Over the weekend of the 14th and 15th June at Battlefield Hobbies in Daventry, UK, 22 MeG players took part in an "armies and enemies" of the Persians competition.
I took a C4th CE Imperial Roman army. After day one I was rather off the pace, so to see how they fared in the last two games read on ...
A reminder of the list I took was:
For the first game on Sunday I was drawn against an Early Imperial Roman, so a potentially similar army to mine.
The PBS saw me invading (I think) and I engineered a fairly open table. I expected to have more mounted and sow anted the room to manoeuvre. I also expected the Early Imperial Romans to have an Armenian ally which would be Tribal catafracts - tough but manoeuvre like bricks, so again more room for me would be good. We ended up with some rough terrain on the table edges which had no impact on the game, and a gentle hill in the centre that would have an effect.
I outscouted the other Romans by a fair chunk. They deployed with auxilia and a small legionary with bolt shooter behind the hill ready to advance onto it, legions and Praetorians to their right, the Armenian to their left and a small equites unit in reserve. I deployed with my Armenians on my left, infantry in the centre and my Roman cavalry on my right. I was deployed with the legions well back as I wanted to encourage the other Romans to come to me to utilise my manoeuvre advantages. It looked like this:
First moves saw the Early Romans advance as a coherent line with their centre climbing up onto the hill as expected. I pushed an Armenian cavalry unit forward on my left and the Roman cavalry on my right to threaten the enemy Armenians. Half of my legions also advanced.
The Early Romans reacted to these moves by wheeling their Armenians to stop my Roman cavalry running around their flank and moving their small reserve to my left. However, Richard made a bit of a mistake by bringing an auxilia unit off the hill to threated troops I had advanced to shoot at his other auxilia (and had got lucky and taken a base off). This allowed me to double move an Armenian cavalry unit to be able to charge them in the flank the following move.
The auxilia were ridden down in a satisfactory way but a legion was wheeled to threaten the flank of the Armenians. However, this would not stop the Armenians charging up the hill to have a punt at the infantry sitting there. Not a good thing for loner survivability but I was happy to expend them to cause damage that might be exploited later. On the left I teed up a charge on the cavalry that had been sent there and on the right the cavalry dance continued.
The (now) expendable Armenians didn't do much damage but hung in there, but would not last too much longer. The attack on the left broke off after not doing much - they thus avoided being charged in the flank by a legionary unit; I had held back a card to allow for this break off. The enemy Praetorians had start to advance with intent at my line and I started to prepare a reception for them. More cavalry dancing happened on my right.
My expendable Armenian cavalry finally gave up the ghost the following move, whilst we had a bit of a stand off on my left. On the right, however, I had finally managed to isolate a unit of the enemy Armenians thanks to the Drilled manoeuvring of my Roman cavalry and some patience on my part. The equites were in a position to flank charge the catafracts whilst the scholae would fight them frontally - the combination should be able to break them fairly quickly. Elsewhere nothing much of note took place.
As hoped the Armenian catafracts broke in a pleasingly rapid fashion and my Scholae pursued into the rear of the other Armenian catafract unit which didn't like it at all.
However, the game ran out of time shortly after this and we ended up with a 9-6 result.
Sunday afternoon saw a matchup that is now traditional in 2025 for the second day of a competition - I was drawn against Matt Haywood and his Middle Sasanid Persians. Always good fun games, but he tends to get the better of the result.
I defended (IIRC) and whilst trying for a fairly open field as possible but with a couple of rough areas to play with partly failed in that aim. We had forests down the left of the table (from my point of view) providing a secure flank and a couple of patches of rough terrain in annoying places on my base line. There was no outscouting which meant I was deploying troops first which was also a slight hindrance - but nothing fatal.
I deployed most of my army between the rough going the the forests. Armenians mostly on the left but one unit more central with the Roman cavalry on the right. On legion was in the rough on the right with the others and the guard ahead of the cavalry. The plan was to manoeuvre the cavalry around the infantry as needed. Matt deployed compactly as is his wont with a big strike force of catafracts and elephants facing my centre and right with Sasanid swordsmen and Sabir allies in support. His only unit of asvaran cavalry was on his left. It looked like this:
Matt advanced aggressively aiming his elephants and catafracts at my right which was weaker and also where I had a bit of a traffic jam due to where I had deployed my cavalry (bit of a mistake on my part). I did wonder if he should commit both catafract units to this but hitting hard and fast is a perfectly good choice IMO. I manoeuvred my scholae towards the right (thus demonstrating where I should have deployed them to begin with ... whilst also advancing my Armenians on the left to attack the Sasanid right where a single unit of swordsmen had a big job to do.
The following move teed up the first combats of the game. My Armenians lines up to charge the swordsmen . I decided to go with both attacking frontally as opposed to one frontally and manoeuvring the other for a subsequent flank attack on the basis that a quick win using both offered better rewards; of course if I didn't win quickly I wouldn't get those rewards ... My guard, although having been a bit rubbish in previous games, were committed to taking on one of the catafract units. Elsewhere I tried to line up as much shooting on elephants as possible including with bolt shooters who can be deadly against them.
Well, best laid plans and all that ... Quick wins were clearly not on the cards for either side - something that would carry on throughout the game with an inordinate amount of blanks and "S" being rolled but damage being a rarity. The Armenians charged in, fought a melee and broke of after doing minimal damage, but at least were not damaged themselves. Matt's catafracts did the same against my guard. Handbags all round. My only real success was a bolt shooter killing an elephant base with one shot. On my right my scholae were now lined up with the asvaran unit - we would soon see if either of them could roll better than the rest of our armies.
The answer to the last question was yes for both of us. The asvaran had great shooting, however, they were then cut to pieces by the scholae but this left the latter two bases down but in the Sasanid backfield. In the centre the guard lived up to their past performance and were soon one wound off breaking having only inflicted a single base loss on the catafracts they were fighting. In the other fights it was all handbags with not much damage being done although the Armenians were starting to get somewhere by dint of weight of numbers.
However, by this time it appears that the guard had been reduced to the few men who could actually fight and despite only one wound being needed to break them they stayed where they were. The other two engaged legions also did the same despite fighting larger numbers - on the other hand little damage was being inflicted back. The Armenians did manage to overwhelm the swordsmen leaving them in a very advantageous position.
Alas, like other games that weekend time ran out before either side could get a significant victory. However, before we stopped two of my legions finally broke as did one of the elephant units - the guard, however, remained there at the end, one wound off breaking. This latter would have been important if we had got another move in as one of the Armenians had moved to be able to flank charge the catafracts fighting the guard. The other Armenian unit of the left had also double moved to be within charge range of the Sasanid camp. If we had had the time I feel that I had a fair chance of winning the game, but it could have been close.
We ended up 9-7 which is the best result I've had against Matt this year. Another good game 😁
Overall a really good weekends games. I finished 9th from 22 which was respectable enough. The list was OK but the guard are not worth the additional points over a superior legion with melee expert and I'd drop them down to that in future. A second superior legion would be useful as well for army balance I think, and would probably mean the Armenian ally would have just two lancer units not three.
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