A right Phonging

So, maybe it wasn't quite that one sided. In fact, it was very close, coming down to a single point. It was a nail-biting finish (literally) for Kevin, whose scotsmen I was facing. Scotsmen, with two dirty great blocks of 12 bases of impact foot, who, it must be said, swept all before them.

As did the actual Spartans, for that matter. Anyway, on with the pictures.

 So, the battlefield. Somehow, much to Kevin's dismay, practically all of the terrain winds up in my half of the table. Inconvenient places in my half of the table.

But I'd rather take than let his medium foot take advantage of it at this point. And Kevin has a lot of medium foot.

 And that's the armies. The plan was basically to break his centre and hope my flank could hold against that dirty great mob of Galwegians. It went horribly wrong, and horribly right somehow.

 Kevin has first turn. His entire army, barring the light horse (who seem to not like the look of the actual cavalry placed against them) advances with double moves, full speed ahead.

 My response is to close the gap. A fast game's a good game, right?

Anyway, right flank moves up. Cavalry falls into column in order to slip past the Galwegians. We will learn that in the end this is completely futile.

 So, the phonging begins here. Impact Foot against my Perioikoi. Superior Impact Foot. With a general. Hmph, just like Romans.

And just like Romans they manage to Disrupt my unit on the charge. And kill a base.

And thus the phonging continues. Galwegians are impact foot too. Against my poor, unsuspecting Thracians. Again, somebody dies, and they fall to disrupted.

 The inevitable happens in the melee phase. Perioikoi lose another base and Frag.

And the same thing happens to the Thracians. I can tell in short order Kevin's going to have taken 4 points off my army.

 So, we counterattack. Everything attempts to get stuck in.

 Although Kevin's light horse aren't too keen on getting stuck into by pointy sticks.

First impact, the "Iron" Perioikoi unit manages to disrupt and kill a base in the first scotch unit.

 So, interesting little situation here. The blackcloaks lose impact by 2 hits to 1, falling to disrupted. The goldcloaks win, with 6 hits to 2.

So Kevin fails the cohesion test (not unexpected), and a base automatically dies due to suffering 6 hits. Then he has to roll anything but a 1 to save.

…of course he rolled a 1.

 In the ensuing melee phase those scotsmen broke. (Doubling down, in fact). So now I'm on 2 to Kevin's soon to be 4.

 Then my Perioikoi broke.

 Then the Thracians broke. (And popped, due to being so damaged).

So, that's 4/9 points to Kevin.

 The blackcloaks decide being disrupted is no obstacle to victory, knocking another unit of scotsmen down to fragged. And they kill someone too boot.








And the "Iron" Perioikoi follow suit, forcing their opponents down to fragged as well. It's actually a ridiculously even fight now. Well, sort of.

I now have 4/7 points from Kevin's army, and he's got 4/9 from mine.

And then these guys pursue, catch the fleeing scotch, kill their general, slaughter them to a man, and wind up stuck in the middle of nowhere.

Remember when I mentioned Gone Horribly Right?

Yeah, this is pretty much the definition of it. The goldcloak spartans simply steamrolled completely through and enemy unit, pursued a total of 9", and placed themselves wonderfully out of position.

 As normally happens in my batreps, things start to get a bit messy as I forget to take pictures and get involved with the climax of the game.

Here is where Kevin's last unit of scotsmen obligingly broke for the blackcloak spartans. The other unit broke before the might of the "Iron" perioikoi shortly afterwards.

 The Galwegians are getting scarily close to my javelinmen. And my camp. It's the round up of this that will net Kevin another 4 points, and push me dangerously close to breaking.

Kevin's already there, having lost 3 units to breaks, so I have 6/7 points from his army at this moment, and he still only has 4/9 from my army.

 Some drastic and frantic manoeuvering begins. By which I mean everything gets in the way of everything else.

Some manoeuvering by yours truly. The only thing that really matters is the iron perioikoi on the left flank.

 As we can see, The Galwegians hit the camp, having forced the javelinmen to flee the field. Despite this netting Kevin 4 more points (so he now has 8/9 points from my army), I find this hilarious in hindsight.

Why?

Because nobody spends less than 3 turns looting my camp. I don't know exactly why. Maybe its the stamina of the spartan woman hidden within the tent.

 Anyway, more ineffectual manoeuvering. This is FoG. If you are actually manoeuvering, then something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

 The dirty great block of galwegians charges my spartan cav and phokian hoplites. They manage to kill a base of cav in the impact phase.

They do nothing against the Phokians, who, obligingly, do nothing back—except make some rude gestures.

The melee phase is the crunch point. Three hits against the cav, and if they fail the death roll, they auto-break.

So, for a change, they decide they want to live, but run away, falling to disrupted before breaking off. (that skull was actually meant to be on the impact phase picture above.)

 So, impact phase. The "Iron" Perioikoi go for gold, slamming into the impact in the field there. They manage to disrupt them.

Here we see them locked in epic battle. Well, sort of. With a little luck (and an amazingly bad roll on Kevin's part), the scotsmen drop to fragged.

That's now 7/7 points taken from Kevin's army. But, he could still claim a draw if he can frag my Phokian hoplites.

My Phokian hoplites who are having none of that nonsense, despite being outnumbered nearly 2:1, they hold fast. The melee phase is over, and the final score stands at Sparta 7/7, Scotland 8/9.

A win, by a single point. But a win is a win in FoG. It was a damn close battle though, and that's the kind I love.

There is a second battle to go up later, against Glenn's seleucids… and while in the end it was close, it started very, very badly for me.

Stay tuned for more.