Surrounded

So week three of the campaign, and having mugged Nash last week, I was now King of the Table and had to defend my position against Wayne and his Nabateans. Having defeated them earlier in week one, I wasn't expecting too much trouble, and was probably a little overconfident.

 I did however, prepare one little surprise for him, rebasing some models that I'd painted 30 years ago and never played with. I was thus able to field three elements of artillery O. Now if you've read the previous posts about this campaign, you'll know that one of Wayne's hobbies is building walls (TF) across battlefields, and if you're familiar with the finer details of the purple tome, you'll know that not only do artillery shoot at bows with a factor of 4 vs 2, but temporary fortifications don't count against them. I wasn't sure if Wayne knew the last point or not, but was looking forward to him finding out.

As per my right as reigning King, I chose to defend. Since Wayne had chosen one of the two available sand dune terrain pieces, I elected to use a 2 FE dune which fell on the left round about the center line. A BUA and a rocky hill protected my right flank, and a difficult hill was in the middle of my deployment area on the back edge. Wayne's left flank was protected by another dune a little way in from the edge.

Now in the previous game, Wayne had deployed a large light horse command, which could present some dangers, and my left flank was a little open. OTOH I didn't want to sit on the defensive, as I wanted to logorate his bows with my artillery. Therefore I angled my pike a block a little, so that it could push out into the center, but keeping the gap between it and the rear hill a reasonable size that the the cavalry command to the left could protect. The artillery were on the right of the pikes, and the rightmost command would protect the right, and use its peltasts to clear the dune protecting Wayne's left flank.

Position after first turn

Bows out, psiloi in

Now in the past Wayne has struggled to put together an Aramean list that suits his style, but this time he'd come up with something that might just work. Gone was the massive bow line and wall protected it, this time what appeared on table was a few bow behind a short wall anchored to the dunes on his right, and many of the compulsory bow elements in the army had been converted to psiloi (O), a large swarm of which occupied the center of the table. More light troops and some camels were in the dune, and on the right of his line were some Ps(S) and Bow(I). There were a few cavalry and light horse in the center too, but clearly a lot of troops were missing.

I should probably have stuck to my plan of anchoring the left of my line on the hill, but I favour an agressive approach to the game, so decided to push forward quickly and try to defeat the one table forces before the expected flank march arrived. I wanted to be able to move the artillery into position so gave the middle command of pikes and artillery the middle pip dice, the command on the right took the high one so that it could sweep the dunes, and the flank guard on the left took the low one. The latter was to cause problems later.

Skythian flank march arrives

The initial moves then saw me push forward into the center with the pikes and artillery, and push forward aggressive on the right with my peltasts with a few cavalry in support. Wayne moved his light horse across to fight with the peltasts, and I managed to bag a cavalry with my bolt shooters. The big surprise was that Wayne's flank march rolled a six* on the second turn, and he announced that it would arrive on my right, rather than the more open left

Skythians advance

The flank march turned out to be a Skythian ally (obviously under new management after the demise of their general last week), comprising a a bunch of light horse and a couple of noble knights. I hurriedly turned around my own column of knights from the right command to act as a fire brigade, and hopefully keep the Skythians contained behind the hill until a enough force could be summoned to deal with them properly. Meanwhile the Skythian knights advanced towards the baggage (subsequently killing half of it), and the light horse formed into a long column snaking around the hill, with their general in the rear.

Skythains flee

Now in my experience, Skythian ally commands seldom fare well**, and so it was to prove as I unleashed cheesy move of the year, hitting the front of the light horse column with a knight, and forcing the leading element to flee. This pushed back the whole column forcing the whole thing flee, and resulting in the general at the end fleeing off table and being lost ***. Next bound I was able to flank and kill one the nobles, and that was enough to break the command.

Holy ****

However, my relief was short lived, as Wayne announced the arrival of another flank march on my left. This turned out to be a huge force of 18 horse archers, plus a general. To the three elements of Galatian cavalry mercenaries that I had thrown out as a picket on my left, it must have seemed like a scene from a French Foreign Legion movie as the whole horizon was suddenly filled with hostile cavalry. The tried to flee, but were quickly caught and surrounded. However, they put up spirited rear guard action fighting back to back, and killed several enemy elements before succumbing. This gave me time to throw together some sort of line, using the peltasts from the left command, and some pikes from the center, but the response was hampered by the command on that side having the low pips.

Flank march and response

The leftmost command also contained two elephants, which I could find little use for, so had left at the back so that at least wouldn't be in the way. These were quickly surrounded and dispatched by the onrushing mass, demoralizing the leftmost command. Wayne then moved his light troops from his right wing to attack my left side peltasts hoping to finishing them off quickly. They held on for a while though, allowing reserves from the right to arrive and counter attack killing enough of the flank marchers to demoralize them too.

Open fire!.  All Weapons!

Meanwhile on the right Wayne's light horse had been driven off, allowing my artillery to advance and shoot at the archers behind the wall. The latter, feeling themselves safe, were clearly dismayed by the heavy bolts arriving from afar, with the first two shots being six ones in my favour.

Gap in the line

Madness

It was at this point that I almost made a fatal mistake. With the peltasts and the left part of the phalanx having been send to deal with the flank march, a gap had opened in my line, which Wayne attempted to exploit with his psiloi, placing heavy pressure on the left hand peltasts, who could collapse at any moment. So being short on reserves, I send King Btobemy himself to intervene, and in a moment of stupidity charged him into the long column of psiloi attempting to come through the gap. Now another of the lines of fine print in the purple tome says that if you are a knight wedge element, you must pursue if you win, and since the Egyptian King surrounded by his finest, tend to do quite well against light archers equipped only with a bow and tunic, King Btobemy kept advancing leaving his flanks to be attacked by all manner of scummy commoners. One bad die roll, and his glorious reign would come to an ignoble end. Of course I mounted my own "Saving Private Ryan" effort, but to no avail.

Luckily by now, we had reached the time limit for the game, and King Btobemy remained on his horse. Wayne's pressure had finally broken my

Btobemy lives

leftmost command though, so we had to do some counting up to determine the victor. As it turned out we'd both lost 30%,  but Wayne also had a demoralized command, so I scrapped through seven to six, and retained my grip on Syria.

This was a tough game, and Wayne had a much better battle plan than me, and for the second week in a row I just scraped through, being particularly lucky in seeing of the Skythians so easily. The newly constituted lightweight version of the Nabateans is much more dangerous than before, and could now be a real contender.

Next time, I will be challenged by Anthony and his Parthians. There has been some feverish diplomatic activity with both sides sending large bags of gold (the campaign rules allow you to use your bonus APs to boost your rating with allies) to the Rhoxolani, in an attempt to secure their services, but in the end they elected to keep the cash, and join neither side. Now we both have some time to consider our plans, as unfortunately due to upcoming commitments, we won't be able to fight this game for another three weeks.

* Wayne has notoriously bad luck with flank marches, and is usually happy if they arrive by the end of the next game. Any plan that relies on his flank march not turning up will usually succeed.

** The Skythians were also in action on the side table this week, where thing also went badly for them.

*** I had actually intended to make the whole column flee which would buy me some breathing space, but hadn't reallized this would send the general off table.