October 23, 2023

TTS AAR: British Open Game 3: Early Imperial Romans versus Galatians

October 23, 2023/ Robert Avery

My third game at this year British Open at SELWG was against Tim and his Galatians.

Galatians are a unique army: like Gauls or Ancient Britons, but nearly all deep fanatical warrior units with loads of heroes. It was going to be tough to chew my way through them!

Neither Tim nor I were in the mood for any shilly-shallying around or tactics or anything like that: both battle lines headed for the other determined to get stuck in as soon as possible:

Annoyingly, one of Tim’s units burst through the Auxilia and made it into an undefended part of my camp.

Honours were even on my right: whilst most of my cavalry were forced to retreat, the Contariorum smashed an enemy unit off the table, and threatened to wreak havoc in the Galatian rear (ooh-er, madam!) despite the threat of scythed chariots.

On my left, I was cautious about his cavalry swinging wide around the wood and coming in from the flank. I therefore held back a unit of Legionaries against that threat: something that I was very glad I had done when suddenly a couple of chariot units appeared from off-table on that side - good use of the stratagem card that I thus neutralised by accident!

So, as ever, it was up to the main body of Legionaries to do the job…and they did. Pushing forward relentlessly, the Praetorians and other veteran units smashed three enemy units from the field, giving me a pretty narrow 13-9 victory.

So not much finesse, but a win. A warning to those intending to fight Galatians: those warrior units are tough! Three hits to kill them, they rally easily, and ignore wounds until they are dead. A battle I was glad to get through!

May 18, 2021

TTS AAR: The Last Zoom Battle

May 18, 2021/ Robert Avery

Regular visitors will know that last time I faced Bevan’s Galatians with my Marian Romans, things started well but finished very badly: one devastatingly bad turn (I blame the cards, my figures blame me) led to an absolute thumping for Caesar and his men. It was now time for the re-match in what, I hope, will be my last game over Zoom as we all return to face-to-face gaming.

The Galatians: eight warbands of deep, fanatical infantry and a couple of tasty cavalry units. More heroes than The Expendables.

The Marian Romans: six units of veteran legionaries, a unit of legionary cavalry, three units of lights.

Learnings

I had learnt three things from my last encounter.

Firstly, don’t fight right in front of your camps: you might need a bit of room to pull back and rally and the Galatians are bound to punch at least one hole in your line so you need to make sure that any (unwieldy) warbands that have got through the gap take a lot of time to take your victory-points-rich camps.

Secondly, don’t face your light cavalry off against their cavalry: use their comparative manoeuvrability to keep some of their warbands occupied.

Finally, use the comparative manoeuvrability of your legionary units to get a temporary two-to-one advantage wherever possible. You need to do three hits to break a warband, so to break a warband in one turn will need the attacks of at least two units.

Armed with these nuggets of undoubtedly game-winning information, I logged on to Zoom and prepared for battle.

The Game

I had the initiative so advanced my line forward as fast as possible. The Galatians did the same, but in a somewhat more raggedy manner: no nice, straight, Roman lines for these barbarians.

I protected my left flank against a cheeky cavalry lap around by keeping one of my legionary units back from the main line. This made it difficult for the extra cavalry unit (bottom, left in the left-hand picture above) to either get past the unit and into my rear or to threaten the flank of the main line.

On the other flank, my two light cavalry units (the Persian types with the sandy bases) faced off against the warbands positioned far out on the Galatian left, with my legionary cavalry bolstering the line of legionaries. I’ve no idea why one of my legionary units has hung back: perhaps I thought this might temp a charge from one of his and allow me a to-the-rescue flank attack!

The Two Lines Clash!

The two lines began to come together with a mighty clash!

Last game I had pussy-footed around with my legionaries and allowed the Galatians to recover from their advance and hit me in a nice straight line. This time, as you can see from the pictures above, I had advanced forward smartly myself and was in a situation where my main line could get an overlap on the (my) right hand side of the four warbands that had advanced slightly in front of the others i.e. I could get the 2:1 advantage I needed on one of his warbands.

This duly happened, and even better than I expected. My lagging legionary unit came forward and conformed with the main line, giving me six units: L/L/L/L/L/C. One of his central warbands came forward giving him a line of five units: C/W/W/W/W. I was, I admit, a bit lucky in that his other central warband hung back!

The five legionary units that matched up with a warband performed as expected, disordering but not breaking the Galatians in front of them, two being coming disordered in return, but the overlapping legionary cavalry then smashed the warband they overlapped from the field!

This punched a hole in the Galatian line which my cavalry then charged in to. Pausing only to eliminate a unit of light infantry with their javelins, they then charged forward and took the enemy camp. One turn and half the victory points I needed had been gained!

However, things weren’t going all my own way.

One of my legionary units was then broken by the Galatian warband in front of them; and another, as my cavalry couldn’t be in two places at once, had moved forward into open space. Now it was my three camps (a lot of VPs to lose) that was threatened. Fortunately, my light cavalry out on the right flank were keeping three warbands occupied, otherwise I was in danger of being swamped by numbers despite the fact that I had just broken another warband on the left.

Never fear: the legionary cavalry hadn’t finished their work yet!

Neatly reversing out of the Galatian camp, they headed back onto the battlefield and smashed into the back of another enemy warband. That shook the Galatian warriors badly enough so that a fast-manoeuvring legionary unit could also about face, hit them in the rear and send them fleeing from the field. Victory was mine!

It Worked!

Amazingly, my battle plan had worked!

I had managed to fight away from my camps, keep three of his warbands occupied with my light cavalry, and get a vital overlap at the initial point of impact. I had been lucky in that the Galatian advance had been a bit raggedy, but if I had hung back, as last time, then they would have had a chance to correct and hit me as one line.

Stars of the show were, undoubtedly, the Legionary Horse. Only the second time on the battlefield and a Companion-like performance. One warband destroyed, one light unit destroyed, the enemy camp taken, and then a rear charge to set up another warband for its almost immediate destruction. Laurel wreaths aplenty!

A great way to, hopefully, end my period of wargaming over Zoom. Not that it’s a bad way to game, but pushing lead face to face is always better!

May 11, 2021

TTS AAR: Marian Romans versus Galatians

May 11, 2021/ Robert Avery

Time for another game of To The Strongest over Zoom with regular opponent, Bevan.

Those of you who follow the site will know that our last game ended in a large victory for my Marian Romans over Bevan’s Gauls. This was obviously pretty galling to Mr B (did you see what I did there?) so in search of revenge he suggested that I might like to try the Romans against a Galatian army, and sent me his list.

There were so many galatian warbands that I had to draft in some ZULUS to proxy for two of them!

My immediate reaction was a comic-book double-take. Eight warbands of deep, fanatical, hero-accompanied warrior units plus two good cavalry units, one of which was veteran!

The tale of the tape says it all. Let’s look at the infantry first. My Romans have six veteran legionary units. They save on a 5+ (which is very good) and have two hits each; they hit on 6+ until they take one hit, whence they hit on 8+. The Galatians have eight units. They are fanatics, so save on only an 8+ (bad) but have three hits each and, more importantly, keep fighting at 6+ to hit until destroyed.

The Romans then have three units of cavalry, two light, versus two units of Galatian cavalry, neither light and one veteran.

On top of all the above, and probably the final nail in my coffin, I was using my newly painted legionary cavalry unit and my newly painted Roman army standard. This had the potential to be nasty, brutal and fast!

The Game

The sides lined up facing each other. My plan was to hold back my infantry and try and get some sort of advantage from my extra cavalry unit. I was hoping they could slip past his line and go for their camp, or at least get onto somebody’s flank. With that advantage in place, I could close to infantry combat hopefully surviving long enough to avoid a lap around from his extra foot units: my hyper-manoeuvrable legionaries being very good at rapid changes of direction.

The Galatians advanced as fast as they could whilst still maintaining a relatively unbroken line. I advanced my infantry a little bit forward, but concentrated on what I was doing with the cavalry. Try as I might, however, I couldn’t temp Bevan’s cavalry forward enough to give me the advantage I was after.

The two infantry lines came together with an almighty crash!

Unusually, my pila were effective, and at the end of the first round of fighting two of his eight warbands were double disordered, with another four disordered, and no casualties taken on my side at all. I’d also wounded one of his commanders.

Meanwhile, just before the main action, my legionary cavalry, which had been charged by his veteran horse, were also doing well: disordering the opposition and allowing a unit of my light horse to get into a decent position for a flank charge.

This was great: another round like that and I’d have broken enough of his warbands (and perhaps his cavalry too) to win the game!

The Inevitable Reverse!

And then it all changed.

The next turn I had one of those passages of play that defy belief.

In the melee that followed the above, I didn’t score a single hit on any of his troops (not even those teetering on the edge of obliteration) but lost two generals including the CinC, one legionary unit and had another two disordered! So much for a 60% chance of saving a hit! Oh, and his cavalry retreated and re-ordered themselves.

Worse, I’d managed to get a unit of light cavalry onto the flank of one of his warbands that was already shaken to the point of being about to flee. If I could destroy them, and just one more hit would do it, then a rolling up could occur. The activation cards were kind: I had three chances to kill the unit, two attack cards per chance, 30% chance to hit with him having only a 30% chance to save if I did so.

Nothing. Just…nothing!

Now against some armies it would still be possible to make a comeback from the situation described above, but against a Galatian army with two warbands as yet uncommitted: not a chance. Bevan just steamrollered forward and that was that!

Here’s a shot of the end of the game. Just count the Galatian disorder markers! Nine of them…but eight of them had been inflicted in round one, and no warbands had been broken.