Today I had the pleasure of playing Vince's Thracians - a (near) historical match-up with my Thebans. As always Vince was great to play, and we had a wonderful audience to make a great day of gaming.
The Theban plan was traditionally Greek - a phalanx in the center with the elite Sacred Band stiffening the right, and psiloi and medium cavalry on the flanks. The plan was to get the Sacred Band into the Thracian spearmen and grind their way through while the lighter troops held the flanks.
The Thracians however were never going to play the Theban game, and Vince deployed second, and wisely put a horde of psiloi in front of the phalanx, and his superior auxilia against my hamippoi.
The Thebans attacked in formation, and thankfully I used up my terrible pip die early before it mattered, while the Thracians replaced their light cavalry with the tougher noble knights against the Theban cavalry.
The Thracian auxilia pushed up against the hamippoi and quickly began hacking their way through. Unfortunately though their line broke up and the Thracian general soon found himself surrounded and killed by the Theban elite skirmishers. The blow was doubled when a second Thracian general rolled an unlucky 6-1 against another group of psiloi and suffered a ignoble end. Awful luck for Vince!
After the loss of 2 generals the Thracian army began to break apart. Although the Thracian nobles were able to kill the Boeotarch leading the cavalry it was too little to stop the march of the Theban phalanx and, shortly after the two centers met, the Thracian army broke.
Thank you Vince for another good game. I certainly got the share of the luck with two general kills early on.
On a personal note, I really enjoy playing the Thebans - having a brick of heavy infantry in the center feels great (even if I can use it better), and psiloi are always a fun troop type to use. I'm still skeptical of my Cav(O) though.
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