Armenia is Invading Again
Andy Leeser and I decide that whilst we were await the last games in Round 1 of the tournament to take place we would have a 500 AP practice game. We decided on Book 2 and I didnt know what Andy was going to choose. For me it ended up choosing between Numidians and Early Armenians as I didnt have any lists pre-written for any other armies and didnt have the time to write a viable alternative.
Sunday morning arrived and after a fraught time stuck in the queue behind a barely functioning woman in the petrol station who had spent 15 minutes with the cashier until someone opened a second till after the queue had become so long that the customers were starting to complain about the wait I turned up in not the best of moods.
Andy's army consisted of four commands composed as follows:
CinC 26 E/26 EE/9 D [6.5=25%]
C2 28 E/26 EE/9 D [6.5=25%] Reg Sub
C3 28 E/26 EE/9 D [6.5=25%] Reg Sub
C4 10 E/10 EE/4 D [3.5=25%] Saka Ally
Total 92 E/88 EE/44 B
My Armenian Army is huge consisting of four commands composed as follows:
CinC 41 E/37 EE/12.5 D [9.5=25%] Tigranes the Great
C2 41 E/37 EE/12.5 D [9.5=25%] Irr Sub
C3 41 E/37 EE/12.5 D [9.5=25%] Internal Irr Ally
C4 7 E/7 EE/3 D [2=25%] Bedouin LPIA External Ally
Total 130 E/118 EE/59 B
Rolling for set up the Armenians with Aggression 3 +5 v the Graeco-Bactrians Ag1+3 meant I was yet again the invader and the difference of 3 meant that there was a Strong wind blowing from the South which affected the archers of both sides and dictated Andy's deployment for some unknown reason.
Below is the table consisting of some smaller areas of RGo placed by Andy and the huge single piece of RGo placed by myself. Thankfully they were all Brushy RGo which didnt affect my LPIA ally on their camels. The table below is show from the viewpoint of my left corner.
We deployed slowly electing to chat to other players as we took turns to deploy because at Essex Warriors we have from 09.30 to 17.30 on a Sunday to game with.
I rolled my first PIP dice and surprise surprise my Armenian internal ally was unreliable but Tigranes and the LPIA both got a 6 which upon reflection allow me to be too aggressive. I threw caution to the wind and pushed Tigranes LH F contingent forward and to the through the open right flank of the enemy but just not far enough to get past. My Armenian sub-general rolled a 1 which rather meant I was limited in what I was able to do in the centre for a while.
On the other flank the LPIA charged forward through the brush and past the exposed open flank held by a lonely looking three Irr LH F.
Andy then rolled his first PIP dice and immediately got a 6 for his Saka ally which he then announced was reliable and would be arriving behind my now open left flank. He had a pair of LH F which he used to break up my attack column and forcing then to turn to face meaning had I lost I would have been recoiled back off the table losing two elements. Thankfully the first combat roll was a 6-1 in my favour - scratch one enemy LH F but the second combat was a draw
My next turn and another 6 for the LPIA meant I could deploy and threaten his open flank.
Andy then used his only high dice roll on his three regular command dice to deploy out his LH S ready to take on the now broken up LH F
I started to push forward in the centre whilst I luckily got a 6 with the internal ally which now decided that it was probably wise to come onside.
I hard flanked the last remaining LH F on my left flank to take it out. this was the only success I was going to see with this attempted attacking move as Andy had deployed his LH S ready to attack in his next bound.
Over on my right flank I had a brain fart and pushed forward my LPIA ally general with the intention of taking on Andy's exposed baggage whilst the rest of his commands LH F was threatened by the camels.
Back on the far left the LH S crashed into my horse archers and it ended horribly for me.
Andy was slowly advancing forward and organising his pikes into four deep ready to take on my waiting Armenian foot. I had finally taken the RGo in the centre and was pushing forward to threaten the now exposed flank of his large block of archers facing my LPIA ally. The two enemy Ps O were living on borrowed time and were promptly despatched in my next bound.
Taking advantage of my exposed LPIA ally general Andy then pinned it with a single LH F leaving me with no where to go, more of which later.
Having despatched six of my horse archers on my left flank I used all available PIPs I could spare and pushed over the central commands eight LH F to try and contain the now advancing Saka as pulled back the last two horse archers in to the RGo and relative safety..
The LPIA general was now surrounded with nowhere to go but he survived the first attack which was a draw. This allowed me to move a couple of Irr Cm O up towards the rear of the enemy LH F with the idea of taking them in the rear and saving the general.
The now four deep pike his my central command infantry and quickly despatched a couple of elements whilst he threw in a LH S to try and recoil me into a friend and take both of them out. Another draw allowed me to survive and hard flank a pair of Ax S and by luck I rolled just enough to survive in position.
For some reason Andy thought that it would be wise to try and take out my LH F that were sat in the RGo with a single LH S. Of course mounted dont really like fighting in the rough and because I wasnt lining the edge meant that both of use were fighting in the rough so both were affected by the combat penalty.
The CF were 2 -2RGo = 0 for me and 2 -2RGo -1Overlapped= -1 for Andy. He of course then rolled a 1 making his CF total = 0 meaning I only needed to roll 2 or more to destroy him because of his S rating. I rolled a 4 and down went his lone LH S.
After three turns of combat the LPIA general finally died and of course I then rolled a 1 to break this command! which then turned and fled towards the rear.
Back in the centre Andy was slowly pushing forward towards Tigranes and had removed another pair of Armenian infantry from my sub-generals command. I just needed a bit of luck with the dice to stabilise the centre and this happened when my lonely Armenian infantry facing off a pair of superior Auxilia rolled high and recoiled them into the flank of some pike behind taking them both out.
Having survived the disaster on the far left I pulled out the remaining two horse archer and set them up to hit the open flank of the Saka command threatening my rear and also managed to feed in another four horse archers from my internal ally meaning that I now had concentrated a total of 14 elements to counter his 10 Saka elements. so in went the first combat. a quick his-low roll and down went the first Saka LH F.
The broken LPIA ally command was now causing Andy all manner of control issues as his infantry on this flank were now impetuous which meant he either let them go and risked being drawn piecement down towards my waiting Armenian infantry or put PIP's into them to maintain some sort of control.
Tigranes was now in contact with the enemy with my imitation legionaries, phalanx and some infantry trying to hold out against his pikes whilst I was bringing forward my two small cataphract contingents to take them on. I had not hit the Saka in flank and front and proceeded to roll them up taking out another four elements in quick succession breaking them and in the next bound hit them whilst demoralised killing every other element apart from the now surrounded Saka cavalry general.
It was at this time Andy announced he needed to go by 4pm and conceded the game.
The game score was 5-5 VP in DBM terms which due to actual loses taken by both sides converted to 16-16 VP using the BHGS system.
I was two elements away from breaking his left flank command and was about to start to take out some more elements from his centre and right flank commands. Had the game continued it was highly likely that the loss of this command, 26 EE, plus the Saka 10 EE and the other losses on the remaining commands totalling 42 EE would have meant I only needed to take another two elements to break the Graeco-Bactrians. Apart from my LPIA ally I was still 4.5 EE away from breaking in each of two commands and was 8.5 EE from breaking with the last command. Meaning that it was probably highly unlikely Andy could have taken more casualties than me before he collapsed. All in all it was a fun hard fought game and it taught me another valuable lesson DO NOT BE RASH with generals!
I dont like games that end without a conclusion but it was our own fault really as neither of us played particularly fast and I would have probably ended up with a 9-1 DBM victory converting to a 29-3 VP at best and a 27-5 VP BHGS at worst.
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