After game 2 produced a satisfying victory the Huns moved onto their 3rd game. This time they would face Dacians.
An account of this game follows ...
As ever, a reminder of the list I was using:
Yet again the Huns invaded and so yet again were denied the opportunity to fight in the Plains. Can't blame my opponent Steve for the choice, I'd have done the same in his position 😁Terrain placement didn't go too badly despite Steve attempting to get as much terrain as possible. We ended up with Rough/Difficult terrain in both flank sectors, but the middle of the table was nice and open. Meant things were likely to be a bit straight up and down, but it could have been a lot worse.
Scouting was, however, worse and quite comedic. I was outscouted by 50% 😆 Fortunately the way my army is constructed it meant I didn't have to place any of my really good units at first, but obviously I did have to give somethings away.
In the end I went with a fairly neutral deployment with the better shooting and fighting units spread across the line. I did have both noble units towards the left (one of the extreme left) as that is where it became clear that the Sarmatian ally would be and they were best placed to take these on. The Dacians did indeed deploy with the Sarmatians there and infantry extending to their left. As expected it was all going to be fairly head on.
Think I forgot to take pictures for a couple of moves but there are enough to show the progress of the game.
It looked like this:
Initial moves saw the armies rush towards each other with very little of anything you could call manoeuvre. I threw out a small unit on my right to slow down the Dacian left so that their numbers would not be able to swamp me. Apart from that and some slight wheels to bring shooting to bear as I desires that was about it really.
Steve mostly declined to charge too soon - damn his experience - however, my shooting did chip away bases from a number of units as I fell back in front of his advance. The one place he did charge, with the right most Sarmatian unit, my nobles rolled low and were caught when Steve chose to Prompt Through Fire. However, it was with a minimal contact and as I was better in melee I was happy enough about that and so expanded the number of bases fighting as much as I could.
Photography gap here I'm afraid. However, my nobles despatched the Sarmatians fairly quickly but were charged by a supporting unit of lesser quality Sarmatians and over a couple of moved were reduced to 3 bases - 1 Wund from breaking.
The second front line Sarmatians ended up fighting my unit with Roman armour and thanks to shooting before combat started also fared badly being broken as well. My cavalry then pursued into another lesser Sarmatian unit placed for that very purpose - my unit was down to 4 bases so not well placed really.
Elsewhere, facing the mass of Dacian infantry, my shooting was doing what I needed. A 6 base Superior unit was heavily damaged and then charged and broken by my second unit of nobles, although these took a fair amount of damage in the process. Combined with this units of Skilled Shooters were eroding other infantry units, one 9 base unit being reduced to 5 bases quite quickly.
Another picture gap, alas.
My Roman armoured cavalry died as expected, but against the odds my nobles who were down to 3 bases refused to die - Steve just couldn't roll the single Wound needed to break them.
Inevitably the badly damaged Dacian infantry unit was broken - being picked on by the Skilled Shooters rather made that inevitable. My horse archers then moved onto the next unit in line and soon had it badly damaged, at which point one of the horse archer units charged it to finish it off.
The end followed quite quickly at that point. The infantry unit broke which took the Dacian army and the noble unit on my left again refused to die. Thus I ended up with a 15-2 victory. Like the previous game I felt that the score flattered and by rights Steve should have had at least 4 more points; I'm sure his dice had a stiff talking to.
Game 4 will follow soon.
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