ADLG - Game Report 60

Thessalonian Greeks (60) vs Achaemenid Persian(64)

A second ADLG game this week. This time against Iain. He needed some practice with his Persians before jetting off to Lisbon in Sept. I thought my Thessalonian Greeks would provide a nice historical matchup for him.

The terrain was “in the plains” and the nice hill on my left flank was moved there when I, as defender, repositioned the terrain. Straight away I made a mess of my deployment, or at least Iain out guessed me, as there was no way I wanted to charge my Heavy Cavalry into his Immortals.

I decided that a little bit of strategic repositioning was required. I moved the infantry lines to the left and was starting to move the Cavalry command under the CinC to the right.

Predictably because of the lateral movement, Iain managed to secure the heights of the hill I had nicely repositioned for him to be able to dominate my infantry! At the same time the Persian Cavalry also forced me to close and charge them. In the subsequent round the Scythed Chariot joined in, but was destroyed by my Heavy cavalry.

I managed to eventually extricate the Light Cavalry from in front of the bow fire. However, the repositioned line is starting to come under intense bow fire. I deployed two Peltast units to fight of the smelly camels. Iain deferred the opportunity, perhaps wisely, to charge my Peltasts.

The Peltasts have driven one Camel off the battlefield, and destroyed the other with its javelins. However, the bows on the hill are causing the Hoplites some concern and increasing the disorder. As I launched the Hoplites against his Heavy Cavalry they evaded in order to protect themselves. In doing so they had to leave a Persian Heavy Cavalry unit behind in melee with my Heavy Cavalry, The Persians were destroyed but their sacrifice allowed the others to evade and escape.

While the main actions were taking place on the left and centre on the right my elite Light Infantry destroyed two Persian Light Infantry with fire and then started moving towards the enemy camp to loot it. The rest of the Persian Scythian Light Cavalry maintained some effective bow fire on my units forcing one of my Heavy Cavalry to withdraw from the fire.

Outcome

In the end honours were even with each of losing 11 cohesion points. Most of mine were due to bow fire while most of Iain’s were melee casualties.

Lessons Learnt

Once again the effect of massed bow fire was seen to delay and disrupt an attack. Especially when one does not have the command points to rally!

The repositioning of the hill into my half of the table would have only made sense if I had placed my infantry on the left!