Saturday 15 April 2023

Thracians vs Middle Imperial Romans - posted by Vince Cholewa, 12 April 2023

Many thanks to Michael Stonyer for a great game of toy soldiers at the Hutt Club on Saturday. Mike used Middle Imperial Romans vs my Thracians – Imperialist oppressors vs the free people of the world! Mike’s Praetorians lived up to their decidedly dubious reputation and I made a numpty mistake that cost me a command. The result, 14-11 in my favour when we timed out after four hours.
Before the game I decided I wanted to play Romans on a billiard table. I use a lowland Thracian army with lots of elements and ME but it would be just impossible to winkle legionaries and auxiliaries out of lots of rough and difficult ground. I invaded and chose small pieces of terrain to try to stop Mike placing his chosen terrain in useful places. It sort of worked but Mike was still able to place two good-sized rough hills, one in each flank, and the compulsory Roman road (the pic of our deployment shows this).
With the terrain placed, my plan was to attack on my left (Mike’s right) with the Thracian king’s command: nobles, inferior knights in wedge; a cloud of peltasts, mostly superior psiloi with a few ordinaries; and a couple of light horse. Here, Mike had to place his rough hill very near the table edge, outside his deployment area. This created space for the nobles and an opportunity for the peltasts to rush at the hill with light horse supporting.
My small command entirely of light horse flank marched on the left to support the attack. Xenophon and his mercenary hoplites and peltasts (all regular, ordinary spear and superior psiloi) were immediately to the king’s right with peltasts to the front and the hoplites held back. My fourth command (lots of peltasts, some of them superior auxiliaries and most of the rest superior psiloi; and a cloud of light horse) would cover the rough hill on my right and exploit the flank if possible. Its Ps(S) peltasts would advance with those of the Greek command to make a skirmisher cloud in the centre to delay and harass the Roman advance as much as possible.
Mike had the Praetorians on his right with cataphracts and light horse behind them. Legionaries were in the centre and a strong force of auxiliaries on his left on the rough hill with light horse and cavalry behind them.
Mike had the first bound and redeployed the Praetorians into the centre in front of the legionaries, making room for his mounted reserve, and the Praetorians advancing towards my mercenary hoplites.
I responded with the king’s command pressing its attack, pushing my cloud of skirmishers forward in the centre, marching the hoplites to my left to be behind the king’s command and able to support it. On my right my peltasts inched forward and my light horse went ahead to keep the outnumbered Roman light horse and cavalry away.
As the game played out the fight on my left got very messy, at times needing many more PIPs than Mike and I had available to exploit gaps, cover flanks and just push forward. Despite the tangle, or because of it, numbers told and the kings’ command was causing casualties and pushing forward. This started to expose the Praetorians to peltasts lurking onto flanks and into gaps, nobles’ dashing charges and the regular hoplites nimbly covering flanks and overlapping.
On my right, disaster! I was able to fight some of the Roman auxiliaries with a much wider frontage of Thracians and was able to get a hard flank to start turning them. Unfortunately, I had not separated the psiloi back rank from my auxiliaries when they attacked. The hard flank combat went well, destroying the Roman auxiliary on the end but in both the next combats my auxiliaries were doubled, taking the psiloi out with them and leaving their general badly exposed. He bravely fought off several downhill rushes and hard flanks but eventually fell, taking his command with him.
Then, the Praetorians broke. The final ignominy being losing an element to superior psiloi (the Praetorians were double overlapped). On my left, the Roman light horse command saw the Praetorians break and they broke too.
By then we had played 12 bounds in four hours and called time. What about my flank march? It arrived at the beginning of my sixth bound, bound 12, and marched on to watch the Roman light horse rout across its front. The Romans had lost 40% of their ME and the Thracians had lost 30%. Both our right flanks had broken, I had three commands left (the king’s very badly mixed up) and two of the four Roman commands were fighting on, one of them being huge, 39ME, and not even disheartened. I would say the advantage was mine (of course I would!) but it would have taken quite a few more bounds to get a result and that was also plenty of time for a possible Roman rally.
An excellent game of toy soldiers. Thank you Mike 😊

https://www.facebook.com/groups/824840264342234/posts/2329645670528345/ 

When one is wargaming one should have fighting t-shirts. This one is Lepidoptera - float like a butterfly, sting like a bee 🦋 🐝

You can see the shape of our deployment here as Mike rolls the dice for the first bound. Graham Starkey is watching .

The Praetorians are still on the Roman right and would redeploy into the centre in front of the legionnaires to make room for the cataphracts and light horse behind them.

Closest to the camera you can see the column of Thracian light horse about to set off to pin back the Roman cavalry and light horse on the Roman left. The two-tone hill with Roman auxiliaries on it is where I made my numpty mistake that would cost me my command on this flank. 

Roman cataphracts 

Roman cavalry 

Roman auxiliaries 

More Roman auxiliaries 






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