Well, last night Tim Montgomery and I tested out the Sp/Ax (S) interaction, with his Italiot Later Hoplite Greeks taking on my Aitolian Hellenistic Greeks in their first outing under DBMM.
For once, the terrain played a significant part in the game. On my right was a gentle hill, with a craggy hill opposite on Tim?s left. Splitting Tim's deployment zone in two was a difficult hill. On my left was a vineyard, with an orchard in front of it. On Tim's right was another gentle hill. Slightly inboard from the orchard was a patch of rough going. Phew!
I deployed first. On my right was an Aitolian ally with a lot of Ax (S) and Ps, with a small reserve of LH. In the centre, facing the difficult hill, was the Achaian ally with Pk (O), plus a few more Ax (S), a bolt shooter and some Kn (F). On my left was the C-in-C with some irregular hoplites, along with some more Ax (S), a bolt shooter, and another small LH reserve. Finally, in two ambushes in the orchard was another Aitolian ally, this time with a small number of Ps and LH. All commands had command baggage.
Tim then deployed four commands as well. Facing my Ax (S) command was his largest command, containing a mix of Reg and Irr Sp (O) and the tyrant's bodyguard of 4 Reg Sp (S). A mix of Ps sat on the craggy hill. The C-in-C sat behind the difficult hill in the centre with a force of Cv (O). On Tim's right were two commands of Irr hoplites. The command nearer the difficult hill had some Ax (O) and Bw (I), while the one on the flank had some LH (O). All his commands also had command baggage.
I then used my Unusual Weapons stratagem (I spent 20 points on two stratagems, largely because I didn't have enough figures to make it to 400 points) to place the Piglets of Death in line with some of his hoplites on his right wing.
This was a battle in two halves, split either side of the DH in Tim's deployment area. My Ax and Pk commands took on Tim's large left wing command, while my two left wing commands faced off against the two commands on Tim's right. Tim's Cv command worked its way around his left flank to eventually intervene against my Ax command.
On my right, I shortened the Ax line to provide room for the Achaian pike, though wheeling a line including Art was a slow process. Carelessly, I allowed Tim's hoplites to make the first contact against my Ax, and I was lucky to lose only 2 Ax. Fortunately I had reserves to cover the gaps.
In my turns, the effect of the Ax was quite noticeable, and I was even able to kill the ally-general. The tyrant's bodyguard were the main exception, as they killed everything I put in their path. The result was that after several bounds, Tim's command became disheartened. About this time the Achaian Pk made it into contact, although this was much more of a slog, achieving only a couple of kills. In this, Tim was assisted by a couple of Cretan Bw regularly recoiling the 3rd and 4th ranks of Pk with shooting, until I could mask them with Achaian Ax. After a few more turns, my Ax command became disheartened, and I apparently lost the ability to quick kill hoplites - not even attacking the rear of the hoplites helped. I deployed the Achaian Kn in front of the tyrant's bodyguard, which turned into a rather hairy stalemate. Eventually the Ax command broke, although I was able to hold most of the remaining Ax in place, protecting the flank of the Achaians. One last attack by a column of Pk killed the last hoplite I needed to break Tim's command.
Tim's cavalry command took several turns to march around the craggy hill, and managed to catch the LH reserve of the Ax command, helping to break it. But they weren't able to intervene to any greater extent.
Meanwhile, over on the left a completely different battle occurred. I quickly lost control of the hoplites, having split them into two groups and then rolled a 1 for PIPs with Ps too close in front of the Sp. Then, some of the impetuous hoplites had clear ground in front of them to the enemy, and started to outstrip their impetuous colleagues who had to negotiate rough terrain. Initially I thought the C-in-C's command was going to fall apart through piecemeal losses, but the hoplites proved surprisingly resilient. Eventually the impetuous hoplites occupied Tim's inboard right wing command, while my remaining hoplites, led by the C-in-C, faced the hoplites of Tim's outboard right wing command.
And how different the two fights could be. The first was a dour push-shove struggle, in which one of my hoplite elements twice rolled a 6-1 to repel an attack by the enemy ally-general supported by a flank hit. The other fight was over remarkably quickly, helped by my overlaps, a lucky kill of the ally-general, and earlier losses.
These earlier losses were caused by my small ambushing command. They started by mugging a couple of Ps who recklessly stuck their noses into the orchard. Then the LH marched onto the flank of Tim's LH, killing one, then facing off against the others.
This was sufficient in total to break Tim's outboard right wing command, freeing up some hoplites and LH to come to the assistance of my other hoplites, although the battle was over before they could achieve much.
My losses were a little over 30%, plus one general of a broken command, meaning the score would have been 18-7 to me.
A few observations:
Thanks to some poor deployment on my part (partly due to dithering and being unsure how to deploy), the bolt-shooters got about 2 shots between them in the whole game. Still, against Sp, they were unlikely to do much.
The incendiary pigs were brilliant - killing a hoplite element at 460 paces. At least, we assumed they have that range. According to the rules, all Artillery except (I) have a range of 480 paces. In the end the loss made little difference to the final result. I'm still surprised they use Expendable factors, as this makes them largely ineffective against elephants, the weapon they were designed to fight against.
The Sp/Ax (S) interaction is a bit scary, but I think it favours the Ax, although there were a lot of corpses on both sides. Tim didn't help himself by losing that command's ally-general fairly early, but my 30 ME Ax command disheartened Tim's 35 ME hoplite command before the Achaians got involved in the combat.
The Pk/Sp fight took a while but I was slowly killing hoplites.
The Sp/Sp fight was generally a slog except where I accumulated a few advantages.
I'd be interested to see a few other Sp interactions. I suspect they might like running into Bw (S), where others fear to tread. But I don't think they'd much like Kn or Bd. In those cases, deploy deep.
Ax (S) seem good value in proportion to other Ax.
The craggy hill provided a solid flank for Tim's army, but I had the numbers to take his Ps on. What I didn't have was the PIPs to fully exploit my numerical advantage.
Tim decided he won't be putting hoplite generals in the front rank in future. I would have had a much tougher fight if I hadn't been given 8 ME from two generals carking it.
All of a sudden I didn't think 10 ME to spend on ambushes was a waste. I've had fun using ambushes with the Aitolians, and it was good to try it again.
Be careful about how you let troops go impetuous. I made a complete hash of letting my hoplites go impetuous, thanks to the patch of rough terrain and the Ps getting the way. I'm still somewhat surprised it didn't go worse for me.
When we come to discuss the Later Hoplite Greek list, we're going to need to be very precise about who gets what. Tim's list was perfectly legal, but had a few oddities - a Cv (I) general leading a bunch of Cv (O); Reg Sp (S) as a tyrant's bodyguard, although they weren't in the C-in-C's command, and their own general was Irr Sp (O). Other strange results crop up in other LH Greek lists, too.
There's something about the way Tim's Cretan archers could recoil my Pk's 3rd and 4th ranks which didn't quite look right, though that might as much as anything be my fault for not covering the phalanx's flank.
Still, it was a fun game, and I have to say we're generally getting better at remembering the various factors in play. It's not as easy as DBM was, but we're getting there.
Thanks to Tim for an enjoyable evening.
