Macedonia vs. India- Fight to the River- Part two

Hi again,

Continuing on from the last update, I'll report back on this battle to its conclusion.

As with the previous week's gaming, I was commanding the Macedonian forces, whilst the Indians were controlled by a different player for each division.  Overall, my die rolls had enabled me to smash one of the Indian divisions, and all I had to do was break one more of the three in order to force a withdrawal.

The forces on my left flank managed to array themselves in a sturdy battle formation, glaring nastily at the mounted component of Pete's own forces.

Pete wasn't going to let the demonstrated ability of my troops to obliterate their Indian counterparts get in the way of a good scrap though, so ordered them in.

With better troops and more support, I obligingly countercharged!
On my right flank, Bill was having a fairly tough time organising his troops to act in a co-ordinated manner, his cavalry taking the order to 'close as quickly as possible on the damaged Macedonian cavalry' a little literally, as they promptly succeeded in moving 27 inches across the table and charged home.  Normally this wouldn't be a bad thing, however Bill tried to bring up his chariots in support and failed the order.  His division was in danger of being destroyed piecemeal just as Jason's before him.

In the combats that followed, on the left flank, Pete's cavalry continued the Indians' ill fortune as they lost by 1, but broke and routed as a result of a dreadful morale check.  The combat against the chariots once again proved that they are TOUGH, although with my support and my general in there it still turned out a draw.  I was feeling pretty confident at this stage; The chariots had taken four hits (their stamina was 6 so I was almost there), my cavalry was supported on both flanks and the commander was there to help as well.  So this explains why, in my turn, I moved up my infantry across the rear of their formation, sideways on to the melee.

In the proceeding combat, my dice finally turned, and my hitherto undefeatable cavalry got, well, battered to bits to a paltry one hit in return.  The ensuing morale check resulted in me being pushed back in disorder, straight through my infantry who became disordered as well.  This left my left flank in what can only be described as the 'Prettiest Battleline Ever'-

Pete's victorious chariots swept on into the dazed and confused pikemen, who were not only facing completely the wrong direction but also in complete disarray.  I could smell a bit of an embarrassment coming on.  The chariots chewed up a goodly portion of the 'phalanx's hits allowance, and forced them into retreat as well.  However, the handful of desperate attacks managed to just force the Indian's over their stamina, causing them to become exhausted and they withdrew back to their lines, no doubt a tad more smug than they were on the approach.

For my part, my battleline was knackered; many of my own units had become exhausted in the fighting, and my own overconfidence had left units in each other's way when it came to reorganising my forces.

My right flank had suffered disproportionately as well to Bill's cavalry charge- many units were carrying damage and now were facing off against theoretically poorer, but as yet uncommitted troops.  At this point both sides spent a couple of turns trying to prepare themselves for the final showdown as best as could be improvised.  Pete was rallying hits off of his chariots whilst they sheltered behind a screen of infantry, Bill was trying to bring all of his units to bear at the same time, and I was endeavouring to get non-shaken units to the fore, supported by their shaken comrades behind if possible.  I was having trouble rallying hits off of units I recall, so was feeling vulnerable.

The next few pictures show the resulting confrontations after the lull in the fighting.  The Indian chariots came back for another go against the Macedonian cavalry, whom I gave a chance of redemption to.

On the right flank, battle was joined as Indian chariots went in to the Macedonian cavalry there, who suddenly decided that they'd fought quite hard enough already, thank you very much, and packed up and left without much by way of reply.  The Indian chariots then crashed into the Greek auxilliaries, who'd been involved in some pretty heavy fighting already.

The supporting Indian infantry on the right, sensing a change in the air, finally launched themselves off of the hill and into the fray.

The combat on the left saw the chariots narrowly beaten, but they were able to limp off again, having shaken the Macedonian cavalry so that no pursuit was possible.

Combats raged up and down the line.  I was only a unit or two away from losing, and if I could just break one of the two divisions facing me then I would be able to break through.  In the end, it was javelin work from a humble unit of light cavalry that did the trick.  Circumventing the protective screen of Indian infantry on my left flank, my light cavalry snuck around and harassed the chariots, who were trying to rally for another confrontation.  The unexpected attack made them scatter and leave the board, breaking Pete's division and winning the game for me!

The chariots are just out of shot in this camera, having already run away before I could bring the camera to bear.  D'oh!

Overall, it was a great game.  Up until about halfway, I really thought I'd sold the Indians short- not a great thing seeing as how I was supposed to be GMing the game and took the Macedonians all for myself.  My dice rolls were exceptionally jammy as well, which further scewed the outlook of the battle.  All it took though was one reversal and the consequences for my formation was almost disastrous.  Had the Indians been able to co-ordinate better, had their units taken less damage and been able to pile in straight away, I could have been torn to pieces many miles from home.  As it was, the Macedonians survived the attack, reached their fleet, and collected their supplies.  No doubt the trip back to the main army would be as hasty as possible!

I hope you enjoyed this report.  Soon I hope to have reports and pictures of a rather special game that's proven very inspiring, just from looking across at it from my board!  No hints yet though- that would be telling!

Leigh

Macedonia vs. India- Fight to the River- Part 1

Hello again,

Returning to ancients, some of us couldn't wait to get another game of Hail Caesar under our belts.  We'd already played one game with these protagonists before, but I didn't get to write that one up due to a catastrophic camera memory failure.  Anyway, after playing what I thought to be too many pitched battles, I thought it would be a good time to see what these rules could do with a more interesting set up.

So here we have it: during the Macedonian invasion of India, a column of seasoned troops is moving to rendevous with a supply fleet.  Some local Indian warlords/princes have attempted to seize the cargo, but have been thwarted when the fleet saw them and departed, and so they will have to content themselves by sacking the approaching Macedonian column instead.  It's not the easy target they hoped for, but they had to give their followers some promise of loot after mustering them.

The setup is as below.  In the earlier game, we'd found that, even with indifferent commanding by the Macedonian leaders, the quality of their troops would fairly inevitably crunch through the Indians, and so it was time to mix things up a bit.

Here is a view up the board- the river at the fore represnting the rendevous point between the Macedoian column and fleet.  There's a very out-of-period stone watchtower in the middle- staffed by some peltasts who in the event did nothing at all really.  At the far end, you can see the Macedonian troops.  There Indian Army was split into three separate commands, representing the forces of three individual leaders, so no swapping or changing them about halfway through.  From this picture, you can see two on the left and one group on the right.

Here are the Macedonians above, set up in two lines, each reprenting a 'division' in the rules.  To keep things simple, we used stats out of the rulebook, each of the troop types being either medium cavalry, pike phalanx, generic heavy infantry (for the Greek auxilliary types), or light cavalry.

And here are a couple of pictures of the Indians.  I made up stats for the Indians, based on the Rulebook suggestions but the infantry tended to have a worse morale save than their type usually gets.  The Elephants represent commanders of each contingent, rather than units.

I was planning to run the game myself, but this was just as the latest bout of heavy snow kicked in, and we were without a couple of players.  As it turned out, we had 3 other people interested this week, so I gave each of them an Indian division, whilst I took the Macedonians myself, seeing as how their objectie was to drive up the middle and reach the river.  I confess now that I had no idea whether the scenario would be balanced or not- the way the command system works could see either side crush the other.

The first moves saw the Macedonian right column fall into a battleline in response to the nearest Indian contingent heading straight for them.  As shown below, the Indian Chariots (established in the previous game as the tanks of the battlefield) managed to crunch home on the greek auxilliaries.

Sheltering behind their shields, though, the heavy infantry managed to weather the charge, then crush the Indians in a single round of combat.  Taking advantage of the awesome luck I was having, the Macedonian cavalry in that same division went crashing into the Indian Archers, suffering light damge, then onwards into the infantry block behind them.

On the other side of the narrow battlefield, I was concentrating on moving as far as possible up the field and away from the bottleneck before the Indians on my left brought themselves to bear.  After some false starts (bad command rolls) I managed to end the evening with them deployed in something approaching a decent formation, as shown here from the point of view of the approaching Indians.

Anyway, this finished the first week's gaming- having to set up and decide upon unit make up and sizes had cut down on actual play, but we can leave games up for as long as we need to.  The nearest Indian division on my right had been shattered by some above average luck, the Indians had been stalled by their own stuttering commands- units had been engaging piecemeal, then gradually broken down.  This freed the player of that broken division up to join another game going on at the same time though- which I will be reporting on in the future, believe me!

Anyway, there'll be more photos in the next update, I assure you.

Cheers,

Leigh

War in the Peloponnese- Athens vs Sparta

Sorry for the delay in posting another set of pictures- but it's been business as usual at the Eastbourne wargames club so here are some pictures of another game of Hail Caesar set in Ancient Greece.  The first game- see previous post on 'The Road to Boetia'- was so well-received that we decided to expand on the forces, make up a 6x8 foot table and grab some more players.

As befits the period, we chose to have a fairly open board, so that the battlelines could really get stuck in without any namby-pambying around.  Hope you enjoy the pictures!

At the end of a brutal slog, the Spartan side unhistorically broke and fled- the Spartan commander no doubt bravely blaming the performance of his allies, who made up the bulk of the army.

We'll be continuing the ancients theme for a while yet, as collections get dusted off to try in this new ruleset.  Check back soon for a battle set in Late Antiquity, involving the Sassanid Persians.

The Road to Boetia- Sparta vs Athens

Here are some pics of a game played to a conclusion in one night on Monday 8th August.  We wanted another bash at Hail Caesar, and Eric kindly brought down enough Hoplites to easily manage the sample battle set in Ancient Greece from the rulebook itself.
Spartans and their allies face off against Athenians and Boetians.

 Both sides moved forward somewhat tentatively, except for the Spartan unit on the right side of their battleline, which shot off in front of it's allies.

Here they are, nearest unit on the left.  As it turned out they pummeled their way through not, one, but two Boetian phalanxes in short order, then turned to deal with the hated Athenians.

Meanwhile, the Athenian commander had decided to commit his remaining forces along the rest of the battleline, hoping to smash the will of Spartas allied troops and end the game before the elite Spartans returned to the fray.

The above photo shows this climactic struggle.  In the end, the Spartan line got pushed back, bent inwards, even lost it's commander, but ultimately held long enough for the Athenians to tire and break off.

At this point, all of the remaining Athenian phalanx units were shaken, and with the triumphant Spartiates threatening their left flank, they decided to call it a day.

I hope you enjoyed the photos as much as we enjoyed the game!  I think we'll be playing this period again next week, this time with bigger forces and thus more carnage!

Ta ta

Gaul vs Rome- more photos!

Hi again!  I've been sent some more photographs of our Ancients game mentioned previously on this blog.  Although late, I thought it would be nice to show them off.  As explained before, the rules used were Hail Caesar.  The figures are a combination of my own collection and another club member's. 

The eagle-eyed amongst you might notice the different base sizes- mine on 'Warhammer' sized bases whilst some are using the WRG style.  Usually this would make any game a nightmare to run, but Hail Caesar adapts without problem.

Enjoy!

Gaul vs Rome

In this first set of pictures, here is a game representing a Mid-Republican Roman army catching a large Gallic raiding force on the hop, as it were.  The numerically superior Gauls started off in some disarray, whilst the Romans all marched on from one bord edge.  The rules used were Hail Caesar.  Played on two of our 6x4 foot boards pushed together to form an 8x6 footer.

It was a great game and really showcased these great rules to many club members- it was about three players per side.