Carthaginian invasion...

This was a solo test game using the scenario generation system I've been fiddling around with for Lost Battles. A Carthaginian army of inferior quality is attacking Roman-occupied Gaul. The Roman defenders are of average quality.

Rome won the initiative and elected to choose board edge rather than turn order. Rome took the side with the hill and Carthage decided to move first. The attack limit is 5.

Here is a view after deployment. Both sides have weighted the right wing, refused the left and hope that their infantry will hold out long enough for their cavalry to envelop the enemy centre.



Here the wings have closed. Fighting has already commenced in the centre, over the hill zones. The view below shows the Carthaginian cavalry attacking the Roman left, which is also engaged to its front. There is a similar situation on the Carthaginian left, but the infantry have already advanced forward, leaving the outnumbered cavalry to face their Roman counterparts.



The action on the wings is quick and bloody with both sides shattering or routing the enemy's weakened left. Rome manages it more quickly however, and the Carthaginian centre is now enveloped and their morale is shakier as a consequence. To balance this, the Roman centre is entirely spent due to determined attacks by the Libyans. The situation can be seen below:



The Roman cavalry hit the Carthaginian infantry from the rear to support the flagging legions on the hill. The shot below shows the scene just prior to the Carthaginian centre and centre left folding, mirroring the events that have taken place on the Roman left.



The remaining forces of both victorious flanks now swing around in an attempt to make contact. After the advances it is the Carthaginians who hold the hill. The Romans are at breaking point, but the exhausted foot cannot land a hit on them. The Spanish cavalry is too far from the action, and there are not enough commands to get them into place. In the Roman turn the infantry can make no headway in assaulting the hill; it is left to the battered Roman cavalry who, having galloped around the rear of the Carthaginian army, now charge home against the spent Celtiberians on the Carthaginian left. The Celtiberians perhaps wish they had held their attack for a turn and let the reinforcing elephant take the lead...



A hit is scored and the remaining Carthaginians flee. It is a Roman victory, but a very tight one indeed. One more hit on the Romans and it would almost certainly have been the legionaries who failed the morale test and fled the field.

It was a good, exciting game that went well and served its purpose!

Two Weeks With Dad

This is an old thing I wrote back in 2007 and originally posted on boardgamegeek. It was written after a particularly good holiday back in NZ. I'm posting it here now because I like it and to keep the blog active even while I'm busy with other things.

I was fortunate enough to head back to New Zealand with the family for a couple of weeks last month. Before leaving I decided to throw in the Commands & Colors: Ancients cards, dice, a laminated QRS and a few blocks, for I had a cunning plan.

To fill you in a bit, the old man's a chess player. We used to play a lot in spells when I was younger and still had dreams of being a better player than he was. Unfortunately, I have only ever beaten him in one game, and that was a fluke.

Second night in with wife and daughter settled down for the evening I casually mentioned 'this game that I play a bit'. We had a small discussion ending with an "If you've got a bit of spare wood lying around I could do up a board."

Next day I found what I was looking for and did do up a board, using offset squares rather than hexagons. I was sitting outside under the covered table marking it in when Dad got home from work. He was curious, so we cracked open a couple of bottles of beer and I explained how the game worked. "So there are three sections, eh?" he said.

Naturally it became necessary to demonstrate this novel concept.

The board was not the only area which required improvisation. I had only brought a few blocks with me, my idea being to use one block to represent a unit, rotating it to indicate when it had taken hits.

I set up a re-imagined version of Cannae to start things off. I called it Cannae but the Romans were given more mediums than usual and both sides started off with 5 cards. Dad was interested in the history, so we talked about that as the game went on. Dad won 7-5. Good start.

Another game was suggested, and we played again after dinner. This time I set up a ScenarioX style battle, again with the Romans given the better force balance. Dad started to pick up how to use light infantry. "You should see how this bloke from Italy uses lights," I said. Dad won again, 6-4. He saw how MI were superior to Aux in close combat. "How does evade work again?" he asked.

There was call for one more before bed. This time I went for Castulo, but without the terrain. "I still don't understand how leaders work," he said, so we went over that again. We both agreed that they were pretty useful. "How you use leaders might decide the game then," says Dad, and we both agree on that too. Dad wins again. 3-0 to him after the first day's play. Pretty good.

"By the way," I say after packing up. "Remember that Italian guy I was telling you about? Well, I play in these online tournaments. I'll show you a couple of websites."

Next morning when I got up for coffee the first scenario booklet from GMT had been printed out. "Found one that looks interesting," says Dad. "Let's try that out tonight."

The 'interesting one' turned out to be Bagradas, which I'd not played before. We set up and I explained how it was common for people to play the game twice, once from each side and total the banners to see who'd won. "Should we try that out, then?" came the reply.

This was the first time that elephants had hit the table. Dad had great success with the elephants.

My old chess scars were starting to reappear. I was getting a bit worn around the edges. There would be no helpful tips this game.

I started cautiously, waiting for a chance to get the elephants into contact. He advanced; I waited too long. After some outrageous swings of fortune and two vicious Double Time cards, Dad lost by one banner. I had won the battle but lost the war. Still, my luck had changed. "The good thing about this game", I said, "is that you'll start thinking about it at odd times."

Next morning when I got up for coffee the living rules had been downloaded from the GMT website. So had the remainder of the scenarios. "This one looks interesting," says Dad. "You know, I was thinking about that second game last night. I really should've won that. I think I played the wrong card." I agreed that it was quite possible.

That night we played the first scenario. One game a-piece and banners dead even. "This game would be quite good with figures," says Dad. "Like that Field Command game you've got. Imagine a whole board full of them. Would look pretty good, eh?" I said that I did indeed play it with figures. "I'd like to get some of them," he said.

I was away up in Wellington for the next few nights. When I got back we played again, and this continued almost every night for the rest of the holiday. We played Trasimene, Castulo, Zama, and others. Dad would find a battle he was interested in and we'd play it at night.

Towards the end he started to lose his initial confidence, and would hang back when he should have attacked a bit more. "You keep getting good cards," he'd say, "but I keep getting these blinkin' useless things!" Every day he would talk about the game we'd played the night before, and he would even talk about the game to people who had no interest in it.

As is the way of things time ran out and we had to return to Japan. They were sad to see their 8 month old granddaughter leave, and we were sad to go.

Still, Dad now has the VASSAL module on his computer, a deck of battered C&C cards, the first edition dice, and a cake-stained, forest-and-hill marked board. I think we'll be playing this again.

More jumbos, or "That's Australian gold, my friend."

I got a little time to do a spot of painting tonight on my Chariot successor elephants. I'm trying out a few different colours from my usuals: I very rarely use greens or yellows on figures at all, so it's a bit experimental. As it turns out, I seem to have an Aussie cricketer leading this herd, so he's going to have to get an alteration to his colour scheme!

Update

Things have been a bit quiet on the blogging front of late due mainly to alterations in the domestic schedule. I've not done any gaming or painting these past two weeks, but I have been getting some hobby-related writing done these last few days, thankfully. Once that is completed it will be time to finish writing up the report for Pharsalus II. In anticipation of a bright near future, I have tidied up the hobby room so that there should be room for both painting and gaming - though the former is more urgent as the heat of summer threatens to hit. Once summer comes the paint dries up almost as soon as it's out of the pottle, and sometimes even before the pottle is opened. Time is short, and there is much to be done! On this note, I would like to finish by wishing our friends in the UK currently gearing up for Zama at Bletchley and Salute all the very best. Take a look at the blogs 'BigRedBatCave' and 'Caliban' linked to on the left to see what I mean!

A figure game (finally...)

In preparation for a C&C:A tournament game I recently set up and played through the Edessa scenario from the 4th Expansion, Imperial Rome. I have no figures suitable for that era, so transposed it back in time to Hispania, c. 210BC, with Sharpur's Sassanids masquerading as Carthaginians and Polybian Romans filling in for Valerian's men. Here are a couple of shots of the board prior to the battle, first looking from the Roman side:

And second looking smack down the middle. The shots were a bit limited, but my gaming/painting/storage room is embarrassingly cluttered, so I tried to avoid getting unnecessary muck in the shots!

And a third from closer in, showing the nasty array of cavalry facing the Roman left:

The Romans don't have much going for them in this scenario. They have only four cards against six and one leader against two; they are outclassed in cavalry and their heavy infantry units are opposed by elephants and subject to the 'Fright at First Sight' rule which makes said jumbos even more fearsome than usual. Good fun for the masochists :)

Author of the month (March)

Author of the month for March is Thomas Hardy. As part of my bookshop browsing in NZ I was fortunate to turn up some excellent secondhand books that I'd never think to search for through Amazon. The Mayor of Casterbridge was one of those. I'd not read any Hardy since university days, when Tess of the D'Urbervilles made an appearance on my side table (or what passed for a side table in student flats), so I was curious to see what my reaction would be.

I'm thoroughly enjoying the book. After many years of reading Classical history in my spare time, interspersed with the odd historical or modern novel, it is wonderful to read something that has been structured so surely. I love seeing well-implemented literary devices at work: irony, foreshadowing, contrast, well-worked metaphor, litote and dialect are just some of the ones to be found in Hardy. I'd forgotten how rewarding 19th Century novels are, and I'm actually more at ease with this traditional style of novel than with the more modern forms.

To close, thank you Mr. Hardy, and thank you to the secondhand booksellers of Christchurch!

Commands & Colors: Ancients - teaser result

Following on from the earlier post, here is the result of the game featured in the Commands & Colors: Ancients - teaser. To recap, I'd been thrashed royally in the first leg of a tournament semi-final and had to win the second leg 5-0 to progress to the final. That is, I had to wipe out 5 of my opponent's units or leaders and lose none of my own.

After two card plays each, an opportunity to launch a potentially game-winning attack presented itself. The situation is outlined more fully in this post: http://prufrockian-gleanings.blogspot.com/2010/03/commands-colors-ancients-puzzle.html

It was such an interesting and delicately balanced position that I thought other players might like to discuss what they would have done in this situation. Thankfully, some did! These ideas and the rationale behind them can be found in the comments section of the above link.

Here is the board again. I was the Othonians, holding the following cards: Double time, Order two units left, Order two units centre, Coordinated attack and Inspired center leadership + 4.



The suggestions took two broad turns: one was an attack on the Vitellian centre using the Double time card. If the dice were favourable, the attack should see the enemy medium infantry and heavy infantry units destroyed, and there would also be a 1 in 6 chance of killing the leader if the HI were indeed wiped out. The Othonian HI with the leader would possibly be able to momentum advance and hit the light bow infantry or the medium cavalry, forcing them to evade, while another unit would have been able to force the light infantry straddling the center/left line to evade back to the baseline. Next turn the Othonians would be able to use the centre leadership or order two centre to continue the attack, hopefully being able to push the light infantry, the light bow infantry and medium cavalry onto the baseline and destroy them, thereby gaining the five banners.

The other tack was to attack the enemy left - again with the double time card - focusing the attack on Vitellius and his heavy infantry in the first turn. Subsequent turns would see the Center leadership card and whatever else turned up to push through with the attack and get stuck into the auxiliary infantry.

Bigredbat also suggested going a bob each way, using double time to attack both Vitellius an the enemy left and the HI and the MI in the enemy centre.

All of these plans had something to commend them. The trick, of course, was to find which one was best!

The original plan had been to attack the centre with the double time card, but the preceding turn had seen the centre reinforced from the right (the second HI with leader and the MC). Even if we managed to wipe out the MI and the HI, we would most likely have to contend with a flank attack led by HI with a leader. There was also a medium cavalry there - probably now with a leader, if the HI were destroyed and the leader was forced to retreat - and with my opponent needing only one kill to win the match overall my the chances were not good that I'd get out of it.

In the end, I decided to attack the enemy left for reasons outlined well by Bigredbat - namely, that when the counter-attack comes, it's better if it's conducted by auxiliaries than heavy infantry! (see screenshot below)




Using the double time, the Praetorians and the medium infantry moved into contact with Vitellius. The Praetorians are able to hit on helmets due to their special unit status and can ignore one additional flag result. The medium infantry, by virtue of being adjacent to Titianus, will also score hits on helmets. This gives a total of 9 dice on Vitellius and his HI, with each dice a 50% chance of scoring a hit. Assuming the unit was destroyed, Vitellius would have to survive a leader check and then retreat away from the front line, meaning that my opponent would need to waste a command to get him back where he was needed to retaliate next turn.

We led off with the medium infantry against Vitellius. The result was three hits, causing a leader check. What do you know but Vitellius failed it (1 in 36 chance) and died! We experienced a great leap of confidence at this point. The heavy infantry battled back with 5 dice, but were now hitting only 2 in 6. Odds were he would kill only 1 or 2 blocks, and so it proved. The Praetorians took over the attack, scoring the single hit needed to eliminate the HI. Two banners to the good, and only one block down. It was a good start, but much depended on the Vitellian response. A strong move from the centre would force me to adjust my plans.

Fortunately, the Vittelian response was to play order three left, advance the auxiliary and heavy infantry into contact with the Praetorians, and go for gold. Unfortunately, with the leader dead, the dice were hitting only 2 out of 6 times. Although there were eight attacking dice to roll, the odds were that they would only score two or three hits, and would still have to endure the battlebacks of the Praetorians.

As it turned out, the attacks were disastrous: plenty of leader symbols rolled, but no leader to make them effective. Neither the auxiliary nor the heavy infantry scored any reds or swords on the dice, and the Praetorians scored three hits each time on battleback. They also forced the heavy infantry to retreat twice, which took them safely out of close combat range.

Here is the board following the Vitellian card play:


We now used Inspired centre leadership to activate Titianus and five other connected units, allowing us to contact the light infantry and the auxiliaries (see position after movement but prior to attacks):

The medium infantry attacked first, killing the auxiliaries. Now that they were no longer adjacent to the enemy, the Praetorians could throw their pila at the enemy HI. They had a 1-in-6 chance on 1 die. Yes, you guessed it - they got it. With only one kill now needed, the Vittelians were in dire straits, but still rather than advance in the centre they reorganised their auxiliaries on the left. Did they not have any centre cards, or did they simply prefer to steady the left?

This gave us the opportunity to play Coordinated attack. Trusting to luck, we used the warrior infantry to move 2 and attack the light infantry. Titianus used his 'Julian legion' ability to move the HI two hexes and give the warriors the advantage of a supporting leader, thereby upping their odds of scoring hits from 2 in 6 to 3 in 6. Also swinging things in the Othonians' favour was the fact that the light infantry were on the baseline. Any flag rolled against them (1 in 6 odds) would kill 2 blocks. Nevertheless, a failed attack here would give the Vitellians a chance to counterattack from the centre against the warriors, giving them a decent stab at picking up the kill they needed to win the game. Here was the position before the dice rolls:

And the roll? It came up hit, hit, miss, banner, giving a total of 4 hits - enough to eliminate the light infantry and score the winning kill.

It was a ridiculous turnaround and yet another example that one should never allowing oneself to admit defeat or claim victory in Commands & Colors until the last die has been rolled. I felt very sorry for my opponent. He took the vagaries of the dice with good grace.

For the commentators, BigredBat figured out my plan - and the reasoning behind it -pretty much exactly. Of course, the dice had to go the Othonian way, but there was a chance, and thanks to favourable dice and the Vitellian inability or unwillingness to move in the centre, we were able to take it.

I'll keep an eye out for similar conundrums, and if there is interest will post more teasers in future. However, in an effort to curb what could be perceived as unsporting triumphalism, I shall endeavour to present situations that do not go my way, as well!

A very big thank you to all who took the time to read through the situation, and an especially big thank you to those who posted comments both here and on TMP. It's much appreciated!

The scenario was 1st Bedriacum from the 4th (Imperial Rome) Expansion. The game was played in real time using Bill Bennett's wonderful VASSAL module, which can be found on this site: http://www.vassalengine.org/community/index.php and the tournament was conducted under the auspices of the VASSAL C&CA yahoo group, which can be found here: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/ccavassal/