The final game in the campaign, lets go for an interesting scenario - Surprise attack, Scenario Eleven in the book. One army starts with only a couple of units in a decent defensive position and faces the full might of the enemy whilst waiting for the rest of the army to show up. My army is rolled for and again I get three heavy foot, one skirmishers and two mounted. I choose to start with two of the heavy foot on the table between a wood and lake.
The boys army storms on - three heavy foot making a beeline for my defending troops, the light foot heading for the wood, with a chariot unit supported by a heavy foot unit pushing around the lake. Text book really showing that he is learning how to do this.
I get a choice of either pulling my troops back towards the other flank or staying with firm flanks and toughing it out and hope for the support to come up and save me. Standing firm it is, the opposition continue to sweep into position.
And in they smash frontally with scary things looking like they are happening to the front and rear. Game over before the rest of my army have even turned up surely?
But no! In the nick of time the first wave of reinforcements turn up! I chose to bring on a light foot and chariot unit for their speed to get into position to support.
Which mean the forces threatening the flank and rear of my main line are diverted instead into equal odds fights. Could we pull this out of the bag yet?
Oh yes, I had forgotten about you. I wonder what it is you are about to do?
Ah yes, this is not to much of a surprise - and what pray tell will be the outcome of this devastating flank charge?
Ah, not a surprise there then. On top of that one of my heavy foot have manage to lose there straight up frontal fights against the bad guys. The two light foot are managing to have their traditional low damage ongoing fight without effecting the rest of the battle that much.
Forward his chariot sweep into the rear of my other foot unit. Anyone want to guess what happens next?
Boom! His free heavy foot units look to from a line against the rest of my army that is soon expected.
Alright guys! We are here! Time to get the party started. Oh, where is everyone? Ah well, we need to do the best we can. I target his most beat up heavy foot unit to take it out.
Which is duly done. However the rest of his troops swing round.....
And in a few turns.....
The inevitable happens......
And I get chomped unit by unit.
My war donkey chariots score a brief victory!
Until they to are gone.
And that is game and campaign over. 3 - 1 to the bright seven year old against his handsome and debonair father.
Comments on this game?
Well, it seems that the side that was being played by the boy, all they had to do was reach a level of basic competence and they would force a win. Have to say the boy made all the correct decisions and got his due rewards. The scenario may seem a bit unbalanced though. Anything I could have done better? Well, instead of standing and fighting on the deployment line if I had pulled my line back, pivoting a flank on the woods to delay contact and protecting a flank against his heavier troops, this could have brought time for the help to arrive. I also notice in rereading the scenario, his army should have all come on at the road and moved their first turn from there, which would have slowed down the fight by a turn or two, giving me more of a chance. So, if we had set up correctly and I had played better then I may have had a chance of winning. Seems fair to me.
Don't want to take anything away from the boy though, he played a good game and got the win his tactics in the situation he was given deserved.
That is the five games that I set myself to play before writing a fully considered review of the game. That full review is to follow shortly.
No comments:
Post a Comment