Suppiluliuma II and Warfare 2021 - Part 3
Following the crushing of the Egyptians I am sitting well up the table, if a bit off the pace. In the third game I find myself facing Hammy's Early Libyan horde who have won both of their games so far. Can I beat "the blob" army ...
For those who want to review my army the list is in the first part of this series on my games at Warfare - https://gamer-at-the-end-of-time.blogspot.com/2021/11/suppiluliuma-ii-and-warfare-2021-part-1.html
Hammy's army is an absolute monster with 26, yes 26 units! Half of these are SUGs but that still leaves 13 TUGs so I need to break 7 of these to break his army. That all the SUGs shoot just makes life harder.
The Pre-Battle Sequence left us with an open plain apart from one large piece of rough ground on my right. This suited me down to the ground as I didn't want the Libyans able to hide in terrain or, use it as safe roads to get where they wanted (as I doubt Hammy would have hidden). I was helped by rather good PBS discs here.
The Libyan's deployed on a wide front - not that they have much choice being so big - with the Sea Peoples ally on their left where the terrain was. I deployed to meet this with the majority of my chariotry on my right on the basis that I needed to get them into, or shooting at Hammy's TUGs rather than chasing SUGs. My left was held by my ally.
It looked like this:
The now traditional gratuitous deployment pictures.
The limited shooting knocked 4 bases off the Libyans and 2 off the Hittites. Nothing dramatic.
Movement was fairly limited as we had a fairly early double pass. The main thing was Hammy pushing forward the Sea Peoples again and I moved my chariots forward to push the screening skirmishers away behind the Sea Peoples so that i could then shoot at them the following move.
This did, however, mean some of my units would be within range of the Sea Peoples javelins, but at Unskilled I could expect little damage.
After a cagey start things started to hot up a bit after this.
The next turn saw my unit of allied archers destroyed by shooting, however, my own shooting on the Sea Peoples knocked off a couple of bases which I felt was more significant. I did, however, lose a chariot base to the Sea Peoples Unskilled javelins.
On my left Hammy started to swarm around my ally even brining up a unit of chariots to join in. Must confess that as my chariots were much better than his I wasn't entirely sure it was a good move, mind you with all the shooting skirmishers around that was probably the compensating factor for Hammy.
I also pushed my Exceptional chariots forward in a possibly foolhardy drive at some TUGs, but it did allow me to get a chariot unit behind the flank of one Sea Peoples unit (the Superior one of course) with me being the active player next turn. I doubted this would cause too much damage to the Sea People but it would pin them in place and allow my other units to shoot at their unengaged bases - hopefully the combination would work.
As expected the flank charge into the Superior Sea Peoples didn't do much, but over the turn I knocked off 2 bases with combat and shooting. I shot another base of the damaged Sea Peoples unit which meant Hammy brought the skirmishers back in front to screen them. I also decided to carry on pushing the Exceptional chariots forward on what may well be a death ride.
On my left I charged my allied chariots as it seemed a batter bet than just standing and being shot at. I caught a couple of skirmisher units and hit Hammy's chariots as well, but did suffer some small loss myself - but overall I was pretty luck to be honest.
I now charged 2 units of Hittite chariots into the heavily damaged Sea Peoples unit and broke it. The following KaB plus melee and shooting them broke the Superior unit. The third Sea Peoples unit charged my Hittite infantry on my right and came off 2nd best as I had skirmishers able to shoot at them when they charged.
My Exceptional chariots charged and took next to no damage from the 9 shooting dice directed at them, and would end up hitting a unit of Unprotected, Combat Shy archers.
My allied chariots in combat broke the chariots they were fighting but were reduced to 2 bases and on the edge.
AT this point normal time ran out and although extra time had been allowed for due to delays (me umpiring for one) we decided to finish there, but did work out what the result would have been if we'd have played an extra move or so and scored the game on that basis.
That result was 12-7 to me. This was the worst result that the Libyans would get all competition and I was pretty pleased with how I had played - with a little help from the dice.
The last game follows here - https://gamer-at-the-end-of-time.blogspot.com/2021/12/suppiluliuma-ii-and-warfare-2021-part-4.html
Comments
Post a Comment