An exciting day for both myself and Kevin, at 3,000 points I could get all sorts of Seleucid goodies to see how the army worked, I took a chance and brought an elephant and a scythed chariot, the latter because I have one and what's the point of that if you do not use it now and again. The rest of the army consisted of four phalanxes, one levy which I would use as a reserve/flank guard, then some skirmishers, horse archers, cavalry and my new Mercenary Peltasts which I hoped would do great things. Kevin brought his new Republican Romans with four units of heavy infantry supported by a Gallic warband, some Numidian infantry and cavalry along with a horde of skirmish units.
As we deployed unit by unit I suddenly felt quite vulnerable as I expected to be overwhelmed by the enemy skirmish line, so to this end I kept the chariot and elephant in reserve and deliberately decided to attack the Roman archers while ignoring the javelin armed Velites, if I managed this I could then move up the elephant and chariot with the intention of hitting the enemy right flank. On my right I pushed forward my own javelins and the peltasts hoping that the Numidians would not be able to stand up to the mercenaries, my phalanxes were simply to hold their ground.
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| My new toys. |
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| Seleucids on the left, Romans on the right. |
The game started very well for the Seleucids as they won the initiative (and were to do so for most of the game) and launched a missile barrage which very soon either wiped out the enemy archers or caused them to run for the rear, putting them out of action for most of the game. On my right the mercenaries chased away the archers and cavalry, they would rally but again this gave me a lot of leeway on that flank. Kevin's Velites now approached my line but for some reason could not hit a barn door and got too close to my phalanx, the chariot and a phalanx put paid to the rash wolfskins. Kevin was having no luck at all except bad luck.
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| The Roman right disappears. |
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| The boys line up for an attack. |
I managed to get the elephant to charge the warband in the flank and rout it, this left my cavalry free to roam behind the enemy line keeping the returning skirmishers away from damaging my 'tank'. My mercenaries after clearing out the enemy light troops now charged uphill into the Numidians, an easy fight for them thought I, but no, the Numidians fought like tigers and routed my uninspiring mercenaries. This did not turn into a disaster thankfully as I sent my Levy phalanx to take on the victorious Numidians and it routed them in short order, the flank was safe again.
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| The Levy secure my right. |
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| Roman routers about to be dispersed. |
My phalanxes had begun to slowly move forward by now, and Kevin had moved some of his infantry to guard his right flank, this gave me an opportunity to loose the chariot and the elephant into them as once again I won the initiative. Another Roman unit routed and dispersed. A second Roman block had moved forward and I charged it, it now also had a phalanx on its flank and an elephant to its rear, Kevin decided enough was enough and conceded.
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| It is all over. |
A remarkable battle where the heavy infantry of both sides hardly took part until near the end, I had managed to keep my elephant alive and use the chariot to good effect, this would have been much harder had I not took out or chased away the enemy archers. I am not going to get overconfident about this as both units can easily be countered at other times. I was a bit surprised the Roman infantry held off as long as they did but it worked in my favour. I am not completely at ease with this army yet, the flanks usually look very vulnerable, or at least one of them always seems to be particularly weak, however it worked very well today.
A rather splendid looking game and write up.
ReplyDeleteIt was a good game, I was on tenterhooks a couple of times when the elephant waddled into contact.
DeleteGood BatRep George, as always. I didn't see much in the battle regarding Roman maniples and their bonuses. Did they not come into play?
ReplyDeleteIt was more a late Roman Republican army I think. Not sure about the maniple situation being represented on a wargame table. Also at the end of the day no one really knows how it was used. So you won't see it in Kevin's army.
DeleteMay give the maniple rule a run out next time. A major problem I found with the republican Roman army was that I tried to reflect as accurately as possible the ratio of troop types used. This involved lots of Velites. But these guys are expensive at 9pts and at the end of the day suffer from the weakness of skirmishers in WAC. That said the dice rolls were shockingly bad, including rolling six 1s from 8 initiative rolls and losing out on seven occasions. Hard to come back from that.
ReplyDeleteI think that's probably where you're going wrong Kevin. You can't hope to get an historical reproduction from a wargame!! The abstractions are so massive that it won't work. I'd say take the troops that you need to get a good competitive game for you and your opponent, keep within the legalities of the army lists that you're using and you'll get much more from it. I know there's no 'sure thing' about how a maniple worked, but one thing we can expect from common sense is that it gave the Romans an advantage in combat that they exploited, whereas you're actually handicapping your gaming army by not using the rules that are there to counter your opponents options (which I might add, are also 'our best guess' as none of us were present to witness the actual events) and give you a reasonably balanced game. Worth a try at least! ;-)
DeleteThat both looks and sounds a grand game!
ReplyDeleteI think we are both lucky in that we have nice armies to look at and fight against.
DeleteIt was the most unusual game we'd fought as the heavy infantry did not clash at all. I banged on about it to George but I don't like the "evade" rule for skirmishers in an army with large numbers and feel that Velites should have a feign flight capacity. In reality they would have fallen back to the protection of the Principes rather than routing off in panic en masse. A few skirmishers at 5pts is one thing but a mass of Velites at 9pts ought to be more resilient and the Mo6 is by itself insufficient. Well, that's my view anyway.
ReplyDeleteYou should drop Rob a line about the Velites, the feign flight rule would work but make them even more expensive, however worth a try.
DeleteI may be wrong about the Velites. They have AV1 and as well as javelins are armed with throwing weapons. This would allow a reroll of "kills" in the first round of combat. However, this presumably only affects Velites fighting in close combat which is an unlikely scenario, particularly as in George's army there were very few skirmishers for them to fight. It does appear also that Velites were trained to retire back to the Principes or Triarii on a trumpet call so, again, I don't think the current skirmisher and evade rule quite fits the case of Roman Velites.
ReplyDeleteWell I banged on about Phalanx often enough.
DeleteYour armies look great, would you consider play testing the At Lances Point rules by Grenzer Games?
ReplyDeleteThank you for thinking about me Kim, but I am more than happy with WAC and once I find a set I generally keep to it. I have played Johnny Reb II for thirty years!
DeleteBest of luck with them.
Elephant, chariot and pikes, what's not to like? A beautiful looking game!
ReplyDeleteThanks Phil.
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