Phil has been talking about turning his spare room into a wargames room for a while. Goodness knows he has enough to put in it. At least two large car loads of toys, for example, that I shifted to the house for him in the summer (my estate car with all seats folded flat).
He originally proposed putting a table tennis table in there, but when Steve and I balked at carrying it up the stairs he accepted that some Go-Pak style tables would do instead. So he has set up three of those, with a few DBA battlefields and some of his matched armies for us to play with to get the room up and running. Most of the toys are still downstairs, but it's a start, I guess.
For this Tuesday's fun and games Phil & I were joined with Tim & Steve.
For the first game I played Phil, using Nubians (I/3) against Early Libyans (I/7). This is a pair of armies I hadn't seen before, although Phil's had them ages. He will insist on using polystyrene tiles for a game board. Four of them make a 2'x2' table, more or less, and you can clearly see the centre lines and the quarters of terrain deployment. It's a neat idea but I've never liked them, as they are lightweight and prone to movement. This is an extra problem when one of the players has mobility issues. Lucky we don't take any of this too seriously.
The Libyans are a devil of an army to fight. The core is six bases of Fast Hordes (5Hd). As killing these doesn't count to elements lost for victory purposes you have to kill four out of the remaining six bases to win. That means it is a legitimate tactic to hide them out of the way of anything that can kill them until the hordes have mushed up a fair bit of your army. The Nubian core is eight (8!) fast bow, nine with the general, supported by a couple of fast warband and some psiloi.
Added to that the Nubians have a low aggression, so I was defending, allowing Phil to deploy out of the arc of my bows.
That meant that I needed to draw deeply upon my stock of tactical genius, bringing all my skills to bear. In the end, by dint of rolling a fair few sixes when needed, I was able to shoot off most of the hordes before they ripped a hole in my centre and killed three elements, including the one with the general, and came out winner by 4:3.
I was also reminded that another reason I don't like the tiles is that the dice naturally fall in the crevices between them. I've suggested using them the other way up, but Phil likes the texture.
As Tim & Steve were still at it, we moved onto the next board on the table.
This was Thebans (II/5c) against Gauls (II/11). The photo shows the end state of the game, where I have just lost very heavily. I think the effective element count was six lost, as I lost four bases, of which one was 8Sp (counts as two) who was also a general. As I was defender Phil had been able to get his match ups exactly where he wanted them.
I got a bit caught out. I rolled a one for PiPs in the first turn, so we kept the ploughed fields. I had wings that folded out, too, so they were held up. And then the Gauls were upon me, as Phil was using the Wb as Fast not Solid, and I was thrown a bit as they have 4 figures per base. I lost a lot of combats 6:1, hence the loss of units that fight on 5/6/7 to the front against Wb on 3/4, being outscored by 1 in total, and so being quick killed. This game lasted 10 minutes, and I didn't do anything really. The final score was 6:2 - the two Wb bases out of line are just about to be taken off.
Phil offered to swap to something else, but I said I'd do a rematch.
Second time round a few more PiPs let me be a bit more aggressive, and I pressed forwards to pin him back. I reckoned the hoplites couldn't implode for two games in a row. I was still worried about the flanks, as the Gauls have two Cavalry and three Chariots that count as Cv, and the Psiloi are just elements waiting to be lost.
This time the dice were more even. Phil's plan to tempt my cavalry on the right into an ambush by camp followers backfired when I chased them off the board. The double ranked warbands also suffered, and I was able to produce an overlap that got me a quick kill effectively on the right. I was able to delay the destruction of the Psiloi on the left long enough for me to get a 6:4 win.
Much more satisfactory all round for me.
And then it was time for me to pack up and head for home.
I reckon that's the last post before Christmas. There's a big game planned for New Year's Eve-Eve, which hopefully I'll get written up before the close of the year.
Otherwise, Merry Christmas to you all, and a Happy New Year.
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