Warmaster Ancients, Devizes 2009
Game 3 saw me facing some Huns
My opponents army was unsurprisingly comprised of lots of good quality LH, some foot, and some shock cavalry. To be precise 2 Warband, 1 foot skirmisher, 9 Good Quality Skirmish mounted, 1 shock cavalry
The Gallic warband and spearmen moved up hoping to protect their flanks with a wood.
On the flank the two sets of Dairylea Light Horse faced off.
Hunnic cavalry shot relentlessly at the Greeks, driving them back and halting their advance
At the end of my following turn the infantry were just about able to advance again.
The Carthaginian light cavalry then tried to charge home against the Dairlylea cavalry of the enemy but found it rather hard
Odd units maneuvered around and out of the way of my foot
More Dairlylea combat ensued...
As the Carthaginian cavalry gained the upper hand, their warband also managed to combine some charges at the Triangles with those of the Carthaginian light horse - who had pinned the triangles with their charges. But the Warband were struggling to make headway against the shooting of the Triangles as they charged home
..oh, and Hunnic light horse were roaming around behind Carthaginain lines at will
Having largely but not entirely battered the Hunnic triangles, the Warband retreated to gain rear support from a line of spearmen
The Carthaginians were then coming under attack from all sides and were forced to turn around and take on al comers. The elephants were yet to move!
And then the elephants charged in - up a hill at non-evading dairlyeas!
The elephants then followed up ... had taken casualties on the way
Elsewhere, shock cavalry were fighting each other as confused remnants looked on
A table full of smashed units!
The Hunnic infantry came out to try and finish off the Carthaginian army
Amazingly, the lone elephant had traveled across the field after routing the enemy LH and tried to punish the hunnic infantry
Things ended up even more fragmented, with single-base units all round - would skirmisher shooting be enough to kill off yet more HUns?
Skirmishes against a lone base of shock cavalry ...?
One hit too few! Game over for the Carthaginians
Hannibal's Post Match Analysis
Eh?
What??
Almost impossible to understand what happened there, I really struggle to comment.
Incomprehensible!
Post Tourney Thoughts
This time around at Devizes it was clear that people had played lot more WMA games than me, and had started to find holes in the system. Dairlylea, Archers supported by infantry, hitting flanks when starting in front of the enemy - well, I sometimes think WMA is most fun when played by people who have only read the rules once, and who then make assumptions about the rest of it! Then again, 2 of my massive losses at the weekend could have been massive victories if I had scored just one_more_hit in a 2nd round of combat when charging in with my shock troops! Which is fun by anyone's definition :-)
For
example, I could think of the following suggestions (working through the
rulebook):
1. Commanders - "barbarian" army commanders should be limited to CV8
even with special bonuses
2. Visibility - troops can move away from, but not charge, troops
"invisible" behind their front edge
3. Irregular formations of any troop move at half speed, and do so whether you
start or end in the irregular formation.
4. Chargers do not have to maximise frontage, they can create overlaps.
5. Frontal charges against pinned targets must add to the battle line, and so do
not hit flanks.
6. Shooters need a full clear 40mm of their base edge to see the target to be
able to shoot
7. Skirmishers shooting suffer some sort of penalty. Less dice, or the target
gets an additional armour save?
8. Drive-backs can be away from shooting, or straight back, the choice of the
player owning the driven-back troops.
9. Troops confused by being driven back still move backwards
10. Units that are in a position to support shooting targets in combat are
automatically driven back with front rank troops - no need to dice for
confusion, but they do share any confused results with the front rank unit
11. Only stands that are contacted by enemy can shoot at charging enemy
12. Skirmishers do not get charge bonuses against non-skirmishers,
13. Elephants either lose the Elephant Charging bonus, or are not terrifying (to
foot only?)
14. Bowmen can only support or be supported by other bowmen in combat, or
possibly more restrictions who can support each other.
15.
All hits are counted for determining winners and losers and fallbacks - not just
those it's actually possible to inflict on the units you are fighting (ie before
they are destroyed).
16. General Slain not a reason to stop the game.
17. Warband take a -1 command penalty for being in groups of less than 3, not a
+1 for being in groups of more than 3.
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