Biblical at Warfare 2022
Achean (Mycenean) vs Syria, Canaan and Ugarit
Game 1 Achean (Mycenean) vs Zhou and Spring and Autumn Chinese
Game 2 Achean (Mycenean) vs Ancient Hebrew
Game 3 Achean (Mycenean) vs Ancient Bedouin
Game 4 Achean (Mycenean) vs Assyrian Empire and Sargonid
Game 5 Achean (Mycenean) vs Syria, Canaan and Ugarit
Astonishingly the Achean army, with its dearth of troop types, unimaginative deployments and largely passive "come and get me" approach to what other armies would surely laughably dismiss as a poor facsimile of "tactics" was now going into the final round sitting pretty on 4 wins out of 4. Pig Wrestling was having its day in the sun !
The final round would see the Achaeans taking on the near-legendary DBm-era Ugaritic army, under the always-clever command of the Spanish Tablecloth Tycoon Rafa "don't confuse me with Nadal" Tortosa. The lists for the Achean and Syria, Canaan and Ugarit from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Warfare can be seen here in the L'Art de la Guerre Wiki.
The Ugaritic list is almost a toolkit Biblical era army in ADLG, with Light and (Impetuous) Heavy chariots, a mix of infantry types and the usual couple of Elite Guardsmen too. The Impetuous Swordsmen Sherden foot come as part of the main army, so there is no need to add in an ally unless you fancy yet more Light Chariots
This time the terrain had not fallen in a manner favourable to the linear aspirations of the Achean horde, with nothing on either flank worth writing a cuniform tablet home about.
This exposed the Achean spear line for what it was - an one trick pony that very much depended on getting down a waterway, which by game 5 I had forgotten even to try for having gotten into a complete rut in terms of thinking the army might just win on its own
With the Ugaritic army having two flanks to aim for (rather than the usual none), the chosen tactic of the Acheans was simply to race forward and try and get the Impetuous elements of the Ugaritic army to commit to combat before they could conjure up some outflanking malarkey
Once they got themselves into such an advantageous position they would then start to nibble away at the edges of the line of cowhide-carrying spearmen and archers
The Mycenean host took the field.
Every man had a hand-painted shield.
This tale was released
not by Homer from Greece
but his namesake who comes from Springfield.
(Homer, The Silly-iad)
As usual the enemy had shifted their attack chariots away from Nestor and his Pylian supported spearmen, aiming instead for the marginally less dangerous vanilla spears which were found everywhere else in the Achean formations
The Mycenean bowmen were shooting furiously as the horde of enemy chariots approached at speed, hoping to knock a couple of points of damage off of the enemy battle carts before the seemingly inevitable conflagration to come
This was teeing itself up to be a repeat of pretty much all of the other games in which enemy chariots tries to run over a line of Achean spearmen - which, given previous results, felt pretty dammed like a great plan to be honest!
The chariots were in - 4 abreast, charging home and even managing to catch the end of the Pylian line at the junction of two commands of Achean infantry.
Only one archer was in the line of fire too, so this was about as good as it could get for the passive reception approach of the Achean army and its well drilled stick men
The City of Ugarit
Over on the flank the Ugaritic chariotry were working hard to sneak past Achilles standard Achean infantry, but with a combination of defensive spears and archery that could reach out and touch the Ugarits in inappropriate places this looked like it may be a thankless task
Even so, the Ugarits ploughed on with this furrow - getting round the back of the Mycenean line was a key part of their obvious plan
Achilles Armpits! The chariots had gone crashing into the line of defensively minded spears at a rate of knots, but now the initial charge was done the battle shifted from a blitz to a slog
This would now all be about whether the quality and armour of the Ugarits would come out on top in the struggle against the sheer weight of numbers of the Achean infantry line.
As one door wobbled between open and closed, another one slammed firmly shut for the Ugarits
Shooting and aggressive spear action had decisively driven back their attempts to sneak past the end of the Achean line
The chariots were a pale memory of their former selves as they fled sheepishly into the desert mists
Paris' Punctual Petfood Platter! In the centre however the Ugarits were starting to look like they might just go straight through the middle of the proto-Greek infantry.
Gaps were opening up fast as the chariots ground forward (holes in my line, not a pre-Christianity flurry of new branches for a sensibly priced American casualwear retailer), scattering wound markers on the spearmen trying hard to resist their continued assaults.
The End of Ugaritica
Suddenly things started to go wrong at an ever increasing rate as the Ugarit chariots poured forward
The Achean reserves were really only there to plug the odd gap - the task was for the spearmen to hold firm - but with Ugarit chariots breaking through all over the park suddenly there were more leaks to plug than plugs available to, erm, plug them.
The spearwall started to collapse at an alarming rate as the Ugarit chariots continued their deadly work. Now there were more holes than spear wall components!
Achilles had uncharacteristically been left adrift in the battle, falling between the central spear struggle and managing the outflanking defence.
The effort of sending a constant stream of orders to his spearmen and archers had left his Myrmidions becalmed, and now the tricky Ugarits were returning in style, sweeping back into the fray and overrunning the Achean archers much to everyone with a cowhide shield's concern
Agamemnon's Aerobic Angel Cake Slices!
The Achean archers had barely slowed the Ugaritic chariots triumphant return, and suddenly as their Sea Peoples warriors began to lurch forward and spring into life too. Achilles and his men were suddenly surrounded!
The centre of the Achean army had by now utterly collapsed under the hammer blows of Ugarit chariots who were channeling all of the good fortune that the Achean's wheeled opponents in the previous 4 games had seemingly lacked.
Not only had the front line evaporated, all of the reserves had done little more than just gift even more break points to the Ugaritic army in their failed attempts to stem the charioteers high scoring surge
Achilles and the Myrmidions found themselves in the unfamiliar position of being stopgap reserves, applied hastily to any gap that they could find in a frantic effort to prevent the left wing of the Achean army quickly following the fate of the now defunct right wing command.
The out-swinging Ugarit chariots were now meeting up with the surging Sherden Sea Peoples to squeeze the Acheans between a rocky place and a very hard place indeed.
The game was slipping away fast and it seemed there was nothing that could be done to halt the imminent demise of Achean ambition as their troops were sent packing everywhere on the surface of the table
Every effort to claw back respectability seemed doomed to failure - the Ugaritic chickens were coming home to roost in the Achean wooden horse shaped hen house as the game finally slipped away from Achilles, Nestor and the other bloke with no actual name.
The Result is a crushing defeat, with a score differential of 25-85 against the Acheans, although killing a surprisingly significant 18/24 of the Ugarits in the process
When Mycenean met Ugarit
The Greeks did not like it one bit.
When by chariots slapped
Their whole army collapsed
And their cunning plan went all to sh*t.
(Homer, The Silly-iad)
Read on for the post match summaries from the Generals involved, as well as another episode of legendary expert analysis from Hannibal
Post Match Summary from the Achean Commander
Look, I'm inclined to gloss over this one, as frankly I felt like I was playing with both arms tied behind my back as historically-speaking by this time in the campaign I should really be sending a load of warriors through the gates of Ugaritica hidden in the belly of a big wooden horse.
Instead I had to endure the ignominy of playing on a field with no anchors of terrain, nor beachside, nor city walls against which to rest one of my flanks, making this a game in which things suddenly got really really hard for me - not a scenario I had really planned for with this passively victorious army.
Add into that debacle the way Nestor's spearmen somehow managed to collapse against the chariot charge of the enemy chariots - a mystery I cannot yet fathom, as surely my attrition and odds-based approach to surviving such attacks which are only likely to succeed perhaps one time in five seem to have bucked the odds to somehow succeed in this, the 5h game 0 and things really went against me from the off, and then carried on doing so as well
This game is best moved on from, with an upside of allowing more shopping time at a moment when the show is not as busy as it was yesterday. So, not all is lost!
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
At last it is proved the benefits of being patient, after we have had to endure through all your victories at last we see the deserved grief of defeat. Now at last my eyes see you stricken, and there is none but your own hubris to succour you for all your sorrow; for a hard foe is the Olympian Ugarit to meet in strife
Hera hath bent the minds of all by her supplication, but here you bent yourself over the table by forgetting even to try for a waterway in the terrain selection part of the game, and then compounded that by deciding to float your entire linear and static army in such a way as to gift both flanks to the fast-moving foe. Truly over the Acheans now hang woes by the will of Zeus!
A shameful thing is this even for the hearing of men that are yet to be, how that thus vainly so goodly and so great a host of the Achaeans warred a fruitless war even after winning their first 4 games by some trick or scam, only to throw ultimate victory away by basic mistakes and lack of adherence to their own plans, even when fighting with men fewer than they - and no end thereof hath as yet been seen or heard!
Your men were let down by one man, you, and surely they now flee with their ships to their dear native land (or Bisley Filing Cabinet?) for no more is there hope that they shall take broad-wayed Troy.
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You may also like....
Game 1 Achean (Mycenean) vs Zhou and Spring and Autumn Chinese
Game 2 Achean (Mycenean) vs Ancient Hebrew
Game 3 Achean (Mycenean) vs Ancient Bedouin
Game 4 Achean (Mycenean) vs Assyrian Empire and Sargonid
Game 5 Achean (Mycenean) vs Syria, Canaan and Ugarit
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