Derventio IV - a Tale of Mid-Table Mediocrity

 

After a run of some success, I am brought back to earth at the Classical themed Derventio IV held at the very hospitable Boards & Swords venue in Derby.

Read on for a short overview of what opponents I fought and how the games went ...

Derventio IV was themed for the Classical lists with armies dated between 500 BCE and 500 CE. Having taken my C4th CE Imperial Romans to Derventio II and III (I wasn't playing MeG when Derventio I was run) and finished 3rd and 2nd I decided it was time to use a different army for the period.

Realistically this meant a decision between Sasanid Persian and Early Carthaginian. As I wanted a change from the horse archer bases armies this quickly decided me on the Carthaginians.

My list was:

This is slightly different from the one I described a while ago, but not massively. It is fairly solid with all the Long Spear troops, although these can be vulnerable to warband types if these do well in the charge phase, but has a limited cutting edge - basically the Chariots and the Sacred Band, although the Numidians can do quite a lot of damage with their Skilled shooting in the right circumstances.

So an army that is competitive enough but not one I'd see as setting the world alight with its results; but importantly one I enjoyed painting up, think it looks nice, and that I enjoy using regardless of the result.

First game was against Roger Whittam with Mauryan Classical Indians. Roger's army looked lovely and so I'm including a number of gratuitous pictures. It won the best painted army prize and quite deservedly so.

The game itself saw a fairly open table with woods and fields on my right in which Roger placed a couple of units in ambush. The mass of both armies were deployed in the open section with the Indians interspersing small War-wagon units with their infantry for protection to make it hard for my troops to go to contact other than at a disadvantage. I deployed a fair chunk of my spearmen well back as they are vulnerable to elephants and I needed to see where that threat was before committing. I placed a unit of cavalry on my right wing to skirmish and slow down his ambushes.

My main thrust was on my left with the Numidians, chariots and Sacred Band with African spearmen coming up in support on their right. My right wing was to contain Roger's left of cavalry, elephants and light horse - plus the infantry in ambush - and withy any luck be able to push them out of the way and turn in on the larger part of his army. Roger advanced in a controlled manner. I pushed my Balearic Slingers up to snipe at one unit of his War-wagons - as these were only 2 bases they can be a bit vulnerable to shooting and a lucky round could see a base removed and them only a single wound from breaking.

With both sides having a fair amount of shooting we were soon exchanging missiles, however, to very little effect. I did get lucky with the slingers though and a War-wagon unit lost a base. Other than that not many bases were lost and wounds that were caused were bought off. We had a lot of this in the game, somebody had supplied both armies with blunt missiles.

I did charge the Sacred Band into a War-wagon unit as they should be able to win through slow attrition, and this caused Roger to put his Legendary C-in-C into the combat which cut down some of his options as it meant the rest of the C-in-C's command were now "out of command" needing extra cards/discs to move, etc. I also charged my chariots into one of his infantry units but carefully avoided hitting the wagons.

I also engaged the weakened War-wagon with a unit of spearmen. It was going to be attritional, but we had time.

Long story short - turns out that our troops were equipped with blunt hand to hand weapons as well as blunt missiles and despite a bit of attrition by the end of the game losses amounted to 2 war-wagon units and a light horse unit for Roger and a single light infantry unit for myself. 7-3 result. Now that sounds a bit dull but in fact it was a really good game, Roger was a great opponent and good player and fun was had all round.

Second game was against John Munro (3rd time in 3 competitions we've played) with Galatians. Not an army I really wanted to face as it is a mass of really effective warband types who have Light Spear and Melee Expert in addition to their Devastating Charge - they can really rip through good chunks of my army.

Again terrain was mainly open but with a couple of pieces of rough ground which ended up a bit closer together than I would have liked. I totally outscouted John who deployed a mass of warbands with his cavalry/chariots on his left so that his army was mostly to the right of the table as I looked at it. In response I deployed mostly towards the left hand of the table (as I looked at it) and chose to push a unit of my Ligurians through the rough on that side of the table to face off John's one unit of Loose foot. He would obviously support those with warband even in the terrain but I took the chance that I could impeded those with Numidians who were all on my left wing. John was obviously going to redeploy his mounted from his left to right but I expected I could arrange my Numidians to deal with them when they arrived as well as shooting infantry.

The game proceeded more or less as I thought it would, alas my Numidians did not really do anything much to tghe warband John pushed through the rough going which was a pain - but these things happen with shooting. In the space between the terrain we were getting set up for a clash between warbands and my chariots, the sacred Band and my Spearmen - the latter were a bit nervous but hoped their larger unit size would see them through an attritional fight.

The fight in the rough saw us swap units and despite the Numidians not performing quite as well as I had hoped the light infantry missilemen chipped in and cause damage. In the other rough my Spanish were overwhelmed by superior numbers - sort of expected but rather quicker than hoped, but I think I made some poor decisions there so only myself to blame.

The Numidians destroyed the chariot unit pretty quickly and were working on the other mounted. However, my chariots and sacred Band were making slow going where they had the advantage and John's warband had had a good charge phase against my African Spearmen.

This allowed a heavily damaged unit of warband who had fought in the rough going to charge the chariots in the flank (despite the Balearic slingers having a couple of chances to break them with shooting) and then pursue into the Sacred Band breaking them as well and thus the whole army. 8-15 in the end; ah well.

Saturday evening - beers, curry and talking wargames rubbish, what more could you want ...

Game three and sitting mid-table drew me against Kurt Jewkes who used Gallic Foederate Roman, a list I had got Richard Jeffrey-Cook to add to the lists for this year. A chance to be hoist by my own petard.

We had a mainly open field, both of us were happy with that, and I outscouted Kurt. he deployed with a big cavalry right wing and the rest of his army of mostly foederate infantry on his left supported by another unit of cavalry. I matched his cavalry wing with most of my cavalry and the infantry likewise. I placed most of my African Spearmen away from the foederate infantry as I thought they were better used against his single unit of Romanised infantry, and my Ligurians faced his Alan Horse Archers as I thought their Experienced Javelins would be useful.

Kurt started by pushing his cavalry forward aggressively whilst being a bit more cautious with the infantry. I was happy to push my cavalry wing forward but was a bit more aggressive with my infantry especially in the centre where I felt I could push the Alans away and so pick on other parts of Kurt's army at an advantage. I was happy for my right to refuse a bit in order to stagger the start of fighting on that wing.

The next few moves were quite important and were dominated by Kurt having a run of appalling discs on his right where he hardly had a colour for 3 turns and thus his attack stalled completely handing me the initiative. His Alan lancers were forced to charge my chariots (he had no disc able to hold them) whilst being shot at by Numidians. It didn't end well for the Alans. he wasn't helped when a unit of the Alan Horse Archers rolled a terrible skirmish VMD and was caught - although he did break off with minimal losses. 

The chariots continued forwards chasing off the remaining Alans and destroying one on the board edge. My African Spearmen beat the Romanised infantry as I had hoped and the other unit pushed across the board into the Roman camp. The Sacred Band beat a Foederate Infantry unit and then turned around and charged another in the rear that was fighting Africa Spearmen. Kurt's Bucellarii were surrounded by Numidians and shot down. My small unit of cavalry on the right were chased down and broken by Kurt's unit of cavalry on his left. But I then got the last unit I needed and thus the game finished 15-2 to me.

I must comment that Kurt was remarkably relaxed about his terrible discs for his cavalry, far more than I would have been. All credit to him.

So having now got within sight of some form of respectability score wise I played Peter Reilly with his Ancient British (with a Roman ally of course).

Table ended up a bit more cluttered than I would have liked but I did luck out and outscout Pete by 60% (IIRC) which allowed me to plan a bit based on his deployment. I put most of my army on the more open side of the table whilst Pete was more evenly distributed. In this game I was more happy to put the African Spearmen forward as although the Brits have warband types they are a lot less fierce than the Galatians.

As I suffered some last game forgetfulness in terms of pictures here are a few from the set up.

My approach was to push on my left where I felt I could win whilst holding back on my right to delay as much as possible and lose slowly in the rough terrain there. Sounds a familiar plan, would it work this time?

Pete was happy to push hard on his right - obviously, he had more troops there and better - but also brought up his warband centre, but was more cagey with his right wing mounted being careful about my Skilled shooting.

I was slightly hampered by having too many troops who needed to move at the same time under my Talented general, but only a bit and it probably wasn't too significant in the game.

My chariots, the Sacred Band and Africans fought Pete's warbands after a bit of manoeuvring. The chariots broke a superior unit on a second charge after breaking off and the massed spearmen were grinding down the Average warbands. The Scared Band ended up fighting 2 units, one Superior, but was doing well.

My Ligurians in the rough over-performed against Romans and Superior warband and although they broke they had taken many bases off by the time they did which weakened the Superior warband especially. 

Again to keep a long story short, especially as some things got complicated and without pictures would be hard to describe, I broke 3 of Pete's units (2 warband and a chariot unit) and he broke 2 of mine (Numidian nobles and the Ligurian) as well as destroying a SUG to leave us 8-7 when time was called. We were a bit held up by my answering umpire calls (last game always generates more) and I must thank Pete for his forbearance whilst I did that - fortunately I don't think it affected the result as both of us would have needed quite a few moves to win the game from where we were.

So in the end I finished on 38 points, 11th from 28. Just above mid-table and about where I had expected to be with the army. I enjoyed the army despite its limitations and will no doubt use it again in a similar theme.

Finally I must thank Will Denham and the staff at Boards& Swords for organising and hosting the event, including sorting lunch out for everyone on both days. Highly recommended if you can make any competition there.