Attack! 2025 - Foederate Roman, day 2

 

Over the weekend of the 19th and 20th July at Devizes School, UK, 16 MeG players took part in competition with a theme of "Constantine the Great to Yazdgird III, 306 CE to 651 CE" with a list of allowed armies based on this.

I took a C5th CE Foederate Roman army and on day 1 had, shall we say, not performed as well as I had hoped - in fact I was only just above last place 😂

To see how day 2 went, read on ...

A reminder of my army:

I had been expecting to play a Byzantine army in the first game on Sunday, however, illness struck and the draw had to be changed and I actually faced an African Vandal army played by Graham Willmott. Whilst similar in that both are basically charging cavalry, I think that the Vandals were the tougher option for my army.

I again defended and once again tried to get some bits of terrain to break up the opposing mass of dangerous troops. We did get some terrain but as it was around the edges the majority of the field was open. I did, however, heavily outscout the Vandals which was useful. The Vandal army deployed towards my right where the field was most open. They were, as expected, a line of charging cavalry, but on their right there was a Moorish ally which whilst a useful addition, was something I may be able to target. I deployed more to my left aiming to attack the Vandal right (including the Moors) and pivot the table to give myself as much manoeuvre room as possible so to get in as much shooting as I could. It looked like this:

First move saw both armies wheel towards each other with both sides holding back their respective right wings. I had hoped that the Moors might be pushed forwards and that I may be able to rush up and bully them, however, Graham didn't fall into that trap 😔

However, a short while later as the two battle lines manoeuvred for whatever advantage they could get the Moorish light cavalry (Skilled shooters) were pushed forward and I was able to push a unit of Foederate cavalry up close and personal aiming to drive them off towards their base edge and open up the Vandal right a bit.

The charge of the Foederate cavalry caught and destroyed one of the Moorish units thanks to them being slowed by the Shoot & Charge shooting of my cavalry. Elsewhere I pushed up my Roman cavalry units to provide "hard points" to hold up the Vandals whilst my shooters would be able to skirmish effectively and, hopefully, cause casualties. I did slightly cock-up a bit here and one of my shooting units was pushed back through my Superior Romans causing a KaB on the latter which inevitably came up as a Skull 😖

Over the next few moves there were various charges by the Vandal cavalry with the inevitable evading and shooting by my skirmishing Huns. Success went both ways and the battle lines started to break up. I chased the second Moor light cavalry off the table, but the Foederate cavalry got badly shot up and a Moorish "heavy" cavalry unit moved in to attack it. Elsewhere a couple of my Hunnic cavalry ended up in combat with Vandal cavalry and were giving a good account of themselves as were the Average Roman cavalry who were fighting 2 enemies. It was all in the balance really.

In the next (and last) couple of moves a number of units on each side were destroyed leaving the table looking somewhat empty as the remaining units were scattered around.

Alas we ran out of time before either side could deliver a final blow. The game ended up as a draw, however, I felt that Graham had the advantage as it was probably easier for him to get the kills he needed to break my army than it was for me to do the same. Good game.

Despite getting my best score of the competition so far, doubling my haul, I was, thanks (sadly) to another drop out, firmly in last place. This drew me against Stephen Stead and his Imperial Roman. This is a very tough ask for a shooting army to beat, although it is also a tough ask for the Romans to beat a mobile horse army.

In this game I invaded and played my PBS cards to dictate the terrain as best I could. This turned out to be quite well and we ended up on a table with only a single piece of terrain - a hill in the righthand corner of the Roman side on the table. I slightly outscouted the Romans who deployed in a solid defensive array with the lone hill to their right. I weighted my deployment to my right to attack, and hopefully get around the Roman right. My left was to slow and distract the Roman right. It looked like this:

The initial few moves saw the Romans advance whilst keeping their formation quite tight and somewhat holding back their left. I pushed up to get as many troops shooting as soon as possible whilst keeping clear skirmish lanes behind them. On my right I did have 2 Skilled shooting units facing an Average legion, but as these have Shield Cover and were 8 bases this was still a challenge. This was not helped by the command with the cavalry who were to run around the flank on that side was hampered by consistently poor cards and the cavalry were unable to double move. On my left I got a small unit of Foederate cavalry round the back of another Average legion which was useful, but was not going to be decisive as there were only 4 bases to 8.

Due to cards the small cavalry unit was unable to charge as soon as I wanted it to. Additionally. my shooting was not very good. I hadn't expected wonders due to the Shield Cover of the Romans, but it was still a tad disappointing.

A charge and break off by the small cavalry unit caused some damage to one legion, but elsewhere my shooting remained less that I would have hoped for and the Romans continued their slow, but remorseless advance. I had, however, finally got a cavalry unit around the Roman left - 2 or 3 moves later than I had planned for though 😕

There wasn't much action after this before we ran out of time. The small cavalry unit had another punt at the legion, but fluffed its lines and was broken in the melee when the legionaries turned round and beat them up. The game ended with Stephen slightly ahead in a low scoring game.

The outcome of my 4, somewhat unsuccessful games, coupled with 4 players having dropped out, was that I finished in last place.

This is the very first time I have managed this in a wargames competition and I have felt it was a gap in my wargaming palmarès 😂  As you can see I was happy to have finally managed it ...

All in all it was another really enjoyable competition and in an odd way a successful one.

Now on to Britcon in August ... 😁