Zionist Collapse at the Post Office

Long time readers of this blog will recall that a few weeks ago, king Bobu Deva of the Kushans defeated the schoolboy king Nashur III, and assumed the title of King of Kings. He was then challenged by Whatagasses, a former holder of that title. For most of the battle it appeared that Bobu would easily see off the challenger, having crushed his largest command and surrounded his allies, but then a sudden and unexpected collapse of the Kushan left flank, saw the army defeated and Bobu Deva forced to make an undignified tactical redeployment to the rear.

Having thoroughly reviewed the video tapes of that battle, the Kushans came to the conclusion that the only possible explanation of the collapse was witchcraft*. However, with the witch king Whatagasses having finally been killed in another battle, the scene was clear for Bobu Deva to reclaim his rightful title, secure in the knowledge that his tactical brilliance would no longer be thwarted by the foul arts. This would mean another battle with Nashur III (all hail him in his shorts) of the Sassanid empire.

Some adjustments to the previous army list were required for the upcoming battle, since while witchcraft was undoubted the main cause of the previous defeat, the small commands and piecemeal deployment of vulnerable fast light horse, had been contributing factors. The Kushan army was thus reorganized with a smaller ally, and more robust commands. Since Nashur would be aware of the threat posed by Kushan elephants and deploy counter-measures, these would be neutralized by not having any elephants. The Kushan plan then was to hold a section of the line with cheap pikes, while riding down the Sassanids with a line of armoured cataphracts. A Hyrkanian Rebel Parthian ally was enlisted to provide yet more cataphracts making a total of 15 including generals. The vulnerable light horse would be kept behind the lines.

However Nash had been muttering darkly about surprises and new construction, so some perusal of his army list was required to try to guess what this might be. The most likely candidates seemed like a fortified artillery tower, or a frontier wall (which makes some sense in a campaign battle where you're garaunteed to defend). To allow for this contingency a treachery stratagem was selected, and the no elephant rule relaxed for the C in C, just in case he needed to assault a gate.

The Post Office

The battlefield was largely open, with gentle hills on each baseline, and a marsh towards each flank. The center was crossed by a long road, where Nash placed his surprise, which turned out to be an isolated tower occupied by an artillery piece. We dubbed this the "Post Office".

The Sassanid army had also undergone some reorganization, with a large Jewish contingent of superior hordes having been enlisted, and Nashur himself mounted on rather spiffing platform as a Bge(S) army standard.

Anyone who has seen the movie "300" will immediately recognize the authenticity of this model

The Kushans deployed with a command of pikes to the left of the post office, with two commands forming a wall of steel to its right. The Hyrkanian allies were deployed behind the right with the task of preventing any Persian flanking move to the right of the marsh.

The Sassanids deployed with a long line of horde as their front line (28 IIRC) with Jewish Hd(S) on their left, and Hd(O) on their right. The CinC with two elephants was behind the center, and  a small group of Cv(S) was behind the right. However, the bulk of the asavan in two commands were drawn up in a left facing column on the hill on their left.

Our drone wasn't functioning, so this is the best view we have of deployment.

The Sassanids opened the battle by sending most of their two cavalry columns to make a wide move around the marsh on their left, while holding in the centre. The Kushans rapidly advanced their cataphract line, and moved up the ally and some light horse to head off the Sassanid outflanking move. On the left the pikes advanced slowly, as many pips were used to marshal an assault on the post office.

Opening moves

Although an arrangement had been made to bribe the occupants of the post office, they reneged on the deal (rolled a 2 on the treachery die roll), and repelled all assaults until almost the end of the game.

The main action kicked off on the Kushan right with their cataphracts crashing into and mostly destroying the line of Jewish horde in front of them, while the cataphract command immediately right of the post office held back a little, wary of the elephants in the Sassanid center. Despite the success of the charge, the right hand Kushan command found itself in some difficulties. The left end of its line had strayed too close to an elephant and a cataphract and a light horse were lost before the pachyderm could be brought down, lack of pips meant that the only protection for the right end of the line was Bobu Deva himself, and the four light horse that had gone forward to slow the Sassanid flanking force had trouble withdrawing and took losses.

Kushans prepare to charge

Meanwhile the Sassanids let the horde go impetuously in the center,  and they crashed into the auxillia who were protecting the cataphracts from the elephants. Eventually the auxillia triumphed, and the pikes on the Kushan left reached and slaughtered the horde opposite them. The few Sassanid Cv(S) who'd been left behind on the right tried to counter attack, and did indeed kill another cataphract before being dispatched. The whole Sassanid front line had now collapsed, leaving Nashur III on his mobile platform, and his remaining pet elephant looking a little embarrassed, and lacking pips to withdraw. Nashur's platform was surrounded, and destroyed, leaving only the baggage and the leftmost group of cavalry in the center. Being out of command range, and facing two untouched commands, the latter seemed doomed.

Kushan cataphracts and auxillia close in on Nashur

However, there were still some anxious moments for the Kushans. On the extreme right the Sassanid cavalry continued to advance, and the ally general (Wayne) commanding the Hyrkanians tasked to slow this, was given strict instructions to "not lose his command by getting all the light horse killed". Something must have been lost in translation though, as two turns later, five out of six were dead, and his command was demoralized. Still with just a few more kills needed to finish the Sassanids the Hyrkanian cataphracts were committed against the Persian cav. A loss on a 3-3 though saw the Hyrkanian command break, and the knock on effect also broke the right hand Kushan command. There was some frantic counting, but with two almost untouched commands, the Kushan army just survived the knock ons.

This left the situation with the Kushans having two essentially untouched commands on the center and left, with one cataphract from the broken right hand command in contact with the Sassanid baggage, and king Bobu Deva himself patrolling the hill on his elephant preventing the Sassanid general moving close enough to the isolated group of cavalry to command them effectively. The Sassanids still had two commands, on their left, but both had taken heavy cassualties and the army was near breaking. In the end the coup de grace was given by the lone cataphract defeating a baggage F, causing a whole column to flee off table.  (took a bit of rules checking that one, but it appears that the table edge doesn't count as impassable terrain for fleeing elements). With other damage inflicted, this broke the Sassanids, and the rightful King of Kings returned to claim his throne.

So another hard fought battle, but in the end the Sassanids had no answer to the cunning Kushan tactic of lining up all their heavy troops and charging up the middle. One pattern that is becoming clear, is that one shouldn't rely on ones ally general not to get himself into trouble by overcommiting when he's supposed to be in a holding role. More executions needed methinks.

Along the lines at the start.

This battle eliminated Nash from the campaign. The final battle will see Wayne and his Parthians try to retake the throne. Winner take all. Watch this space for a report.







* Wayne was recently bitten by a strange millipede, which may have given him special powers.

That Fatal "Senior Moment"

Two previous battles with the Sassanid Persians have been reported <here> and <here> and they are a dangerous bunch of highly mobile massed rCvS and a few supports.  The supports they bring are limited due to either the cost of elephants in addition to the high cost of numerous compulsory expensive cavalry or the supports are (again massed) space filling lower grade troops used to bulk out the army and prevent automatic outflanking. 

In either guise they are a force to be reckoned with especially “in period and location” that is a basis of our mini pseudo-campaign.

Synchronized Wargaming - Deployment Event

As Parthians my cataphracts (iKnX) are the answer to the superior cavalry but being slower and clumsier than the cavalry we struggle to corner the enemy more often than not.  The alternative is to use our large advantage in light horse (iLhF in this army) to outflank and get into a devastating position in the enemies rear.  The enemy cavalry, and elephants, will cut apart our light horse so these can’t be used to channel the enemy, that is a job for our foot troops who die much slower and give the cataphracts time to catch the enemy.  Unfortunately in the past neither the bowmen (iBwO) or militia hordes (iHdO) we’ve used before stood up for long so failed at the job.

This week I employed a Commagene ally of swordsmen (rBdI) and bowmen (rBwI) who while of inferior quality were regular and hence more mobile and the blades especially should stand their ground longer.  So the plan was 1) be bigger than the enemy and to use iLhF to outflank and encircle,  2) use blade mobility to get in front of the enemy cavalry and act as the anvil for the cataphracts once they finally arrived to destroy the enemy rCvS,  3) to aid these through area control by using a small fortified fort (BuAf) and terrain options to constrict the enemy into a space to trap and attack him.

This must have been a poor plan.  As we all know plans don’t survive contact with the enemy, but in this case it didn’t even survive sighting the enemy.

Nash’s first surprise was a newly constructed waterway (WW) that interfered with my terrain options and because of the terrain dice made the fort plan so much less successful.  The fort was in combination with a gentle hill (GH) and had been constructed with a platform to hold the fort and then one corner extended to take advantage of the free effect of 1FE GH’s counting as ½ FEs.  Bob then pointed out that it’s shape was probably illegal (due to the 1/3 length = breadth rule) and was too elongated.  This prompted Nash to compare it to my manhood.  Thereafter the conversation deteriorated, much like the previous weeks one about Bob’s celibacy (or not), so unlike the lesser civilized scribes in our group we won’t dwell on the ribald innuendos that remained constant all night and through the propaganda dripping battle report that followed (written by the juvenile Nashur III or his frustrated wetnurse).

The second surprise was the army composition on the Sassanid’s side of the table.  Gone were the regular superior cavalry – replaced by irregular versions (iCvS), cataphracts (iKnX), some elephants and massed of conscripted hordes (HdO).  And on our left wing we opposed a Armenian ally, using knights (iKnF) as an attempted cataphract assassination corp and their own light horse (iLhF) flank guards.

Not only did the plan to be bigger evaporate – we weren’t – but as defender and deploying first, we now faced a wall of enemy that had favourable troop match-ups (apart from the KnX on KnX potential clash) for a general straight up charge and fight battle.  I had been seriously caught out and though I was done for even before the first PiPs were rolled.

When the first PiPs were rolled it got even worse – the Commagene ally was unreliable and was forced to stand in front of a wall of cataphracts and elephants that would simple crush them on contact.  My ambush beside the fort was likely to only face off against enemy hordes so it may need to be sprung earlier than planned so it could then redeploy.

Scary View - The enemy had favourable match-ups all
along their line.  They just needed to charge in.

My new plan was to hold the line, redeploy the Commagene command backwards as far as possible until I could get it back into a fighting (reliable) state and to switch my only attack to our left wing where our LhF outnumber the enemy LhF almost 2:1 and go around the outside.  At the same time I decided to take the risk of attacking the Armenian knights with cataphracts as I possibly had two generals in my line and overlaps (maybe even hard flanks) to use at both ends.  If, a big if, I could turn the left wing I just might have a chance to do some damage in the rear of the enemy before he inevitably charged and overran the rest of my line.

We had horrid PiPs in this game, for both sides of the table, and for both armies some opportunities came and went without being exploited.  In some ways it was a frustrating game.  I made a big mistake in an early bound where I moved troops through a part of my ambush (legal interpenetration) but for some reason left the second rank occupying the ambush space.  I realised this just as Nash and Bob started their bound and retracted the rear rank as quick as I could and offered an excuse.  The excuse had holes in it which meant I then had to admit it had been an illegal move and the reason, so my ambush was identified.  They didn’t know it’s content yet, but that soon followed.

However on the left wing my iLhF got out wide and with the help

Ignoring the endangered flanks the Armenians charge
in - to their almost immediate destruction.

of a mis-judgement by Nash beat up the enemy iLhF and Nash had to send some rCvS over to plug gaps.  The Armenians were engaged and while they punched a hole in the cataphracts the return charge by the Parthians saw their general destroyed, some knights and with the light horse casualties from wider out they went straight to a ‘shattered’ command.  The only challenge left out on that wing was three isolated rCvS which were encircled individually by my iLhF but only two of them were actually destroyed (more on that later).

It was a pleasant surprise that Nash and Bob were more worried about activating the unreliable ally than just charging in and destroying my line, ally and all.  I think with the matchup (and maybe a few more PiPs) if they had simply charged straight ahead it would have been a very short game.  The shattering of the Armenians brought the Commagene ally back into the game but apart from their rKnX general and his companion they didn’t do anything of note beyond just being a mildly threatening presence.

On the right wing, Bob was playing two Sassanid commands. 

The slow fight over the misshaped hill.

He avoided the fort along with my cataphracts that appeared from ambush which he shielded all of them off with hordes and concentrated on picking a hole through my line with his iCvS.  He killed my iLhF, my KnX generals killed his iCvS in a game of manoeuvre in a tight space and progress was slow for both sides as we sort the advantage and the hard flank options to strike the decisive blow.  Eventually my command broke but the enemy had become fragile in the process.  It would have been faster if either of us had enjoyed even average PiPs.

The main Parthian cataphract line hit the Sassanid line of KnX and CvS with overlaps to the left facing an open space into the enemy rear and killed a couple more CvS but as expected the KnX on KnX bogged down to a slogging match.  A(nother) PiP shortage saw Whatagases alone push forward past the Sassanid line looking to catch the enemy CinC (as iCvS) in his next bound. 

After the second PiP score of 1 in sequence the Sassanid CinC didn’t do much although Bob sent an elephant marching behind the line from one of his commands to protect the CinC.  Then in my bound saw insufficient PiPs again to finish the job BUT I also had a massive ‘idiot’ moment and using the CinC’s free PiP pushed Whatagases further forward to again be a threat to the enemy rear AND completely missed that I had left his rear exposed to a lone Sassanid cataphract facing in the opposite direction.  I don’t know how I missed such an obvious and basic error.  In this bound we needed to kill a hard flanked iCvS with iLhF to win the game (factors +2 vs +2) – we drew (with a pair of 1s).

So the Sassanids have enough PiPs this time to take the offered rear.  Combat was +2 vs +3 against me so given Whatagases the InDestructable’s long history of escaping such moments this wasn’t so disastrously bad odds.  They also attacked and hard flanked a couple of other cataphracts.  And we still had the even odd on the iCvS which would break the Sassanids anyway.

The dice, death and removal of
the long lived
Whatagases the Indestructable.

Whatagases diced at 3 vs 5 so exited history!! We had other loses that may break the Parthians (I was unsure and needed to confirm the maths) and so the last dice was the iCvS fight at +2 vs +2 from the last bound.  Mutual destruction was on the cards.  


The dice rolled ....... and came up with the same 1 – 1 as the last round!!  Draw!! 

A Deja Vu Moment.
Identical to the last bound.  Two game 
winning rolls missed.

Quick maths check and it was a broken Parthian army – game over, and the fourth change of King of Kings in as many battles.

A frustrating game in so many ways, and from the starting positions I should have been destroyed but for the surprising Sassanid reluctance to actually charge on in.  By daringly attacking on one wing and exploiting the odd error of judgement I very unexpectedly (and cheekily) came within a dice role (twice) of winning the game.  But in the end it wasn’t to be.  Losing Whatagases himself after such a long run of victories, and defeats, was just another low point.

Next game (in 10-14 days time we hope) is Bob’s Kushans invading Nash’s Sassanids with Wayne subgeneraling.  We are all down to one life left so one of either Bob or Nash will exit the mini pseudo-campaign by the end of the next game.

The Battle Of Wayinzfallus - or 'The Parthians Have Trouble Keeping It Up'

The Battle Of Wayinzfalus (Somewhere on the banks of the Euphrates)

The magnificent Sassanian leader, Nashur III (all hail him in his magnificence!), led his force along the Euphrates River to reclaim his kingship from the pretender Whatsisgases The Decrepit. Vast his horde was, filled with rank upon rank of loyal nobles, fully armoured and equipped with their levy in support. The full array of Persian power was called upon this day, with the valiant Armenians in support. (The Parthians had their usual assortment of riff-raff and peasants.)

Being the cowardly scum that we know them to be, we had anticipated the Parthian strategy, and once again they had retreated to the (imaginary) sanctuary of another hill fort. This one was known locally by the name of the hill from which it dominated (sniggers) the surrounding orchards. The hill (due to its unusual shape?) was known as ‘Wayinzfallus’ – a name that will forever strike fear into the man and maid alike, for it was on this day that the impotence of Parthia was proven without doubt. Wayinzfallus was slippery with the blood of many an agonized Parthian!

The Parthians, in their predictable manner, deployed their farce…force in a thin line of battle with their horse archers on the flanks, cataphracts in the middle, and their Commagene ally with his bow and blades of inferior repute holding the very centre. The illustrious Persian killing machine then revealed the true quality (read: quantity) of its host. The levy to the left, Asavaran cavalry and elephants alongside the cataphracts in the middle, and the speedy Armenian knights and horse archers to the right.

Pic: Nashur III & Bobzarus exhibiting the ancient Persian traditional art of synchronise deploying.

Upon sight of the full array of Persia, there was a great uproar from the Parthian lines. At first we thought it war drums. In fact, it was the sound of armoured knees knocking together and officers encouraging, nay – forcing their troops to stand and fight! With that much piss on the floor we though the Commagene ally had deployed in a marsh!!

Pic: The opening deployment, with Wayne’s odd shaped hill on the right.

And thus, battle was begun – well for everyone except the Commagene ally who decided to show his lack of courage – or was it a lack of confidence in the infamous Whatsisgases? (unreliable ally)

The opening of hostilities saw the Parthians advancing their horse archers to capitalise on their greater numbers against the Armenians. The middle stood and quivered, whilst on the opposite flank a number of Parthian men made a show of mounting Wayinzfalus and jumping up and down in a strange manner that reminded us of the Greeks.

Unperturbed, the pride of Persia advanced. On our left, the honourable general Bobzarus, tempted by the excitement on Wayinzfalus, advanced to contact the light horse, reaching around to hit them in the flank and the front. Our middle rode on towards the Commagene cowards, whilst our right pushed forwards. This was our first mistake, as we over stretched ourselves and the dastardly Parthian light horse managed to engage us with flanks exposed.

Above: Parthian LH make a mess of the Armenians

The Armenian nobles exacting revenge and taking out 2 Kn x  from separate commands 

The battle progressed with all the action on the flanks. On our left, Bobzarus deftly took Wayinzfalus in his firm hand, with some wrenching back and forth, we have to admit. But in the end his firm grip proved enough to bring the action to a swift climax. On our right, the Parthians had bloodied the Armenians, but the nobles contacted the Parthian cataphracts, making some holes in their thin line. Alas, it was not to last. The Parthians countered and rode the Armenians down. Surprisingly, Whatsisgases The Decrepit was in the action and managed to even get into a fight – strongly supported by his aid de camp, Zimmer.  The middle had ground to a halt. The cataphracts had become too cautious, holding back to avoid activating the Commagenes – our second mistake.

Dead Kns on both sides but the Armenian general died, shattering his command as they were already weakened from losing LH. 

Whatsigases The Decrepit carrying the day! He had it in a little tartan bag attached to the front of his horse's barding) 

With the Armenians shattered, Commagene, who had just turned his back on the battle, decided to come back – a fatal error on his part! However, the Parthain cataphracts were in amongst our cavalry and doing some harm. Bobzarus, following directions from Nashur III (all hail him in his magnificence!), swiftly and deftly moved an elephant across to threaten the Parthian general. At this time Commagene had gotten quite brave, lustily and with great desire mounting Wayinzfalus. He sat astride the very tip of Wayinzfalus, defying all comers! A desperate move which could have gone both ways – much like the Parthians!

Whilst perched upon Wayinzfalus, the Commagene general was mobbed by the Persian hero Bobzarus. Once more taking the hilt and shouting, ‘Wayinzfalus is mine!’ he rode on to it, riding down the enemy before him. This left a broken sub general’s command routing from the eruptions of Wayinzfalus, and an allied command with no leader. However, the other flank was a different story.

Whatsisgases had pushed forward through the Persian cavalry, exposing their rears – a place we all know he likes to be! On the far right, the Parthian light horse were weakened but not yet disheartened, whilst the Persians we disheartened and very close to breaking!

Our heroic Asavaran were surrounded by Parthian light horse. Nashur III (all hail him in his magnificence!) and his cataphracts were stalled (two 1s for pips) and in danger of being outflanked. It was do or die!
The Asavaran fought like demons to hold off the Parthian lights. Whatsisgases the Decrepit, carried forward by the weight of his colostomy bag, could not control his advance (or was it, like we had seen so many times before, his attempt to reach the safety of a table edge?) and found his own rear terribly exposed – a sight that will, on dark lonely nights, haunt the survivors of this battle until the day they die.

Pic: Whatsisgases’ fateful manoeuvre. 

Tempted by the gift offered to us (beware Greeks bearing gifts and well let’s face it these Parthians are just as deviant!), we took our chance and leaped up on it. Nashur (all hail him in his magnificence!) himself, joined the fray, and Bobzarus continued to harry the Commagenes. It was down to this: the Asavaran, flanked by light horse must survive; the Commagenes must be broken; and Whatsisgases the Decrepit must take it right up his…

Well, I’m sure you can see how justice was done. Good prevailed over evil. Nashur III (all hail him in his magnificence!) regained his rightful throne, peace and prosperity reigns, and the world is free to enjoy feline delights and fine floor coverings…
…but what happened to Bobzarus? Well, he was last seen happily bouncing along as he rode up and down Wayinzfalus!

Pic: Whatsisgases’ The Deceased!

Postscript:
It has to be said that other that the initial planning and deployment, I (Nash) did not play the best of games. Other than spotting a chance for Bob to get his elephant stuck in, most of the hard work was done by Bob. Wayne played very well for the most part but the dice were often against him at crucial times in the game. That could also be said of my dice, but I think it proved more frustrating for Wayne as he was clearly out-playing me on my flank. 
On my flank, there were two  real turning points in the game at the beginning and at the end, whilst Bob’s flank was a well fought battle for dominance of the hill, eventually won by skill and weight of numbers – the ally being unable to support that flank being most telling. On my side, the first real error was my own error. Getting out manoeuvred by the LH in the first turns effectively lost that flank. I was maybe fortunate that it was early on and was taking time to be decisive. My other mistake was not getting stuck in against his BDs with my KNs – that should have been the deciding turning point…however, it wasn’t. Wayne’s only big mistake of the game was the one that decided it in the end, It was unfortunate that because of frustration (and maybe fatigue by this point as we were all knackered) he tried too hard to get onto the rear of the Knx with 
his general without really thinking it through. Lucky me! 
Overall, it was a tense game, hard fought and down to the wire again! 
Well played Wayne and Bob!!

"The Gods Dislike Cunning Buggers" *

* = Phil Barker (Rules Author & Insightful Icon of the Hobby) #160789 DBMMList 21/07/2014.

“I have no plan, least of all a cunning one, so I expect to be favoured by both the gods and the dice. Also to [be] absolutely sure of victory I'm going to abstain from all forms of buggery over the next two days”.

Bobu Deva (aka Bob) by email to the BKK DBMMers 30/07/2014.

Thereafter the conversation deteriorated and thus can’t be printed on these pages.  The poor taste continued verbally all through game night as well.  J

Whatagases the Indestructible was returning to reclaim the King of Kings status taken by the deceased Nashur II of Persia and then lost to Bobu Deva by his infant son Nashur III but I only had a vaguely cunning idea.  Previously Bob had used a foot heavy version of the army for which I didn’t have a ready answer (having won previously through Bob’s lack of PiPs, thus ignoring his foot troops and his commander falling off his elephant) so I looked for a blade option.  Nash was playing as my sub-commander and as he has Romans, I hired the Marian Roman allies to be a small but highly mobile command to move to wherever they could do the most harm.  Dangerously I added a second ally of mostly bowmen, with a cataphract command group, to add overall army bulk.

Game night arrived a day earlier than originally booked (due to a late class cancellation#) so importantly, Bob lost a whole day of abstinence.  The table wasn’t much, we had an oasis on our side and Bob had a couple of long gentle hills to hide ambushes behind while there was a scrubby patch centrally just on Bob’s side that we could run the Romans into to avoid fighting cataphracts in the open.

Bob’s purity came into play as we overrdiced as invaders and we had to deploy first which upset the plan a bit.  Then Bob deploys and we find he’s left the majority of the foot troops behind.  A superior light horse Chionite ally faced off against our,albeit larger, fast light horse command.  The Chionites appeared in our favourite 16ME (general+10Lh+Baggage) formation but had the advantage of superior against fast horsemen and it wasn’t a fight I wanted Nash to engage in.

Our Romans rushed forward into the scrub to annoy and harass the enemy from a safe(ish) position.  On the right I had an unreliable bow based ally but still went off to scout out the potential ambush positions while the massed cataphracts started an across table manoeuvre to eventually engage the Chionites. 

Nash couldn’t resist harassing the Chionites with his better numbers despite my warnings of bodily mutilations for disobedient sub-commanders and tried to semi-encircle them by running onto a hill from where he might be able to threaten their rear. 

That's an ambush!!  Ouch, here comes superior on
fast graded troops.

At this point we discovered Bob was lying about the lack of cunning ideas!! **  Hidden behind the hill were a further eight Chionites who with plenty of PiPs charged over the crest and hit the fast Parthian horse front and flank.  We had been cleverly deceived and caught totally unawares!!  Well done Bob!!.  (Nash’s threatened bodily damage was upgraded to execution!!)

Bob also threw in two other commands of fast light horse on each side of the roman occupied scrub to put pressure on our position and PiPs allocations.  We were in serious trouble.

The PiPs we had to use were low although the combat dice weren’t and the damage we received was less than the odds dictated.  With this we saw the beginnings of Phil’s wisdom coming through – Bob’s combat dice were lower, as predicted, for using a cunningly devised and deviously hidden oversized Chionite command.

On the right I had five light horse scouting out the other possible ambush positions and they had ended up in the corner of the table on Bob’s side

Bob looks to threaten in all sectors of the table.
We felt this was already game over.

once he’d cut off their option to get around into the enemy rear but a lack of PiPs had seen them remain stationary (I’d wanted to withdraw them from a fight they couldn’t win) while Bob faced them off with six light horse.  Bob was musing about charging in using the one overlap, my F(ast) rating in the first bound of combat and the impending recoil back onto the table edge disadvantage to destroy me.  Nash was actually encouraging him while I was trying to signal Nash to be quiet and threaten him with even more drastic measures.

Bob charged and Nash was upgraded to double execution of his corpse.  So the first combat in the light horse lottery was 1-2 against me due to the overlap – I won.  Bob tried the other end and died!!  On the third combat I recoiled then won the last two.  No losses and I was so relieved.

Elsewhere the cataphracts had caught a few of the Kushan light horse and while Nash’s light horse command (with three cataphracts) disheartened, we managed between us to kill enough enemy in one bound to bring the unreliable Eylamians into the fight, not that they did anything useful before the battles end.

Romans attacked front, left and rear.

Nash’s Parthian light horse command did some damage to the Kushan light horse before breaking at which point Bob lost most of the effective control of the impetuous Chionites who were really too big a command to regroup.  However the Kushans sent elephants, cataphacts and supports into the scrub after the Romans and caught some in the open – the Romans disheartened after two bounds.

Back to the light horse lottery on our right.  In my return bound I engaged all the remaining Kushan light horse except the one that had formed the original overlap.  They all died!!  They died to overlaps and horrid combat dice from Bob – on the last roll, a 6-1, I had to apologise to Bob for the atypical run of numbers. 

From outnumbered & outflanked to undamaged.
Embarrassingly Hot Dice.

The Gods had spoken again!!  They said “oversize Chioite commands in ambush are just too cunning”. ***

Suddenly the Kushan flank was open and their cataphracts exposed.  In our next bound we charged on in and with our cataphracts closing from the front cornered the Kushans with potential fights to our advantage.  In the next bound the Kushans broke the Romans but lost a cataphract to hard flanking light horse, which broke a command which had a double knock-on effect and two other commands broke in sequence.  Battle over with Bobu Deva hiding in the scrub among the dead Romans (from where he escaped to fight another day) while Whatagases was also lurking near a table edge (albeit Bob’s rear edge) ready to slip away as we didn’t realise how close the Kushan were to breaking.

Final Positions - An unexpected outcome from an equally unexpectedly sudden finish.

Nash and I were caught unawares, just like with the ambush, by the breaking of Bob’s army and our victory.  I was looking at our own numbers (42% casualties – all from Nash’s commands) as well because I was in fear of our own position, while Bob checked and confirmed that game was finished.

My final comment would be that this was a scrappy game, lacking some of the tenseness we usually enjoy in almost all our games.  Bob had a cunning, well executed plan and I felt a bit [okay, only a little bit  :-) ] sorry for him when the dice definitely skewed in our direction.  

{Next Game:-  Nashur III of Persia, on school holidays, will make a final invasion attempt to topple the recently returned Whatagases the Indestructible of Pathia & all the civilised world.

** =  We didn’t dare ask about the possibly dishonesty involved in his claimed abstinence.

*** =  They didn’t mention abstinence and/or purity.

# = We prefer Wednesday or Thursday, finding the heavy work day after a late Friday night to damaging, but ever changing schedules sometime prevent all of us being available at the same time on the best nights.