Sunday 30 April 2023

ValleyCon: Thracians vs Persians - posted by Vince Cholewa, 29 April 2023

ValleyCon game 4, vs Persians
Paul Graham’s Early Achaemenid Persians were the only army against which my Thracians wanted plenty of terrain. This would maximise my advantage in terrain troops, channel archery, and prevent Paul’s chariots (Reg Kn(O)) bowling through wherever they wanted to. Luckily, I was able to place two 1/2-sized woods, a ½-sized difficult hill and two normal sized scrubby hills. The pic shows the terrain, though the camera angle has twisted the perspective a little, making some pieces look bigger and others smaller than they were.
The largest open space was on my left where one of the woods was on my side of half-way. The nobles (Irr Kn(I) in wedge) were in ambush on the wood edge, supported by their plentiful peltasts (Irr Ps(S)) and a few slingers (Irr Ps(O)) and light horse and the king. Xenophon and his hoplites were next to them in the open ground.
Peltasts from the hoplite command and from the Thracian sub-general’s command (all Ps(S) would storm the difficult hill in the centre with a few elements of archers (Ps(O)) supporting. The sub-general’s light horse and the rest of his peltasts (Ax(S)) would take the scrubby hill on my right and cover the gaps between terrain. My light horse command flank marched on my left to support the ambush.
I was confident the King and the hoplites would overwhelm the Persian light horse, cavalry and archers on the Persian right, and my superior numbers of peltasts would seize the hill in the middle. The rest of the sub-general’s command would delay the Persian chariots, Saka ally, auxiliaries and more archers on my right for long enough for the flank march to arrive on my left and sweep to victory. Ha! or rather, Doh!
The fight on the difficult hill was slow and messy but numbers told and eventually I was able to clear it. On my left the nobles leapt out of their ambush and chased the Persian light horse onto the rough hill behind them. The hoplites advanced on the archers and cavalry.
Unfortunately, the fight on the difficult hill in the middle prevented the peltasts screening the end of the hoplite line from archery, and the end element of hoplites was repeatedly overlapped in distant combat. Three elements of hoplites were doubled and destroyed by archery. Worse was to come. As the hoplites continued their now ragged advance, the Persian cavalry charged them to protect the archers. In a straight fight Xenophon could not be doubled. One of the cavalry pushed back a hoplite next to Xenophon, who then was on the wrong end of a 6-1, was doubled and destroyed. The hoplites were disheartened.
The nobles attacked the horse archers on the rough hill, both sides taking -1 for the terrain. 2-1 in my favour is a dodgy fight and was disastrous. Three nobles were doubled and for the loss of only one horse archer. Fortunately, their supporting peltasts were able to catch up and dispatched the remaining horse archers who were still on the rough hill.
Soon after, the hoplites broke but not before they caused more casualties on the Persians. The hoplites breaking, disheartened the King’s command but in the now badly broken up fight, the King and some of his nobles were able to pick off isolated elements and broke the Persian command.
There was now an intermingled mess of two routing commands and a disheartened command. The Thracian sub-general was doing a sterling job of skirmishing with and delaying the redeployment of the Persians from their left to where the “big fight” had been on my left.
By the beginning of my ninth bound, the 17th of the game, my flank march had still not arrived and, while I could keep dicing for it, its ME counted as lost. That pushed my losses to just below 50%. Paul and I played on, both tired towards the end of our fourth game of the weekend, often needing a lot more PIPs than we had to regroup, push and block. By a minor miracle I lost no more elements in the following few bounds and we ended with Paul ahead 14-11.

Thank you, Paul, for a stonking game! And I had three big takeaways from it: don’t flank march unless absolutely necessary, don’t use the nobles as a front line attack, and Xenophon probably shouldn’t be in the front of the hoplite phalanx. Next, how to apply these ideas. Watch this space! 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/824840264342234/posts/2340422529450659/

Paul's first bound, the second of the game. The Thracian nobles have emerged from their ambush in the wood on the left, the hoplites are advancing on the Persian archers and cavalry, both side's psiloi are getting ready to fight on the difficult hill in the middle, and the Thracian sub-general has claimed the rough hill on the right, "mine!" The light horse in reserve are from this sub-generals command. There is an entire command of light horse wandering randomly somewhere off the left side of the table

Persian archers and cavalry



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