Tommy's Wargaming blog

 Game between 5 Hegemons and Later Sargonid Assyrians Hammy's opening hand. Better than mine but not by too much. Final casualties of the Chinese. Including an 8 base Di Devastating Charger unit which suffered 9 wounds in 3 shooting rounds from a 6 base Cimmerian Tug. 1 in 19683 chance of happening. Holes have started to appear in both armies. The Cavalry unit on my right had ripped apart 2 Chariot units with a flank charge. Ouch. However, at this point I've killed 2 Tugs and 1 SuG. My revolting and extremely rare first hand.  Initial deployment of the armies. On Monday the 30th of August, I played Hammy again. 5 Hegemons against Later Sargonid Assyrian. The game was very vicious and in truth seemed slightly closer than the score of 6-15 to the Assyrians suggested. At one point, I made a mistake of moving something after Hammy passed early, which allowed him to make crucial movements later on in the turn.  I was outscouted by 40%, and I had elected to invade. I made a sch...

 This is a really bad army, full stop. Yes, there are things you can do to improve it, yes you can make it resilient, but what you can't do is take away its main weakness. Firstly, a Talented CinC, a Competent ally, a Talented Sub and a Competent Sub I believe. 5 6s of Average, Experienced Bows, with Fleet of Foot who are TRIBAL Loose and unprotected.  3 8s of the same but this time they're skilled. 2 9s of Average, TRIBAL Loose Protected Melee Expert only foot. 1 8 of Superior Egyptian Short Spear Melee Expert, Drilled Loose Protected. 1 8 of the same but these are Average non Melee Experts. 1 6 of Poor Unskilled Drilled Loose Unprotected Bows. 2 9s of Poor Skilled Bow Combat Shy Skirmishers and 1 9 of the same but these are Experienced. The main weakness is that 10 of the 16 UGs are Tribal. Absolutely ridiculous to try and manoeuvre, and, as a result, even with the Egyptian ally, the army struggles to get decent matchups. Fleet of Foot means, to an extent, you don't have ...

The Samurai defended in Coastal terrain with a deep water secure flank, only got outscouted by 10%, had a long line of Spearmen mixed with 3 Foot Powerbows and a further 6 of Long Spears anchored to the secure flank. My opponent pushed forward with Flexible Cavalry in Tug formation, and also Cataphracts that were nearly all 2 wide. My shooting was very successful and my opponent charging Cataphracts into Long Spears didn't quite work. He caught one unit of 4 Powerbow with Cataphracts and killed it.  Basically, the Tuyuhun player conceded after the first melee phase. My Spearmen were proving too strong against the Cataphracts and my shooting was deadly against most of his army.  The final score was 15-2 to the Samurai. Fewer pictures than usual because I was so engrossed in the game, sorry.

Before starting the battle report, I should state that most of the comments on the photos are from what I remember to have happened in the game. I believe this was played sometime in January this year or perhaps earlier. My opponent was Hammy. The armies deployed, an uncivilized mob vs disciplined troops. 15 Tugs and 6 Skirmishers in the Slave army. Three ambush markers, why not?  The armies are trundling forward against each other, and as the Slave commander, I have revealed one ambush as fake. The Romans take the hill. The Slaves prepare to attack uphill. They are clearly insane. The battle has been joined. On the Slave left, Cavalry are appearing on the flanks. Somehow the Slaves are surviving and beating the Romans on the hill. I believe I threw the commanders of the Fanatic units into combat at this stage to beat the Romans which were off the hill. 2nd mistake from my point of view, but this time it was costly. Battle is very vicious. Quite a few Roman units are on their last ...

 In this game, my opponent was Steve Stead. It was a seesaw battle definitely. The Samurai won the initial dice roll and defended in Coastal, the result of the terrain phase being that there was only a deep water secure flank on table.  Then came the Scouting, the Samurai got away with only being outscouted by 10%. At the end of deployment, on the Samurai side will be a broken up line of Long Spears intermingled with Skilled Powerbow Infantry. On the Chinese side will be 4 Chariot units on their right, 2 9s of 3 Long Spear and 6 Bow, then 16 Tribal Devastating Chargers, 1 unit behind the other and a unit of Polearms. The Samurai are split up to counter the threats of the Chinese forces and also to take advantage of my mostly Drilled training. Initial shooting was fairly ineffectual, wounding units here and there, and scoring the odd skull. My centre left group of Samurai, made up of a Superior 8 and an Average 8 of Long Spears lunged for the Chinese mixed units. In hindsight, ...

 This was a game against James Hamilton, aka Hammy. I chose the Neo Assyrian army and Hammy chose Nubians. The first event of importance was that the Assyrians invaded after winning the invader defender roll. Then I placed 2 open areas, luckily rolling 2 6s to remove both features that Hammy tried to put down. The end result was a completely bare table, which was part of the Assyrian plan. My Assyrian army outscouted the Nubians and did fairly ok in getting good matchups, mostly Chariots against squishy bows and tough Infantry against Egyptian infantry and Bows. My army was I believe a Competent CinC, a Talented Sub, a Mediocre Sub and a Competent Libyan Egyptian ally. 1 6 of Exceptional Chariots, 1 4 of Superiors, 2 4s of Average Cavalry, 1 4 of Egyptian Chariots, 1 8 of Meshwesh, 2 6s of Superior Assyrian infantry, 1 6 or 8 of Tribal Averages, and 2 8s of Drilled Averages. The Nubians had loads of Bows, an Egyptian ally and some Axemen. The Assyrians did a full scale attack again...

 My opponent was Ian. In this game, I used a very unusual Sassanid army with a Kushan ally to maximise the Cataphracts. My tactic was limit the terrain by invading in Coastal terrain and just have a deep water secure flank. That worked because I won the PBS phase very decisively. The point at which my plan failed was when I got outscouted by 110% ( 3 reds and a green for Ian, 2 greens for me). The net result was, Ian deployed his entire army, barring 2 units, on his left flank, whereas my army was in my left and centre. I did eventually get into combat, after loads of manoeuvring but, it took so long because of the Cataphracts having a slower movement than Ian's Cavalry. My flanks did get exposed and I lost a couple of units, however i killed one of the units that Ian out on his right wing. Eventually (read as, they were able to kill a base, and while they should have broken at Impact, they were instead at half strength post the first impact phase.) Clearly red dice don't alway...