18th July 2009
Well, finally played our first game today. Despite having taken down Mid-Republican Roman and Carthaginians my opponent, Lawrence, had just bought a rather lovely Seleucid army on eBay which had arrived this morning so we decided to christen it! So, Later Seleucid v. Mid-Rep Roman it was. We just went for the Starter Armies as it was our first outing for the rules. Ian was to be rules-meister and Richard observer, commentator and Seleucid advisor.
To broaden my frontage and try to counter his superiority in Cavalry and LH and the Elephants. I deployed my Triarii on either side of my central legionary mass. Latin allies to right. My Cavalry to left facing all his horse and Elephants. I pushed forward as fast as I could with my Velites driving back his skirmish line.
The Allies moved to engage his medium foot on the one flank while the one Roman Cavalry BG drove off his LH archers. They went too far forward and had to carry on to avoid a threat from the Elephants who then bore down on and charged my allied Cav.
The Allied foot in the meantime engaged his Off.Sp MF, both with Troop Commanders in the front line. I rolled VERY bad, 6 dice, 1,1,2,2,3,3. TC gave me 2 re-rolls – 1,1
Passed the Cohesion test though and lived to fight again. Held them next turn but lost another base, as did he. Then in the third turn, lost another and my general. In the centre the legions plodded on and were about to charge into the pike. On my left one Cavalry BG ended up engaging both his BGs with the LH threatening the flanks while my Allied Cav spent three turns battling the Elephants to no avail either way…
And then we ran out of time!
We’d had quite a few rule discussions on the way and had my wife not been sat in the car waiting we may have managed one turn of legion v phalanx to see if things would swing the Roman way.
Discussions were mainly…
1. LI Bow in single line of 8 facing the legions. End base faces on BG, next 2 another, next 2 another. We think they only get to throw two dice as the end base is on its own so doesn’t get one and the overlap on the other side only adds one base so they stay on 1 dice. It seemed funny that just because of how my BGs lined up 2 of the 6 bases firing were discounted?
After consulting the FoG Forums we realised that 8 base firing units should really operate in 2 ranks.
2. The battle of my allied cav v the Elephants. We only had one base each in contact and in three turns nothing really happened. It seemed strange that Cavalry were little affected by the big beasts? Maybe it was just our rolling…?
And we totally missed the Cavalry disrupted when in base width of elephants rule!
We enjoyed it anyway and will play again.
Nice pictures and write up, much enjoyed, thanks.