Friday 20th February

Another FoG game, this time Romans vs Carthaginians 750 points.

I commanded the Carthaginian right with the Elephants, one unit of African Spearmen, one of Scutari, one of Javelin LF and a unit of Gallic cavalry. Tim managed the centre with two units of Gallic infantry, one of African spears and one of slingers. Chris controlled an all cavalry command on the left. This is my command at the game start.

Our plan involved pinning the Roman centre with the Gallic infantry, while crushing both flanks. The first units to clash were - of course - the Gauls, who bravely took on three units of legionaries and held them for the rest of the game (See later).

On my flank, the plan started out Ok with my Scutari driving off the Roman LF. This left my Elephants and spears to get stuck into a legionary HF unit.

Unfortunately as they chased the Roman skirmishers off they ran into the Triarii and a short fight later they were broken. As the Scutari fled, they broke through my Gallic cavalry who, having lost a rather messy melee with the Roman HF broke as well.

The Scutari managed to get to the rear, but the Gallic cavalry were surrounded and destroyed. (2-0 to Rome).

This was the crunch point however, so my General moved in to support the Elephants and Hannibal himself joined the fight against the Legion. This did the trick as the Roman HF facing my Elephants and spears reached auto break, and on the same turn the Gallic infantry unit in the centre supported by Hannibal did the same thing to a unit of Legionaries. A large hole had opened in the Roman left centre.

Over on the Carthaginian left our cavalry seemed to struggle because of the quality of their opposition. They pinned the Roman cavalry and supported the Gauls to the best of their ability. Their major contribution was to break a unit of LF towards the end of the evening. (3-2 to Carthage). Their pursuit placed them in the centre of the Roman rear, and thus they would have been a certainty to loot the Roman camp (had one been deployed on table .....)

At this point the umpire declared a tactical Carthaginian victory, but had we allowed for the looted camp the final score would have been 4-2 to Carthage.

The final positions are shown in the last two photos. The cavalry are engaged on the far left, while the Light Cav threaten the Triarii who are moving to intercept the Gauls who have broken through.






On the right the Elephants and Spears have swung right and are threatening the remaining Legionaries supported by the slingers.









Another fun game, and our knowledge of the rules went up sharply again.

Friday 13th February 2009

This week we played Field Of Glory with Tony's 15mm War of the Roses figures.

Taking the battle of Mortimer's Cross as our model, I commanded the Yorkist left with 3 units of archers and one of Halberd armed foot. Glen commanded the Yorkist right with 2 archers and two foot. The Lancastrians had 3 commands, with Chris opposite me and Tim on the left with a large body of Welsh. They shared command of the Lancastrian centre.

We opened slowly, the Lancastrians advancing steadily, the Yorkists doing a bit of last minute adjustment. The initial exchanges of archery favoured the Yorkists with Lancastrian units becoming disordered. On the left flank I took the chance and charged one of my archer units forward. My archers were duly thumped, driven back and eventually broke, causing their supporting unit of Heavy foot to become shaken. The photo show the position on the left at this point.

Since his shooting was failing, Chris passed one of his heavy units through his archers but was disordered by archery.

Chris archers pursued my broken unit, but ran into my heavy foot who even shaken, were more than a match for them and they broke. To try to remedy matters, Chris moved his other unit of Heavy foot into a semi flanking position, but again archery stopped him in his tracks.

The centre followed a similar pattern. The Lancastrian archers were routed off by fire, so the Yorkists wheeled out to allow the central heavy foot unit to advance into the now disordered speamen behind them. Our now fired into the flanks of the enemy units on their right and left.

The Lancastrian left was very slow getting into position. The crossbows held back while the welsh light troops manuvered into the woods to get round the Yorkist right. Unfortunately by the time this was accomplished, their centre had been shattered and they were now under fire from the Yorkist archers who had done so much damage in the centre.

At this point the Lancastrian had 6 broken battlegroups out of an army of 12 and the Yorkists 1 out of 8 and we decided the day had gone to the Yorkists.

Starting Out

Staines Wargamers is a friendly club I started going to about 4 years ago.

This blog will keep track of the games we play, update our event schedule and help me hone my blogging skills.