Field of Glory Wargaming at Warfare 2008

Its Warfare!! With the world economy in freefall and snow in the air Central London convened at the Papier-Mache Space Cafe in Reading for a big fat fry up to put the world to rights and soak up the previous nights red wine.

Under the watchful stewardship of Tim Child the once amusingly shambolic Warfare was now a slick well oiled machine - even the vague smell of old peoples wee had seemed to have disappeared from the bowling green on which the fields of battle were arrayed ("Has it been raining Albert?" "No Maude, we're playing indoors at the Rivermead today remember" "Oh, its probably just Frank again then. At least its not Crown Green or it'd be trickling back down the slope towards us all through the game, which I find so off-putting")

After "Roll Call", despite my series of defeats against massed cataphracts, I'd felt I had started to learn something, and so like a smack addict chasing that one perfect hit I found myself tightening the the ties of lead addiction around my bicep as I brought my Late Republican Romans to Reading.

The choice of Romans was largely driven by the fact I'd bought and painted a complete LRR army just recently and I wanted to use them, and also some Gauls who had also recently seen the benefit of my improved brush technique. The science however was that in a restricted period (RoR/IF/LT books only) it would work as a decent army too. The legions were mostly Skilled Swordsmen in case I fought other Roman armies (or barbarians) - however points restraints and a wish to make them "not too hard to take on" meant I fitted in 6 downgrade legionaries. They were fielded in big units so I could attach generals to them and make large numbers of bases virtually invincible (or so I hoped). I had only TCs as I didn't expect to suffer from much shooting in this period.

I had 3 units of LH, and an odd deployment order that saw some of them coming out at the end - where they were meant to combine with my cavalry unit to drive off and overpower enemy bow armed LH. Likewise my 3 units of foot skirmishers included some late-deployed protected velites to out-match the enemy skirmishers, and hopefully the result would be that I would pick up some "cheap" units by mugging unprepared enemy skirmishers. Finally the Dacian ally was there to provide an unexpectedly large rough terrain force capable of outmatching the typical classical era rough terrain force of 2 x 6 Thracian types - and with a ally general permanently attached, and the Ligurians for rear support as well, the Dacians should be capable of doing some serious - and again unexpected - damage in rough terrain.

Unfortunately I'd forgotten to bring a camera battery, so the first day I was stuck with using my camera on my phone to take shots - hence the scarcity, and the uneven quality.

I again submitted the list before playing a single game with it.

Game 1 saw me facing .... another light horse and cataphract army, just like my nemeses (is that a word? Plural of nemesis? Spellcheck likes it, but it could also be a type of small south east Asian aquatic lizard that a bloke at Microsoft responsible for building the dictionary function in Seattle once had as a pet in college for all I know?) from Roll Call - even some of the figures were the same as the army was led by Dave Ruddock, co-club-member of the same Phil who's 28 cataphracts had just about, after a desperate struggle, managed to crush me mercilessly only a few weeks before.

You can see the list and find out all about the Parthians here

Pictures of Parthian Troops from my Ancients Photo Directory

Parthian vs Late Republican Roman FoG Setup

The Parthians were such masters of terrain their General was practically called Lee, and their +4 aggression meant they ended up with Steppes. A few very cunning choices by Lee, including a small gentle hill with rough ground on it meant I could not even deploy my possible 4 pieces (without also having open spaces in the list) as there were too few uneven or rough bits left for me to choose after the Parthians has snaffled them up and we set out with Carrhae firmly in both our minds.

I had seriously considered turtling up, but the lack of terrain to hide between, and my choice of a v-neck sweater that morning meant this negative option was denied me, so instead I hoped to rush across the table and push some of the enemy skirmishers off the edge of the world ("aaaaaaarrrrrrhggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!! We're fallllllliiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnggg!") to rack up some points using the fast moving Numidians to punch quickly to the back of the table, trapping half the Parthian skirmishers against my advancing wall of Dacians and also nick a few more units anyway with my in theory brilliant Numidian light horse. This meant also using the legions as linebackers to fend off cataphracts whilst my vulnerable Dacians took advantage of a lot of uneven ground on my right to keep away from metal monsters, and used their unit size to protect themselves from shooting.