While uploading the photos from my camera, I realised I only took a couple of pics of my game on Monday night. I was playing a 650pt friendly against Simon, my meatheads vs his Pyrrhic army. I'd won the initiative, picking steppes, and was lucky enough with dice rolls to manage to block the awkward terrain pieces. We had some intriguing moments that required us to call in a more experienced player to check that what we were doing was correct.
Here are the 4 pictures I did manage to take:
Deployments
End of Simon's first move
End of my first move
Errr.... forgot to take any more photos!
"But what was the outcome?" you ask. Rather unsurprisingly, my Sarmatians lost. In some respects, it would be better with this size of game (650 pts on a 3' x 4' table) for me to lost the pre-battle initiative and get first move; the downside is that the terrain is likely to be against me. I think this size of table favours mainly-infantry armies with some light horse - there isn't really enough room for cavalry to make use of their speed and manoeuvrability.
I think my Sarmatians may do better on a larger table with a higher points value army, which would allow the possibility of bringing an allied contingent of Scythian/Saka light horse.
I`d be tired of painting that after the 2nd horse or so :-s
ReplyDeleteThen again, I always paint max 4 figures at a time and still suprise myself sometimes at what rate I can churn out an average good enough for the tabletop force :)
Then again, that`s sometimes, usually, half the regiment ends up painted and the rest on the `to do` shelves
I think you're right about that table size Tamsin. You really don't have much room to manouvre there.
ReplyDeleteI think you are right. Cavalry armies need space to carry out their outflanking manoeuvres using their speed and mobility. If you are playing that many points on such a small table it doesn't really give you many options other than straight ahead and against pike/ long spear armed heavy infantry that's not a pleasant thought for your brave cavalryman.
ReplyDeleteYour barded cavalry look like they are going to be very colourful when they are finished
@Tomsche - it's not too bad when you have a system in your head. With this batch I had 39 horses. I knew that I wanted about 1/4 - 1/3 to have metal barding, with the rest being 5-6 different colours. So, the easiest way of achieving that was to do 9 in bronze or steel, leaving 30 for colours. I ended up doing 5 colours, painting every 5th non-metal one in 1 colour, repeating with the next colour. I should prehaps have done the barding before doing the horse colouring - doing it after meant I had to take care at the edges which slowed things down a bit.
ReplyDelete@Kingsleypark - all my Sarmatians are pretty colourful (well, the cavalry anyway, the foot are rather dull coloured) which is as they should be - most of their horse barding was dyed/lacquered horn or leather.
@Lead Legion & Kingsleypark - very little room for manoeuvre and very difficult to concentrate shooting against pike blocks as they have such a narrow frontage.
Cavalry do like to expand and flank, nice painting girl...
ReplyDeleteSarmations are a hard army to play with, especially when coming up against an opponent with that kind of army.
ReplyDeleteDon't I know it Ray - having fought pike-phalanx armies with them a number of times now, they are very tough opponents for any army, let alone a lancer-heavy one. The only way I can manage to win is to break up their block by tempting individual BGs to charge my skirmishers, or to somehow get around to the flanks and rear with my lancers.
ReplyDelete