Wairarapa two-day competition update: Andrew Brazendale is again running this annual competition, this year in Featherston on Saturdays November 2 and 16.
Fourteen of us are playing 240AP, three games a day, and after day one a handful of players have two wins and a draw. I am not sure of the exact points and will post those when the scores are emailed.
The first day was “home and away” with Wairarapa locals playing visitors from over the hills in the Hutt Valley and Wellington. I am using Thracians and had the pleasure of playing Scot Neilson (Romano-British), Neil Williamson (Horrible Hairy Huns) and Phil Gates (Mithridatic). If there is a theme to my games, it is that the Greek mercenary hoplite ally command is proving worth all the gold it must have been paid.
It is great to see Scotty playing again after a break of a few years and his army is gorgeous. When I posted pictures yesterday people asked which manufacturers made the figures. Scotty says they are mostly Gripping Beast and Eureka, with a few Old Glory cavalry. During our game my hoplites seemed to have been trained by a South African scrum coach! As a precursor to events that would play out later that evening at the Rugby World Cup final in Japan, they heaved their way through the centre proving too strong for the British spearmen. Scotty is still familiarising himself with DBMM 2.1 and realised a little too late that he could have used his cavalry and light horse more aggressively to neutralise the Thracian nobles’ Irreg Kn(I) wedges who chipped away at one flank.
In my second game Neil’s Huns lived up to their well-earned reputation. They did horrible hairy things like marching over a difficult hill apparently held by Thracian Ps(S) peltasts supported by some Ps(O) archers and slingers. Ps don’t stop marches that go straight ahead, you don’t need a big gap for an element frontage to sneak through, and LH(S) march 320 paces when they leave difficult going. Zoom! I did eventually get one Hunnic command tangled with hoplites, terrain and cautiously applied Thracian light horse. That’s when the buggers used a feigned flight and got away! 13-12 to the invading Huns in one of the most entertaining draws I have played for a long time.
My third game was against Phil’s Mithridatic and it highlighted how vulnerable (I) troops can be. Phil’s imitation legionaries, Reg Bd(I), were disheartened by a cloud of Greek mercenary peltasts, Reg Ps(S), while the Thracian nobles and their king, all Irreg Kn(I) wedges, proved vulnerable to any troops that produced a better total combat factor. With my CnC dead, both my flank commands disheartened and each 1.5ME from breaking, the hoplites saved the day. They had pushed through Mithridatic archers and auxilia in front of them, got beyond the imitation legionaries and, to mix my sporting metaphors, sacked the quarterback. That is, an element of hoplites was able to spin around and catch the imitation legionaries’ general in the rear, breaking that command and pushing the Mithridatic losses to more than 50%. A very lucky and not really deserved win.
A big thank to everyone I played, to all those who I had the chance to speak with (there were other games as well as our competition) and to Andrew for organising the event. I am looking forward to the next three games.
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