AAR: Sarmatians vs Early Successor

Another game against Alan, this time against his Early Successor army with the same Sarmatian list I used against Jerry. For this game we agreed to play on a 5' x 4' table. I must apologise for the quality of the photos - the table was in a dimly lit spot and Alan kept blocking the light so I had to snatch shots quickly (hence the camera shake. Believe me, the pics I've omitted are even worse).

My main force - most of my lancers flanked by half my shooty cavalry on my right wing with the Scythian light horse forming the centre. Their job would be to delay, harass and maybe break up the lines of his pike phalanx.

My left wing was over at the edge with the Sarmatian light horse, the 4th lancer unit and the other half of my shooty cavalry. The plan was to drive through the gap between two areas of brush and come onto Alan's flank and rear. Alan had other ideas though, and sent his medium foot supported by light horse and some cavalry to occupy the terrain and threaten my flanks.

My right and centre are going to plan. The lancers and shooty cavalry are starting to get into position to turn the flank of his phalanx, whilst the Scythians have disrupted their line a bit and are no holding off his skirmishers and smellyphants.

Back on my left wing, the light horse have broken Alan's light horse and my left-hand shooty cavalry have broken his lancers. However, his medium foot are in position to charge my right-hand shooty cavalry in the rear....

....as this picture demonstrates quite nicely!

Heading back to my right wing, things didn't quite go to plan, and I've lost a unit of lancers to his Elite pikemen. Mind you, I've got cavalry who could potentially get into position to flank charge his pikemen, which would help.

Unfortunately the landlord called time before I could play my last turn. I was nicely set up here to charge the fragged medium foot in the rear (which would automatically break them) while my other shooty cav and lancers would charge those two units of medium foot, who are "in the open" with one of them "in column".

However, I didn't get to play that turn, so I only managed a narrow victory having broken 2 and fragmented 1 of Alan's units, whilst only 1 of mine was broken.

What I could have done better:

1. Run my lancers hard up the right edge of the table in column before turning them to come in on the flank and rear of the phalanx. The Sarmatian light horse and shooty cav should be used to screen them and prevent the phalanx turning/wheeling to meet the lancer threat.
2. Pick an army where the shooty cavalry are Bow rather than Bow*
3. I should have run the Scythians up on the left wing, through the central block of brush terrain.

Finished: Korean Kwang Gun Foot

I actually did manage to finish these yesterday, but as the AAR was scheduled I decided to post them tonight.

These complete my Kwang Gun foot. So, here are some pics:

These archers are for swapping with the crossbowmen in two of the units I've previously painted.

The Orange foot with crossbows in the rear rank.

The White foot with bows in the rear rank.

The Yellow foot with crossbows in the rear rank.

Close up of the Yellow foot command group.


And a pic of all my Korean foot so far:

I have started work on the Guard foot, but as I'm back at work now I don't expect to finish them until the weekend.

AAR: Sarmatians vs Early Imperial Romans (800 points)

Jerry's Romans first faced my Sarmatians about 18 months ago. That game was 650 points and his Romans back then were Mid Republican; my meatheads were Iazyges. This rematch was Early Imperial Romans against Rhoxolani. Could I do better than a narrow win this time?

My army consisted of:

FC + 2 x TC
1 x 4 Light Horse (Average, Unprotected, Bow Sword)
4 x 4 Lancers (Superior, Armoured, Lancer/Sword)
4 x 4 Other Cavalry (Superior, Protected, Bow*, Light Spear/Sword)
Scythian Allies -
FC
3 x 4 Light Horse (Average, Unprotected, Bow, Sword)

Jerry's Romans consisted of a bunch of Legion, some medium foot auxiliaries, a few cavalry and some useless skirmishers.

As you can see from our deployments, the decision to play on a 6' x 4' table was vindicated!

"Meatheads - prepare to advance"

On my right flank are the Scythians. My plan was to use these to distract (and maybe break up) Jerry's line of Roman legions. My meatheads were aiming to edge across onto the Roman right flank, supported by some of the shooty cavalry.

Things look to be going to plan, with Jerry voluntarily breaking up the legionary line in response to taunts from the Scythians. The Sarmatian light horse charged and caught the evading light foot; Jerry's light horse were being variously charged and shot at by my shooty cavalry on my left flank.

One of Jerry's legionary units has charged the Scythians, mainly to allow his lancer cavalry to join the scrummage against my lancers. Of course, this left the legionaries rather isolated and surrounded by skirmishing light horse.

At the top of the picture you can see the Roman cavalry moving into position to prevent my carefully positioned flank charge against the legions. Oh well!

A couple of turns later....

Remember that legion which charged the Scythians? See that unit just up and right from the centre spot? Same one, broken by massed shooting and a flank charge! There do seem to be a lot of "Broken" markers and missing units on the Roman side....

And the Romans are routed! In the last melee phase I managed to break 2 more units to win 22:3 - a much better result than last time.

This game did teach me two things - Protected Bow* cavalry aren't much cop and I need to work a bit more on light horse positioning.

Sunday Update

It seems that I've got my mojo back for painting and blogging. Thank goodness for that!

AARs

I wrote AARs for the three games of FoG on Friday evening, and the remaining two are scheduled to post tomorrow and Wednesday.

Painting

I haven't got quite as far as I'd hoped with the Koreans, but they're almost complete now. All that's left to do is the metalwork, Klear/ink, matt varnish and flocking. I might be able to get them done tomorrow, but it's more likely that they'll be finished on Tuesday.

Here are a couple of pics that I've just taken of them:

As there aren't many Koreans left to do now, I'd better crack on with prepping some figures. I think it will have to be the Pirates next

Aaaarrrggghhhh!

AAR: Swiss vs 100YW English

This game was just over 3 weeks ago, so some details are a bit sketchy in my mind. We'd agreed to play 800 points on a 5 foot wide table. With hindsight, I wish we'd gone for 3 foot deep as well, rather than 4 foot.

The circle of cloth represents the extent of a maximum size (16 inch diameter) steep hill, with the hill piece representing the location of the ridge. It was slap bang in the middle of my half of the table. The black bit in the bottom right corner of the picture is a piece of "unpassable terrain". These two pieces really made my deployment awkward. I opted for a holding force on my right flank, with the main force on my left, which would (in theory) sweep round the flank and rear of the English. My skirmishers were to advance up the hill and delay the enemy.

Pikes to the right of me....

Pikes to the left....

Skirmishers in the middle (with you).

Alan's longbowmen charged my light foot. One of them got caught and lost the impact, dropping to fragmented.

"Okay lads, wheel to the right and we'll soon be able to flank the much faster moving longbowmen (who aren't affected by the terrain)"

I've just realised that this is the one pic where you can see the light horse on my left flank. At the end of the game I was in position to charge Alan's light foot and light horse with my light horse, which would have seen them evade off the table (unfortunately we ran out of time before I could put that plan into effect).

How on earth can 4 bases of fragmented light foot win the melee against a 6-base BG of medium foot longbowmen with swords?

Whoops! I forgot I was meant to be refusing my right flank pikes and kept advancing towards the English.

After four (or was it five) rounds of combat, those crossbowmen are still holding up the medium foot!

"Oooh, and just HOW MANY rounds did it take you English to kill one base?"

Having completely messed up the plan, there was nothing for it but to charge in with the 12-base pike unit. Hopefully they'll hold up Alan's foot long enough for my main pike force to come around the flank.

After 6 (or 7?) rounds of combat, the crossbowmen finally broke.

"Right lads, with our rate of movement I make it about another 4 turns until we can charge the English flank. Our boys can hold on that long!"

"Errmmm, maybe they can't...."

As it was approaching 10.50, we called it a night. I'd lost badly with 4 BGs broken and having not caused any damage to the English.

Admit it - you were worried, weren't you?

Well, that's the longest break from posting I think I've ever taken. Don't worry, it had nothing to do with me hating you all (I don't, before anyone asks!) nor that I didn't have anything to post (I did have some stuff, as you'll see over the next couple of days). It was simply down to me not feeling like posting. It seems that the mini-"heatwave" we had a few weeks ago had messed up my sleep patterns and I was really, really tired. Still, things seem to be better now.

So, what have I been up to since my last post?

Gaming - 3 games of FoG:AM at the club  giving 1 bad loss, 1 massive win and 1 close win (if we'd been able to play another turn, I think I'd have managed another massive win but the manager wanted to close the pub!). Oh, and I've been persuaded to join the club's FoG:AM team at Derby World Wargames Tournament at the end of September. I'll be in the early biblical era pool (lots of medium foot and chariots, hardly any cavalry) - I've just got to decide which army, come up with a list and borrow figures from one of the others.

Reading - finished my first read of Henry's "The Wargaming Compendium"; read "Achtung, Shweinehund!" and a bunch of Ospreys.

Painting - I hadn't managed to get any done over the past couple of weeks as I was too drained to contemplate it. However, I've been on leave this week and have managed to get some done. To get back into the swing of things I've been working on my Koreans. I've painted the basing texture on all the foot and the artillery and have spent the past few days working on the remaining Kwang Gun foot (36 heavy weapon, 24 crossbow, 36 bow). I should be able to finish painting these over the weekend and may even get them flocked if things go well. That will leave me (for now) with just 4 bases of light artillery and the Guard foot (24 "To Bang" heavy weapon foot and 24 "Tae Gak" crossbowmen) to do....


.... until, that is, I get some more stuff to add.

As no post is truly complete without a piccy, here's one of the Koreans on the workbench: