Seleucids v Classical Indians, Mortem et Gloriam (MeG).

I played a super exciting game of MeG this week using my Seleucids v my friends Classical Indians. Apologies in advance for any mistakes in the description as I am very much still learning.

I was using the following: 

The Indians consisted of fifteen battle groups of thirteen TuGs (Tactical groups) including five units of elephants in twos, two unskilled javelin cavalry and the remaining seven TuGs were Mauryans archers in nines with the front rank being short spear. Also two skirmisher SuGs (Skirmisher groups) in nines. The army therefore had a breaking point of seven. It is important to note that it is the TuGs (main battle troops), not SuGs that determine the army break point.

I really liked the Indian army and suspected I was going to get shot to pieces. I have played it before but got super lucky with a unit of Seleucid elephants (in fours) which rampaged through my opponents army. 

The other challenge would be trying to keep my cataphracts away from his five units of elephants. In this list I opted for two units of nine skilled bow Cretan archers. Probably a mistake as they are expensive and took away from more TuGs

My opponent opted to defend and chose Jungle terrain but I had much better cards and was able to shift the terrain to have not much terrain apart from on the right hand edge as this would suit my heavy foot. 

We deployed as follows:

Pike in the middle flanked by the other stuf. The Indians alternated elephants and bow.

I had the first turn and pushed my pike forward in the middle but unfortunately I didn’t have good enough cards to double move.

I held my cataphracts back on my left flank. On my right flank I pushed my other cataphracts forward supported with javelins and Cretan archers to deal with the elephants. If I could wipe out the elephants on that flank I reasoned my cataphracts could run rampant.

My opponent pushed his elephants on my right flank and I fired at them causing a wound. I dropped my cataphracts back. 

On my left flank I pushed the Spearmen and Thracians towards the enemy but suffered from the bow shots. My Cretans moved up to return fire. Also on the left my cataphracts turned and headed towards his javelin cavalry.

On the right flank my opponent positioned his skirmishers to shield his elephants from the Javelins.

On the left flank my Theoroperei were being shot to pieces, the Thracians plodded on. 

My cataphracts charged his cavalry. He unluckily rolled a one for the flee distance and I caught and destroyed the TuG.

In the centre my pike pushed on under a hail of bow fire. I used cards to heal some wounds but even so I was suffering some casualties. I should have taken more and cheaper skirmishers to allow me to shield my pike blocks in situations such as this.

Now the other disadvantage of having taken expensive cretan skirmishers is that I was a TuG down compared with previous lists which as you can see above left the two flanks of my pike blocks weak. 

Unfortunately things now got so exciting I forgot to take photos. I pushed on into the centre of the Indian army taking some more wounds. I was charged in both flanks. However my central pike started to do serious damage and TuGs of Indian archers broke off (passing their KAB test) to force me to charge again. 

We had reached a position where I had broken two of the Indian TuGs but I had lost three TuGs. 

I then on the left flank lost my Thracians that had been fighting spear/archers and cav in the flank (far distance in the picture below) although my cataphracts were closing in to take vengeance.

I was now in a critical position. My central pike blocks were making progress but were taking casualties with my central superior pike one wound from breaking which would break my army.

It was my turn to decide who fights first and I was able to choose a combat which involved a relatively unscathed pike block against an elephant TuG to the left of centre of the main battle. If I was lucky and could kill the elephant TuG this  would force a KAB (morale) test on three of the Indian TuGs two of which were severely damaged. If I failed to do this I would almost certainly (and deservedly) lose. My opponent had played better and had the better army. 

But yes lady luck was with me again.   In the combat with the first column my full ranks of pike killed an elephant. This caused a “shove” effect with the adjacent depleted pike column which improved the factor for them and meant I wounded the second elephant and broke the TuG. 

The resulting KAB test (more severe because elephants caused the test), destroyed two more of the Indian TuGs in the centre which saved my severely wounded superior pike. The picture below shows the resulting situation. The orange dice on the left showing where the critical elephant TuG perished.

We were now in a position where I had lost four TuGs and one more broken TuG would break my army. My opponent had lost five TuGs and I needed two more to break him.

Luckily for me I had two opportunities if I could defend my superior pike that were on the verge of breaking. I pushed them out of the way and charged with the cataphracts on the left flank against the spear/archers that had killed the Thracians.

 On my right flank I was able to double charge another unit of spear/bow with the cataphracts going into the rear. In the picture below you can see the cataphracts on the left and right flanks readying to charge

Again I was lucky and broke both TuGs which broke the Indian army just before they broke me. 

I was extremely lucky in this game and my opponent undoubtedly deserved to win.

Anyway it was a really fantastic game and I am very keen to get some more games in.

Mortem et Gloriam

As per my previous post over the last few months I have started to play some games of a relatively new system “Mortem et Gloriam” or (MeG). This system holds some things in common with other Ancients systems such as FoG but it uses cards to activate movement and other actions (e.g. wound healing) and special coloured dice to resolve shooting and combat. The game takes about two and a half to three hours to play (similar to FoG) but what I really like about it is it feels fast paced and can be relatively “bloody” with 3 out of the 4 games I have played reaching an outcome (one side breaking). 

The game system is designed by Simon Hall and you can find out more on his website: thewargameszone.org, or just google Mortem et Gloriam.

Here are some pictures from a game I played a couple of weeks ago using my Seleucids v Imperial Romans. I will do some more detailed write-ups of forthcoming games.

State of the Nation.

I have not posted in a long time mainly due to being very busy with work but also the three systems I play have been in some sort of flux.

Firstly Flames of War V4 came out earlier in the year to what has been a mixed reception. I am rather on the fence myself – I preferred V3 but would happily play V4 if there was enough critical mass in my area. However my local gaming club (NWGC) is playing it less and so I have only played a couple of games. I am watching and waiting at the moment.

I used to play FoG V2 at the NWGC and at another club in the Manchester area (Maws), but Maws have changed club nights meaning I can no longer easily attend.  Also FoG has changed to V3. My club mates at the NWGC that used to play FoG have switched to a new Ancients game “Mortem et Gloriam” or MeG. I have now played several games of MeG and am really enjoying it but more of that later. 

I have mostly been continuing to play 9th age with my Ogre Khans and doing well on the few occasions I have managed to play tournaments (I came second at the Midlands GT which I was rather pleased with). Anyway The 9th Age too is changing to V 2.0 (sigh!) supposedly at the end of the year, so my motivation to think of new army lists or play practice games for that system is very limited at the moment.  I will play a team tournament for The 9th age in mid November but other than that I will be playing less until the new rules come out.

I honestly think the whole wargaming scene (for the games I play and in my area at least), is suffering from a relatively static number of players but with established systems changing and more and more new systems competing for the same players. This has had the rather unfortunate effect of splintering the scene and making the population for a given system smaller and less viable. 

So my focus for the next period will be MeG where the scene is small but growing and I intend to post progress and games here. I will most likely continue to play The 9th Age when the new rules set comes out and I will play the odd game of FOW V4 mainly to stay in touch with good friends where that is our common game.

A couple of pictures of my beloved Ogre Khans as I never got around to posting them in here.

Tankovy v German infantry from Fortress Italy.

I had a great Late War FOW game this week using my Tankovy from Red Bear v 

German Infantry from Fortress Italy. We played the No Retreat mission. Find some photos from the game plus a link to a write up my friend did on his blog. Hope you enjoy the pictures. His terrain tables are always pretty special.

http://m10cachilles.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/new-year-new-look.html

1500 point Late War one day tournament write up.

Last weekend I attended a one day six player tournament “PicknMix” at my local gaming centre organised by Dave from the Fire for Effect Podcast. http://fireforeffect.podomatic.com/

It was 1500 points late war which was great as it bridges the gap nicely between the 1420 point late war games I have played this year and what will be the 2017 late war standard of 1515 points (at least until 4th edition changes come in).

I had played a lot with my German infantry this year and so I decided to take a US 7th Armoured force from the newly released Bulge compilation. I wanted to try out the new reworked special character Patton who has been reduced in effectiveness and points from the old “Blood Guts and Glory” but you still get always attack and a reroll for reserves. I have my eye on using a variant of this list for the “Corrivalry” late war event in February so this was a perfect opportunity to practice.

Thanks to Dave for letting me use some of the photographs he took. For more photos of the event visit his blog here….http://m10cachilles.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/pick-and-mix-2016.html
My list was as follows:

My first game was against a Soviet Heavy Self Propelled Artillery Company as follows:

Hq -IS-2

3 x ISU152

3x ISU152

3x IS-2

4x KV-8

We were playing the Hasty Attack scenario with me as attacker due to Patton.

My opponent put his KV8s and a platoon of 152s in reserve and I chose to put my artillery and both tank platoons on table with the mortars, Stuart’s and Recce in reserve.

The objective around which the fight developed was situated on the bottom right hand side of the picture below the road.

As per the scenario I had to remove an objective so I elected to remove the more difficult one to approach (due to the river) on the right hand side of the table as I look at it (on the left hand side of the picture above). My opponent placed his IS2s in the big hill in the middle and I loaded by left flank with tanks ready for an early assault on the objective. The Soviets then immediate ambushed onto the objective facing my tanks.

I had the first turn and decided that my best bet was to go for an immediate and full out attack on the objective before his reserves started to arrive. Also the terrain helped me with a hill situated conveniently in front of the objective protecting me from his ISU152s and once I moved far enough also from the IS2s. As both his platoons of tanks were RoF 1 my idea was to try and make him move thus making his to hit rolls harder.

I got reserves (mortars) at the first time of asking which I used in the following turns to smoke the IS2s. I moved forward on turn 1 and kept out of range of the IS2s. They had to move and failed to hit me in the Soviet turn 1.

I then continued to move right up to the small hill at the top of the picture above and stayed completely out of sight. (Sorry all the action is difficult to see in the picture).

Now I had noticed that to the left of the hill there was a good couple of inch gap allowing my tanks to swarm through instead of being slowed over the hill. I don’t think my opponent had noticed this as he has left the ISU152s quite far forward allowing me to get a substantial number of tanks (especially the fast Easy Eights) into the flank of the Soviet tanks. My shots killed and bailed his tanks putting him on a test, with the slow IS2s still a long way from the objective. He failed the test despite being fearless (and throwing the HQ in for the reroll) and the departure of that platoon gave me the objective for a 6-1 win.
My next game was against a German PanzerKompanie from (I think?) Desperate Measures.

HQ 2 panzer IV Js

4x Panzer IV Js

3 x Panthers

A platoon of recce Pumas (one with a Pak40 gun)

Platoon of Panzerfaust toting PanzerGrenadiers with half tracks.

All Confident Veteran.

The scenario was Dust up.

I suspected I might struggle in this game as historically I had found Panthers a major pain when using my US 7th armoured.
I put my two Sherman platoons and artillery on the table and my opponent put his Panthers and Panzergrenadiers on with the Grenadiers covering the objectives.

My opponent got the first turn but kept his Panthers gone to ground and waited for the reserves to arrive.

I kept one of my Tank platoons near the objective and the other one started to manoeuvre towards the wood to face his 2ic Panzer IV and the Grenadiers.

I tried to hit the Panthers with artillery but to no avail.

The next couple of turns consisted of moving my tank platoon around the wood and the Germans edging the Panthers forward in preparation for the arrival of the Reserves.

I had been edging my Sherman platoon near the objective backwards knowing that when the reserves arrived there was a risk of them flanking me (as they can arrive from within 16inches of the table edge).

My Stuart’s arrived and I moved them to get some flanking shots on the gone to ground 2ic Panzer. They missed, however my Easy Eights finished the job.

Both of my opponent’s reserves arrived (the Pumas and Panzer IVs). Despite what I said above I had accidentally kinked my line of tanks near my objective allowing some side shots from his tanks. My Shermans quaked in their boots as shots came in from the Panthers, Panzer IVs and Pumas (which at least had all moved). My opponent’s shooting dice were pretty rubbish and over this turn and the next he only succeeded in killing two tanks (an Easy Eight and a Sherman).

I meanwhile managed to range in on the Panzer IVs with my artillery (killed one bailed two) and edged my second Sherman platoon around to get side/ rear shots into the Panthers who were engaging my other platoon to the front.

I also moved my Stuart’s to start putting shots into the 1ic.

After my lucky escape near my objective my shooting started to bear fruit eventually killing the Panzer IVs and two of the Panthers. I also destroyed one of the Pumas with the other one running for safety.

I meanwhile had brought in my little recce platoon to lift gone to ground from the Grenadiers but it died to shooting. My Stuart’s also succumbed to shooting from the Panzer 1ic and the remaining Panther.

I finished off the Panther leaving us with two dead platoons each. In order to win I needed to assault the dug in “fausted” grenadiers. I simply didn’t have time to do this before time was called so the game ended as a 3-3 draw.

An interesting game but one where I wasn’t particularly happy with my play making mistakes with positioning of the Sherman platoon and giving away the Recce and Stuarts too easily.

Nevertheless I went into my final game knowing that with a good win I could still win the tournament.
My final opponent was using British Airlanding and the scenario was Fighting Withdrawal with me as the attacker.

This was going to be another tricky one with heaps of Fearless veteran infantry with PIATs and gammon bombs and also a large platoon of engineers (pioneers) supported by artillery and six pounders. My opponent strung his infantry platoons out across the board placing the teams so there was no way I could sneak through his lines without assaulting him. One unit of six pounders was placed on his left flank and the other kept in ambush.

My opponent had placed his objective centrally (this one would be removed last) but I instead decided to go for an all out assault on his right flank objective at what I saw as the weakest point. I kept my platoon of Stuarts over on my right flank to force him to keep a presence there to secure the third objective.

I started only eight inches in from the board edge and so my first turn was spent pushing the tanks forward ready for the assault next turn. I fired at the infantry in front of me killing one team. If my opponent popped his six pounder ambush I was in the open but I hoped my Jumbos would negate some of the effects.

In the event my opponent decided not to ambush this turn but instead ranged in with his artillery. No damage was done to the Shermans but I had to keep moving as once the Light Royal Artillery battery ranges in it becomes lethal the following turn.

I stuck with my plan and opened up on the Airlanding platoon before assaulting with my right most Sherman platoon joined by the 1 and 2ic.

I eventually broke off (failed motivation) but had made a mess of his platoon for the loss of three tanks. I then went in with my second tank platoon into the wood. I didn’t bog any tanks and wiped out his remaining infantry in front of me. There was one base left from his platoon further away from the action but it failed its sole survivor test.

I was now contesting the objective after consolidating and so my opponent ambushed his six pounders to contest the objective. The British Engineers started to move over to the action but they were a long way from the objective with a few teams having been lost when they were dragged into the initial assault. The British 1ic contesting the objective decided to assault my leading jumbo (which had been bailed by artillery fire). Due to the arrangement of tanks my defensive fire would be limited. He failed to kill the jumbo and I got his 1ic in the counter assault.

I now moved out of the wood into the open (I had to move again as his artillery had ranged in). Also to fully contest the objective and make sure I was in range of the gone to ground six pounders which I shot at but without success. I also fired at the Engineers that were trying to move towards the objective and killed the leading team that i could see. My opponent had withdrawn the six pounders on the other flank (first platoon to be withdrawn) and I moved my Stuart’s further forward to keep the pressure on the third objective. I also had ranged in with my artillery on his six pounders where I was attacking.

My opponent now had a difficult decision. Did he open up with his six pounders to try and kill my second depleted Sherman platoon or did he remain gone to ground? Next turn I would have 16 main gun shots into his six pounders hitting on sixes (or fives if I a managed to remove gone to ground with the recce I had been moving up).

The British 6 pounders did decide to fire and wiped out my depleted Sherman platoon. I returned fire and knocked out the gun that was contesting.

It was now all over for the British as all they could do was move a gun command team near the objective that would then have been killed. This gave me. 5-2 win.
On the next table my previous opponent had also won 5-2 meant we were tied for first place. We had also drawn the game when we played which meant there was no way of easily separating us. The organiser decided we would roll off to decide who took the first and second trophy. I got the second place trophy but hey that’s dice for you!

A really great time was had by all and I am now eagerly looking forward to the big Corrivalry event that I will attend in February. I just need to decide what list to take I really enjoyed using US 7th Armoured again but I did have a strong feeling that all the work was just done by the two tanks platoons with precious little contribution from the remainder. I may therefore look at a modified version of the list.

9th Age North West GT

Well it’s been some time since I have posted but I’m back in the saddle and ready to bring you some updates. I may not have been blogging but I’ve certainly been playing plenty of games mostly in the form of The 9th age.

Last time I posted about 9th age (T9A) I was using Dread Elves but having played a few games with them I was coming to the conclusion that they were a little underpowered. I was finding in particular difficulty in competing for secondary objectives which are very important accounting for a points swing of 6 in a 20-0 system.  Sure I could field a strong Death Star type unit, but my other banner bearing units weren’t surviving as they were too small and lacked toughness. My overall impression is that several key units are over pointed. It will be interesting to see if the 9th age team agree when the update to the rules and book come out at the end of October. I’m sure I will come back to Dread Elves but for now I was looking to expand my experience with other armies.

Firstly Vermin Swarm: I enrolled for a tournament using them in early October, The NorthWest GT held at Element Games in the UK.

I played a few practice games and arrived at the following list (to be honest based mainly on my experience with having used Skaven whilst playing warhammer).

I had high hopes for this list. A really solid combat block supported by 2 banner blocks, 2 Dread Mills to go on the Flanks and a substantial amount of shooting to soften things up on the way in and diverters to keep away anything I didn’t want to fight. Some magic but not too much.  I don’t like to over invest in magic. So onto the weekend….

Fifty six eager gamers gathered and I was ready for my first game against…….Vermin Swarm ! Well this was going to be interesting my opponent had a combat list so the question was could I shoot him off before he got to me?

We were using a classic deployment with Breakthrough as the secondary objective. I positioned my army over to the right flank but with a Dreadmill on each flank. My Jezails were in the middle. My opponent spread his army out with his Abomination and Rat at Arms facing off against my main combat blocks, his Vermin hulks with the chief more or less central. The Vermin Guard and Thunderhulks were also central. The large block of Plague Brotherhood were on his right flank with a unit of rat at arms. He started his advance towards me but very quickly my shooting (Naptha thrower) killed his Abomination with its flaming attacks and D3 wounds. My shooting and magic also damaged his big Vermin Hulk block. I charged and destroyed his rat at arms with my Vermin Guard and characters. I then swung the unit round to face the centre of the board.

My shooting and magic continued to decimate his  Vermin Hulks and Thunderhulks. I then got a Dreadmill and my main block into his Vermin Guard with characters. It was completely destroyed and after that it was just a question of mopping up. This gave me 20-0 win and a lot of victory points meaning for game two I was on table one facing Vampire Covenant.

This was a classic deployment again with Breakthrough as the objective. I knew I was going to really struggle to win the objective as I didn’t think I could stop the zombies just marching into my deployment zone whilst I had to deal with his combat threats. I think this was a mistake and I should have tackled the zombies and gone for a more open type of games. In the event I “castled” in my left corner  and left of centre and put just a Dreadmill on the right flank facing the zombies. Two big hills also hampered me from shooting his Winged Reapers. I managed to severely deplete his Barrow Knight with shooting but at the same time I was losing a lot of my smaller units. I got a Dreadmill into the Reapers but it fluffed and went down. I also got a Dreadmill into the side of the Barrow Knight block but it was killed by the Vampire Lord having done a disappointingly small amount of damage. I eventually managed to corner his Barrow Knights with my Vermin Guard “Death Star”. It was the final turn of the game and we were running out of time. He had managed to raise back most of his Knights but as I was losing anyway I decided to go in. I killed the Vampire Lord with my assassin but stupidly I then put the attacks from my lord on the unit rather than trying kill one of his other vampires. He attacked back with his vampires and killed both my assassin and Tyrant with a lot of Lethal Strike. No one broke/crumbled and the game ended 16-4 to my opponent.

My third game was against Orcs and Goblins with Secure Target as the secondary objective.

This game very much centred around me trying (and mostly succeeding) in shooting the Gargantula Spiders. Three of them make for a pretty scary prospect and I dare not push towards his Orc Block without neutralising the spiders. We more or less faced off opposite each other with  a Dreadmill and a Gargantula and a war machine on the other flank. I was a little surprised my opponent didn’t just try and rush me with the Orc block and three Spiders. We thought afterwards this might have been best. In the end I squeezed a 12-8 win by shooting the spiders and his General on a chariot plus bits such Wolf Chariots and Gnashers. I got quite lucky killing a wounded Gagantula with a misfiring cannon and shooting his general with one remaining wound on the last turn of the game. I again lost a lot of small units and no one claimed the objective.

Game 4 saw me on table 11 playing Undying Dynasties. These would be a real surprise for me as I had not played them in 9th age.

This game we rolled diagonal deployment and hold the ground. The diagonal deployment was crucial as it would surely enable my opponents ambushing units to get behind my army and start mopping up points quickly. This style of  9 th age Undying Dynasty list is a real departure from the Tomb Kings of Warhammer being much more combat oriented. I knew I would have to be very careful with the Necropolis guard and Winged Reapers as they could deal serious combat damage. In retrospect I should have pushed straight at the Necro Guard but instead I held back to use my shooting and get one of the Dreadmills around the flank. This was all too slow and I failed to adequately prepare for the Stalkers and Tomb Cataphracts coming from behind. I tried to deal with them using my shooting but a Dreadmill would have been much more effective. I ended up losing a lot of my smaller units to the ambushers although I did kill all three units in the end. I got a charge into the flank of the Reapers with a Dreadmill but it again failed to make signifant impact and was killed in the second round of combat. I gave away my second Dreadmill cheaply trying to pin the NecroGuard in Place. My Vermin Guard had only one chance to charge the Necropolis guard at an advantageous time but I failed to make it. In the end I picked up the three ambushing units and both units of chariots but I lost everything expect my main blocks, general , BSB and Assassin. My opponent also got the scenario giving him a 15-5 win.

My final game was against Dwarven Holds.

I forget which scenario we played (think it was Secure Target) but in the end it didnt really matter. I was fortunate that one of my friends uses a similar type of combat Dwarf list and I knew that trying to fight the main blocks was a major pain due to the parry and armour. Instead I avoided and diverted the main blocks while I shot and cast magic at them. In the end all he had left was a Lord and BSB. This gave me a 19-1 win.

So overall I finished 16th out of 56 in my first 9th Age tournament which I was quite pleased with given the strength of the field (lots of ETC players). I also won best Vermin Swarm.

The tournament was very well organised, I had five great opponents and the venue was a real pleasure to play at so all in all a good weekend !

As for the list well yes it can be dangerous but I am coming to think that my list was not optimal. The small units (Jezails, Cannons, Bombadiers),  bleed points and one of the challenges with them is (like Dread Elves) getting three solid banner blocks in. My list definitely lacked a second serious combat unit. There were a couple of times during the tournament where I was prevented from pushing as a result of this. I am thinking of squeezing in a bigger Plague Botherhood unit with a Pendulum but more of that at a later date. But also I need to just play better. One thing I really noticed is that due to relative inexperience in 9th Age I am still not sure about certain close combat match ups. A classic example of this is when I had to decide whether to put my Vermin Guard block into the Barrow Knight “bus”. Being confident about these decisions can make the difference between winning and losing. Speaking to the non ETC players at the weekend this seems to be a common theme. I guess the answer is more practice against different armies and the best way to do that is to play more tournaments. So taking my own advice I have signed up for the Team England Breakthrough Tournament at Element Games NWGC on 4-5 November. Look forward to seeing you there if you can make it.

As always happy to receive comments or questions. Thanks for reading.

Late War 1420 points, Tankovy v Panzerkamfgruppe from Nachtjager

So I finally got around to playing some FOW again after an absence of a few weeks. Last Tuesday the FOW players at our local gaming club made a special effort to all come down. We managed to get 13 players in total and it was great to get that club feel. 

Above pictured most of the Fire for Effect podcast crew who joined in the gaming.

German infantry take on British paras.

I had arranged to play a 142o point game against a friend of mine and had decided to try out Tankovy at 1420 points and so had brought the following list.

Fairly solid. The only thing it really struggles against is heavy tanks. And yes you guessed it my opponent had brought a Panther company. Specifically one of the night fighting Panzerkamfgruppe from Nachtjager . This was 7 reluctant veteran panthers (in platoons of 2s) with a small Panzergrenadierkompamie platoon fully “fausted up”.

We rolled up a fair fight (Encounter)  so at least I didn’t have to contend with night fighting against tanks with infrared. Nevertheless this was likely to be a very short game. Both of us had scattered delayed reserves. I kept on a Tankovy platoon and the SU100s and my opponent had 2 Panther platoons. I covered one objective with the SU s and one with the T34s.

I won’t go into a lot detail as the game doesn’t really warrant it. Essentially my opponent’s reserves arrived at the first time of asking and picked on and killed the SU100s (the only thing that can really hurt the Panthers frontally). This was always going to happen but I hastened their end by pushing two further forward than I should have done. 

Over on my left flank I decided to try and rush the objective to get into the Panthers’ side armour but unfortunately the Panzergrenadiers turned up in the correct place to support the 3 panthers and cover the objective. I tried to machine the infantry before they got chance to dig in but good luck on my opponents behalf meant he didn’t lose any teams. Return fire from the Panthers decimated the T34s signalling the end of the game.

I think the lesson learned is 1420 points for Tankovy sounds great but if you come up against big cats and specifically panthers it really spells trouble. There are no points for air support and so the SU100s are the key but of course your opponent knows that. I think all in all I would hesitate to take my Tankovy list to a tournament. But probably I just need to play better. Any suggestions for dealing with this type of matchup greatly received.

Looking forward to playing some more FOW in the coming week…

Bosporans v Early Seleucids

I have been rather busy at work lately and got behind with my posts but I will try and remedy that today with a couple of updates. Firstly one on a FoG game I played at the club recently as part of a FoG 750 pt Ancients League we are playing. I was using my full Lancer Bosporan army (see the last battle report for the list) but basically consists of 7 battle groups of Superior undrilled lancers supported by light foot and light horse. My opponent was using Early Successor (Seleucid) with his army consisting of 2 battle groups of normal pike , a big block (12) of superior pike, 2 lancers, 2 medium foot battlegroups (Thorakatai and Thracians), Elephants, 3 units of light horse and 2 units of light foot javelins (13 BGs).

I won the initiative and opted for Steppe terrain which in the end saw just 2 blocks of uneven ground go down open his right flank. My plan was to use my speed to get around his flanks but at the same time keep pressure on his front.

In the event as you can see from the pictures I don’t think I kept enough battle groups of lancers directly ahead of him so when I moved down his left flank he wheeled his pike and his Elephants protected the flank. 

His lancer unit moved to plug the gap in the line. This meant I never managed to get around his flank and I certainly didn’t want to engage the pike frontally. On my left flank (with the terrain) there was a stand off with my lancers and his lancers plus medium foot in terrain staring at each other.  

On the same flank my light foot outnumbered his, and even though mine were poor I managed to fragment one of his battle groups through shooting.
This ended up being the only blood in a very standoffish game (if that’s a word). 11-9 to me. Next time I need to break my lancers into smaller groups and keep the front more threatened as I move down the flank. 

Dread Elf on Manticore

I have decided to add a hero on a Manticore to my Dread Elf 9th Age army. I bought the AOS Chaos Lord on Manticore and managed (with suitable application of green stuff) to replace the chaos character with a champion from the GW Dark Elf Cold One box. I’m rather pleased with the way it has worked out.

First 9th Age game

As per the post below I have decided to start playing “The 9th Age” in addition to my historical wargaming. A friend had agreed to give me a 2000 point introductory game, so I sat down the previous weekend and read the rules and wrote an army list. My initial impression was it would  play in a very similar way to warhammer but with significant modifications to the magic phase. I would be using Dread Elves  and my opponent was using  Empire of Sonnstahl.

I could see unsurprisingly that the cost of certain units that were “overpowered”in the old Dark Elf book had seen a significant increase in cost and a curtailing of their abilities. The most obvious example of this were the Dark Acolytes (Doom Fire Warlocks) which now gained magical ability by upgrading the champion to a wizard for 60 points. The 9th Age team have approached the armies with balance in mind and my view is this type of modification is perfectly valid providing they have been even handed across the races.

I noticed there were unit choices that also had significant points cost reductions. The Dread Knights fitted this category. In a number of warhammer tournaments where there had been significant comp (e.g the Swedish comp system), I had successfully run Dread Knights (Cold One Knights) with “Killy” characters and I decided to write a list based around these.

I took:

A Dread Lord on a cold one with the plus three strength sword

A Battle Standard Bearer on a cold one

A level 2 wizard apprentice using the path of Alchemy

13 Blades of Nabh (witch elves)

13 Repeater auxiliaries

5 Dark Riders

2 bolt throwers

5 Harpies

10 Dread Knights

6 Dark Acolytes with the wizard upgrade

A hydra

My opponent’s army was as follows:

General on a Griffon

A L4 Archwizard on Light

Battle Standard on foot

A Captain on a Pegasus

An engineer

A block of Heavy Infantry (swordsmen) upgraded to weaponskill 4

A smaller block of Heavy infantry

5 skirmishing bow

16 crossbows

5 Knights

5 Reiters with pistols (pistoliers)

4 Knight of the Sun Griffon (DemiGryphs)

A cannon

A volley gun

We were just playing a normal battle line game without any secondary objectives as I was going to have enough trouble remembering how you play the game without worrying about objectives.

My opponent put his full army down first meaning he would get first turn (something quite new compared to warhammer that I will have to read up on). I deployed quite carefully to stay out of range of the shooting.

The Reiters pushed forward to threaten my dark riders, and the cross bows had extra range added to their shooting by an “order” given by the General – a neat new special rule. I managed to fend off magic missiles aimed at my harpies, but I lost one to cross bow fire.

My turn saw me advance with the Hydra and Dread Knights on the right flank. I then turned my shooting first on the Reiters killing them to a man and then the bolt throwers on the cross bows killing several.

My opponent’s second turn saw him charge my Acolytes with his Knights and my hydra with his Captain on a Pegasus. The knight charge in particular took me by surprise – I had forgotten how far cavalry can charge !

The Acolytes surprisingly managed to grind out the Knights over a couple of combats. The Hydra took a couple of wounds from the captain but also emerged victorious after a couple of combats.

The empire line now advanced straight towards my cross bows and bolt throwers. I shot off the cross bows and skirmishers and positioned my harpies to charge the organ gun, which they did the following turn but not before the volley gun had managed to kill four dread Knights. I also lost my Hydra with two wounds left to the cannon. I got my own back though with the harpies killing the cannon after making short work of the volley gun.

I swung the Dread Knights around the wood to face the rear of the Sun Griffons, but they weren’t hanging around and headed straight for the bolt thrower. My Repeater Auxilliaries were clearly in trouble, and so I bailed the wizard out of the unit. The Empire general was eyeing up my second bolt thrower and my Blades of Nabh were suffering from magic missiles. Although I was well up on points I could see the scales were about to swing the other way and indeed my opponent managed to get my two bolt throwers and the Repeater Auxilliaries.

I knew the points were really close and the fifth turn saw me attempt to cast a boosted Molten Metal on the Griffon General.  It had a 2+ armour save, and if I had got the spell off I would very likely have killed the general and won the game. I rolled well above the casting value (with the maximum allowed 5 dice), I also got a double six. However my opponent also rolled a double six to dispel (no irresistible force now !) and he managed to dispel the spell.  This was the third time I had failed to cast the spell.

In his last turn my opponent killed my wizard but the blades of Nabh survived (one left). In my turn I got his engineer. I tried to catch the Knights of the Sun Griffons with my knight bus but I failed to reach. The game was over and had ended in a draw.

Great fun and I had learnt a lot about 9th Age but I had also reminded myself of some key principles of playing warhammer. I enjoyed playing with the Elves again but I was far too cautious with my Dread knight bus. I also found I really struggled to cast spells. I think I may upgrade to an Exalted Oracle. I also need to be careful with charge distances after such a long time away from the game a 20 inch charge range with swift stride came as a surprise.

I am looking forward to my next game which I will also write up. I will give some more thoughts on the game and Dread Elves in general. Thanks for reading.