflank - other than that it was a gaping void clear t the edge of the table. Oh for that couple of Numidians who under 3.0 might well have found a place in this command!! As with the previous two games, we clipped the end of the pike line with elephants and warband with the support of our light horse, and raced onwards to engage softer targets. Soon the spearmen were suffering losses, but giving out some punishment to the warband in turn - who were starting to lose all semblance of cohesion, and frequently risked death by stepping foolishly in front of their own elephants. The Phyrric commander now entered the fray with his household knights, bursting through the rapidly ablating spear line and impaling warband by the bucketful. Troops were coming off in handfuls, and both armies were realizing that having commands with break points of 7.5 featuring almost exclusively troops who die in 2's was maybe unwise. 2 bad rounds of pips by Steve left him unable to exploit the double overlap opportunities that presented themselves, and this meant the tables were swinging my way. But the knights were now being attacked by impetuous uncoordinated warband, incapable of even organizing their own rear support - so my army too was crumbling to defeat at its own relatively incompetently painted hands! The spears had by now gone, and the pike centre was teetering. My commands were both within a few elements of defeat.. There would be no more turns - time for heroes or villains to step up to the mark... Warband and elephants charged into the pikemen in the centre. 2 warband went down the middle, deep into a double overlap - but if the warband to their left, and elephants to their right both won, the tables would be turned.... Warband also willingly attacked the knights - with overlaps, but not by any means enough to make certain. 4 elements needed... 2 pikes fall to my warband 1 knight dies - but the other survives ! The elephant rolls a magnificent victory (from 4-2 up admittedly) and the Phyrrics crumble to defeat ! 10-0 (but damn close) to the Carthos!! phew...
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