Having won the initiative, Dave's army advanced rapidly, but stayed just out of shooting range of my massed bowmen.
In my turn I advanced so that I was just inside shooting range and loosed some volleys off - I did inflict some damage, but not as much as I'd have liked.
Unfortunately, being just inside shooting range meant that I was also inside charging range of the Persian cavalry and scythed chariots on my left wing and centre.
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| "Errmm aren't we meant to win dramatically against light-medium bowmen in the open?" |
Meanwhile, my right wing archers were teeing up to get slaughtered by cavalry, swordsmen and an elephant...
I didn't have many troops not engaged in melee for my turn, so not much movement. However, I managed to destroy the scythed chariots (sadly not worth any attrition points) and do some more damage to the cavalry with the general. But one element of archers got wiped out.
On my left wing, the archers had killed off the light horse who had tried to sneak around the flank and were now switching their efforts to the light horse behind the cavalry. Yup, the cavalry who were getting beaten up by bowmen in the open. Actually, I forgot to say that the two units on the right (with white kilts) are elite medium foot swordsmen.
Over to the right wing where Dave's swordsmen and elephant had charged and wiped out a whole bunch of my bowmen.
In the centre he had disengaged his battered cavalry - which meant I couldn't shoot at them this turn.
Back to the left wing where one of his cavalry units had finally broken a unit of elite swordsmen.
On the right wing, I'd lost another unit of bowmen, but some elite swordsmen had hit some severely hurt cavalry in the flank.
On the left, some javelinmen had finally got into position to join the combat with the cavalry, sounding the deathknell to the end unit.
Sadly not quite in time as I'd lost enough units in this turn to break my army.
I'd lost 32 points from a 28 break-point army; Dave had lost 20 from 25.
Thursday's game was against Clive's host of Carthage. I lost spectacularly - 36 points from 28 vs 4 from 24. It didn't help that I'd lost the initiative and Clive decided to defend in "plains", that the only piece of terrain on my half of the table was a plantation right on the left edge, that I stupidly didn't consider that Clive might send his cavalry command on a flank march to come in on my right, that there were no troops facing my left wing so they would have to do a long march to get anywhere useful, that I had really awful dice all night and that Clive's flank march came in on his second turn, leaving me with no time to redeploy to deal with it. oh well, such is life...
Anyway, tomorrow they are facing andy F's Hebrews - hopefully I'll have luckier dice.