And onto the Ancients game

A Warhammer Ancients battle, fought between Sassanids and Khazars. A report was received from the Sassanid commander, so please take into account the slight bias in his view. Over to you Vince.

The Sassanid king surveyed his army deployed on the plain. A horde of Parthian vassal horse archers, Iranian horse archers, Lakhamid horse, elephants, Arab and Iranian infantry all subordinate to the Sassanian Noble clibinari.

The nations of the empire were all here, the army was vast and it was a good day to slaughter the barbarian invaders.

Then the Khazar horde rode out of the heat haze onto the field. Innumerable horse archers were screening solid blocks of noble cavalry and a group of infantry with yurts. "Tents, why have they brought tents to a battle ?" the Shah of Shah's mused. No matter he thought and waved the Sassanid army forward to attack.

Battle was joined by the opposing horse archers and a swirling melee in the centre led to a large number of Sassanian cavalry fleeing the field. Clibinari charged horse archers along the line firing as they went and saw the retreating skirmishers feign flight as they fired over their shoulders.

On the left Steve M and the Khazar allies under Steve H danced around each other firing as they went. Many saddles were emptied but not one would come to close quarters.

On the right Andy meleed the Khazar light cavalry under their war leader Chas and both sides saw warriors flee the battle.

Frustrated at chasing shadows, a unit of clibinari rode down the yurt guard only to lose half their number to a cloud of arrows from skirmishing horse archers. The elite of Andy and Chas's army came to push of kontos, Andy's elephant stampeded (surprise, surprise !) and Steve M started to get the better of Steve H's cavalry in the shooting contest.

End game came with Steve H's forces boxed in and losing the resulting melees. My clibinari joined in and were glad of the rest from the continual pinging by nomad cavalry commanded by Malcolm. Chas had routed Andy's clibinari but, seeing no answer to the large blocks of untouched infantry, quit the field roundly cursing his allies.

The Sassanids held the field and remarkably their infantry was intact, but neither side had got off lighly.

I thought it was an enjoyable game, played in a good humoured fashion and it reminded me why I hate being pinged by nomad horse archers !

Vince

February is over, many dice were rolled

And hopefully much fun was had. Two games were put on, 15mm WW2 by Jon and a 25mm Ancients by Chas and Vince. WW2 first, so here is a brief report.

Here is a picture of the WW2 game set up. A small German force had to hold off hordes of veteran British paratroopers. Outnumbered over 10 to 1(or not), the gallant defenders of the Reich were in for a hard time.(can you tell which side I was on?). The British had to secure the town and hold out until the armour arrived. The Germans had to wake up, defeat the British, capture London and win the World Cup.

After the first couple of turns some of the Germans had been rudely awakened by a British hand grenade. They promptly rallied themselves and lay down some withering fire, pinning down the Imperialist lackeys and stopping their advance.


As the rest of the Germans awoke, a British section rushed forward to free the local Mayors daughter from her skirts. The gallant defenders saw this and poured a deadly rain of fire on them, wounding or killing them all. They then advanced and gave first aid to the wounded, despite the evil nature of the British Paratroopers. ;)


As the game came to an end the Germans held the town, but had not driven the British off. The British did not hold their objectives but had survived until the armour arrived. Losses were very heavy for both platoons of the British, while the German 1st platoon had taken 40% losses.

I enjoyed the game, despite only getting to move 4 times in more than 11 turns. The rules used were an adaptation of IABSM, PBI2 and FoW.