Search This Blog

Friday 8 October 2010

First real practise

Last night the Carthaginian raiders got their first outing alongside their Phyrric allies against a 4000pt Persian army played by Tom.

It was a good game, but the Persians were a lot harder than I expected. Tom wisely played it pretty defensive and used archery to wear us down and then counted on the hard Greek hoplites to defeat us. And actually it went pretty well. I tried my usual trick of pushing the open order columns around the left flank and looked for holes.

The Persian heavy cavalry were a liability and the Numidians had a great time shooting them up before parthian away and out of their arc. The 1/2 move penalty for massed persian cavalry if they had to wheel was crippling. But in the end they stood in there and if Tom had had some horse archers rather than foot ones I would have struggled. As it was, one of the 11 man Numidian light cavalry units was reduced to 5 figures by the shooting of a block of 20 Mardian foot archers who while formed could fire at full effect overhead - nasty. They rallied and the remaining numidians and foot archers I had crippled his bowmen in return.

In the end, Nick's Macedonian pikemen beat a unit of Kardakes and just beat a unit of stubborn
Melophoroi and he was through the line. Meanwhile my Numidian infantry skirmishers (the weakest unit in the game!) 'punched' a hole through Tom's rightcentre by destroying a large unit of levy skirmishers and charging a battery of 3 light bolt shooters. This allowed my 12man open order Numidian cavalry to move into the gap and be ready to charge any of Tom's 3 remaining infantry blocks in front and rear while simultaneously being hit by Nick's pike from the front. We didn't play on, but it would have been messy.

Overall impression was that Nick's and mine armies complimented each others pretty well but the table - even at 8x6ft is pretty tight for two 4000pt armies. So mobility might be an issue and we'll be looking for holes to get through to beat our opponents. Overall good fun and that's the name of the game really!

No comments:

Post a Comment