Friday 27 November 2009

Chaeronea Refight- Part III

This is our third and final visit to the Chaeronea refight (if you missed part I and II, you might like to read them first).

You'll recall the Romans have pushed forward very aggressively, and have the Pontic's pinned to their baseline.  In my Pontic turn I counterattacked with my heavy units; the two Bronze shields, with their commander Taxiles (just visible on the left of the frame below), and the two units of slave phalanx.  These achieved considerable success and killed several units of legionaries, although suffering serious casualties themselves. 


The Romans, in their turn, pressed forward but the dice gods were less favourableto them. Some Pontic units managed to hang on by a thread, such as the archers (central, below).  If they had been killed, the Roman CinC might have been able to deliver a nasty momentum attack on the unit behind.


Although many of my Pontic units had taken a pasting, I still had the advantage of numbers in terms of units because of the mass of Thureophoroi in my second line (the Pontics outnumbered the Romans several times over at Chaeonea).  I threw these, and my sole unit of heavy cavalry, into the fray.  In a spate of lucky dice rolling I managed to destroy or drive back the Roman units involved attack.


The Romans regrouped (above) into a line, but now look very badly outnumbered!


Recognising how badly they were outnumbered, the Romans fell back towards their reserves...


The Roman Right wing hadn't been engaged (nor the Pontic left).  Ian and Barry regrouped their forces on the right for one last try...


Attacked...


But the dice and their earlier heavy casualties were against them and the Pontics prevailed (they reached the 9 units lost limit we had determined at the start of the battle).

It was a very enjoyable battle, and I hope it gave Barry a good idea of how the rules work!  I'm hoping that we'll be able to get some of our other players together and refight it next week as part of our Roman campaign... if we do I'll make the Romans a little tougher to help counter the Pontic advantage of numbers (perhaps reducing the number of units by 1, but giving each remaining unit 5 hits instead of 4).

4 comments:

Caliban said...

Great stuff, Simon, I've been waiting to see the final outcome. I've just posted a rather sparser battle report of a game in which the inferior quality, larger army, used very similar delaying tactics to your Pontics, albeit with more missile success (Persians against Macedonians). Your photos are very impressive.

Incidentally, which manufacturers are your Marian Romans?

Paul

BigRedBat said...

Hi Paul, yes I read your battle. It seems like Alexander is encountering a few local difficulties!

The camera I use is pretty cheap but idiotproof. Coupled with a decent tripod and free Picassa editing software, it rarely fails.

All the legionaries are Foundry. I have the better part of 500 painted, because I aspire to doing big Roman Civil war battles...

Dogui said...

Wonderful figures, table, and a great game system.

BigRedBat said...

Thanks Dougi!

By way of a postscript, Greg Pitts from the US has given me a very useful map of the suggested deployments for the battle; when we play it next , I'll certainly be moving a few hills about! We had the position of the detatched Pontic LI on the hill, rather wrong.