Well, last night, Chris's Early Germans met my Pyrrhics.
I was the attacker, and selected a couple of gentle hills. Chris selected some rough hills, some rough, a wood and a marsh. In the end, the only terrain feature which played much of a part in the game was a patch of rough which was a little to my left of centre, roughly on the centreline.
Chris deployed first, placing a single command of Wb (O) and some Cv and Bg. I then deployed a Pk block in the centre, and on each flank were commands with Sp (O), El (O), LH (O), massed Ps (O) and (I). The left flank command had Cv (O) while the right had Kn (F) wedges under Pyrrhus himself. My army baggage sat behind TF in its own command. Each of Chris’s commands had two elements of command baggage.
I knew from previous experience that Chris had four commands, one delayed, and the other two flank marching. Chris chose the Delay Battle stratagem, to increase the likelihood of his off-table flank marches arriving.
My plan was to knock over two of Chris’s commands, and hope I had enough casualties to break his army. So I sent the infantry in the centre charging forwards to meet the expected arrival of the delayed command.
Chris’s delayed command arrived immediately on turn 2, and wheeled to face the phalanx, which also wheeled to line up the warband. Also on turn 2, his left wing flank march diced to arrive, and on turn 3 his right wing flank march diced to arrive. So by turn 4, Chris had all four commands on table.
I turned Pyrrhus’s knights to face Chris’s left wing flank march. Chris then lost control of the warband, and I let the knights charge into the screaming mass. Over the next few bounds, the knights slowly ground their way through the warband. Chris’s cavalry in that command never really got the PIPs to intervene, except to kill the two light horse in that command. However, Chris got a major success when he killed a knight, then surrounded and killed Pyrrhus himself. The command was disheartened, but not broken. Boy, knight wedges are tough when they can’t be overlapped!
Meanwhile, action beckoned in the centre. I moved some psiloi out of the way, but others sat in front of some of my left wing’s spear. Chris charged them, chasing them away, but thus allowing me to charge the warband with the pike, some spear and the pike's knight general. Once again I slowly ablated my way through the warband. Chris swung some cavalry onto the flank of the pike, but missed by 1 point his one good chance to inflict serious damage on them. The following turn, some more spear charged into the cavalry, pulling them off the flank. The good thing for me in these combats was that my sub-general was facing his ally general. I killed the general, but Chris then remembered the ally was (S), thus allowing him to survive. But he died in my following combat round anyway, breaking the command.
The extra loss caused by seeing the nearby break was enough to push Chris’s left wing flank march to disheartened, and within 1 ME of breaking. I sent the right wing command's elephant into the Cv sub-general of that command, but wasn't able to kill him. Crucially, failing to kill the general allowed that command to survive into his next turn, when the extra ME losses didn't count any more, meaning my remaining knights had to kill even more warband.
But on my left flank, things were going wobbly. This command had the low PIP dice, and this meant that the cavalry in the command spent most of the time standing around doing nothing. This allowed Chris to mug them with warband and cavalry from the one command he deployed on table at the start. With no PIPs to save them, the general and some cavalry died, and that was my command broken. The extra 2ME losses caused by that command breaking broke the baggage command, and the extra 1 ME losses *that* caused was just enough to break my right wing. Talk about a ripple of death…
I took out 30% of Chris’s army for 6 points, and counted two generals down (one dead, one disheartened) for another 2 points. So 17-8 to Chris. But it was *so* close to being about the same the other way. And Pyrrhus never got a chance to use any brilliant strokes.
Thanks to Chris for a fun and wild game.
= =
It wasn't until after this game that I realised that a defender without fortified baggage can't use Delay Battle, so Chris's flank marches would have had a tougher time getting on the table.
It also wasn't until after the game that I realised that columns of mostly Pk get one free march move. This would have made it a lot easier for me to give the low PIP dice to that command, rather than the left wing, meaning it would have been able to do a lot more.
I'd also paid a 1 PIP penalty for my pike group moving forward because the psiloi in the front rank was moving slow. I didn't realise that the group takes no penalty in these cases; all troops in a group automatically move at the speed of the slowest. So you can mix Wb (F) and Wb (S) (for example), and they move at the speed of the Wb (S) for no penalty.
