Enyalios!

DBx Bases: 48 + 7
15mm Spears: 128
DBA Corps: 1
Saga Points: 6
W/D/L: 1/0/4

So, another weekend at the club, another three games with the Athenians. But, once again, they were opponents out of time – perhaps after their last encounter, the Greeks retreated to their ships and set off again, only to once again get waylaid onto some weird continent that they certainly didn’t recognise – I think either Chronos or Eris were playing some weird joke on them…

Game 3

My first opponent was a II/48 Mithridatic army (don’t ask me – best I can tell, its some successor to a Macedonian successor…) – more pikes and some cavalry.

I managed to spread my line out as planned, and eventually the lines clashed, going up against light troops and Auxilla on the left, whilst a detachment clashed with the cavalry on the right.

The light cavalry were quickly forced to flee, but a series of bad rolls meant that I wasn’t able to get the kills I needed – my opponent remarked that his general was very lucky in surviving multiple rounds of combat, when he should have died fairly early. Eventually, the Pikes in the centre managed to get the breakthrough, and, with my line in tatters, it ended up as a meat grinder. The score was eventually a  3-4 loss, but it could have gone either way, in reality.

Game 4

My opponent switched to a II/23a Pre-Islamic Arab army, which meant I was going to face Blades as the main force – goody.

For this game, I managed to become the defender, and, instead of the usual two ploughs you can get for compulsary Arable terrain, I decided to get a City Built Up Area instead – the initial plan was to use it for a camp, and try somthing a little different.

It was actually quite a novel change, as we had to read up on the rules for BUAs as my club doesn’t seem to use them that much. My opponent decided to put the BUA back near his board edge, and I decided not to garrison it. And that proved to be a major mistake.

After I spread out my line, my opponent was having some issues with his broken force using up his PIPs faster than he would have liked. Because of this my spears were able to quickly outflank the blades and they found themselves with their backs literally to the BUA’s walls, and losing combats quickly.

Not that that meant I was winning everything – on the left, a unit of Psiloi and Light Camels clashed and proceeded to fluff the combat completely, and the camels’ accompanying Light Horse eventually managed to maneuver away, race through and eventually sack my camp.

But with the blades fighting for their lives, the spears outflanking them took a toll – first their supporting bows were cut down, and then the blades eventually succumbed as well. The result was a 4-2 victory for me.

My opponent commented later that he probably should have tried to storm the city, although with a base +6 modifier for the denizens, I don’t know how that would have worked out in the long run…

Game 5

After lunch, my opponent and I agreed to play the game again with a more “traditional” game board, given that the split in the Arab forces caused a major disadvantage for them. Hopefully, this revised game would provide somthing a bit more familiar for us.

Not that it mattered much, as I completely fluffed my deployment. I had a forest in my deployment zone, and it was far enough forward that I couldn’t deploy my line outside of it – and this really had me going for the first two bounds as all my PIPs were spent trying to get my troops out of the woods.

And when the Arabs hit, their point of attack was directly on this weakness in my line – you see, Spear rely heavily on being able to overlap their opponent, not only to reduce the enemy modifier, but also to create a support modifier for themselves…and this support modifier only applies in open ground…as well as spears taking a negative modifier whilst in forests. My opponent was seriously punishing me for this mistake, and it was over a few bounds later. A 1-4 loss.