At Durham Wargames Group (DWG) this year we're doing a club ADLG tournament and tonight I played my second battle against Bob. Our tournament is as follows: 200pts armies Single player Any army 500BC - 500AD. I'd planned to take a diadochi army but didn't get my act together to sort out a list, so I took my Tamils again, this time against Bob's venerable Early Carthaginian army. The diadochi armies are seeing a lot of table time at the moment with two in the fight tonight. But onto my game. Bob inevitably won the initiative, elected to attack in the plains so I was on the defensive again. I didn't get either a waterway or village, so took a couple of fields and a hill in the hopes of closing down the flanks. Bob laid down some plantations and failed to move or remove any of the terrain so we deployed ready for the fight.
Surprisingly I was wider than the Carthaginians and my medium impetuous swordsmen clustered around the elephants as they faced off against the wall of African spearmen and chariots. There was nothing subtle about either of our armies and Bob and I discussed just how quickly this would be all over!
The Carthaginian light cavalry took hail of javelins and decided to retire before things got too bad.
And the lines closed in...
And very quickly we were into the big fight. The impact went very badly for the Carthaginians, and the swordsmen and elephants of the Tamils with their "furious charge" battered the African line. In the first impact of the game, things were pretty much decided and I think both Bob and I knew the battle was only going one way from here. However, one of the joys of ADLG is that "it ain't over till its over", and so things could still recover for Carthage.
Two more turns of melee saw Carthage recover some pride and punch holes across the line in the grinding fight. But it wasn't enough and in about an hour of a 2.5hr game, the Carthaginians broke.
It was a simple, direct, and unsubtle battle that saw two mighty lines clash in a frontal rumble, and the Tamils came out winners. Final scores: Carthage lost 24 out of 24 points Tamils lost 14 out of 25 points Out campaign is posted on the DWG website here.
At Durham Wargames Group (DWG) this year we're doing a club ADLG tournament and tonight I played my first battle against Mal. Our tournament is as follows: 200pts armies Single player Any army 500BC - 500AD. I bought a new army from Xyston specifically for the tournament: Tamil Indians, and painted it up in 22 hours over last weekend. The Tamil List
ARMY
Tamil
India
List 121
Terrain
Plains
Pts
199
Units
25
Forest
Initiative
1
Corps I
7
Pts
Pts Total
Cmdr
1
Ordinary
0
0
2
Elephants
13
26
2
Medium swordsmen
impetuous
7
14
1
Medium swordsmen impact
elite
10
10
2
Light infantry bow
4
8
Corps II
9
Pts
Pts Total
Cmdr
1
Ordinary
0
0
2
Elephants
13
26
3
Medium swordsmen
impetuous
7
21
2
Light infantry javelins
4
8
2
Bowmen
7
14
Corps III
9
Pts
Pts Total
Cmdr
1
Competent
3
3
2
Elephants
13
26
3
Medium swordsmen
impetuous
7
21
2
Light infantry javelins
4
8
2
Bowmen
7
14
So anyway, I took the Tamils against Mal's Achaemenid Persians. Mal won the initiative, chose to attack in the plains. I wanted to narrow the battlefield so tried and failed to get a waterway, but did manage a maximum size village which I put on a gentle hill. Fields and plantations dotted around elsewhere. We began deploying and the huge Achaemenid force of mixed heavy and medium infantry lined up next to a large cavalry wing.
Although the looked splendid, the cavalry was mediocre, being Indian horsemen.
My Tamils were unconcerned so far and the impetuous foot lined up among the magnificent elephants.
Deployment finished, the Persians only had two commands down, and with no ambushed, it was clear a flank march was coming. The early moves saw the Persian cavalry push forwards. I rushed the Tamil centre forwards, angled my left flank to take on the approaching cavalry and dropped a few units off on my right to meet the flank march which i presumed would come on there.
With an unmaneouverable army like the Tamils, I'll struggle to fully react to the flank attack so my plan is to destroy the Acheamenids I can see in front of me.
And with the opening clashes, they go my way and the impact melee sees the Achemenids suffer immediate losses.
And then the flank march arrived! My flank archers really don't fancy their chances, but I did manage to peel off a unit of swordsmen to help out. I'm resigned to losing this flank, but I'm not too concerned as I'm happy to trade a few units to hold things up here while my elephant line gets stuck in elsewhere.
And up front things are going really rather well as the Tamil swordsmen and elephants completely destroy the Achaemenid infantry.
We're not really sure what to do now!
By now, things are looking very shaky for the Persians and the army's break point is getting dangerously close. The Tamils have lost only a couple of units.
But there's a chance for Mal to turn the game around with his flank attack. Surprisingly, the Tamil archers make a fight of it and hold up the cavalry.
Meanwhile, over on the other flank, the elephants chase off the Indian cavalry.
But its all over, and the Achaemenids break.
The final tally is: Tamils - 14 lost from 25 pts. Achaemenids - 28 lost from 28pts. It was a good game that was over in 1 hour 15 mins.
A thing happened last weekend that hasn’t happened for a
good while; I went to a wargames tournament.
Way back when DBM was king, this was a regular thing, but
when Field of Glory took over, a ruleset that was very much not for me, I
dropped out.
Over the last few months however, L’Art de la Guerre has
gained significant traction in the UK and my club (Durham Wargames
Group) has dived headfirst into this new game.OK, its one its third edition and has been played on the continent for
about 10 years…but its new to us.
So, as ever, the Field of Glory crew were off to the BadCon tournament
at Burton and as
it’s a doubles event, my friend John asked if I’d partner up with him for the
weekend away.
John and I had a bit of a chat, and settled on a couple of
armies, mostly it has to be said, based on the figures we had available!Anyway, the two front runners were
Nikephorian Byzantine and Tamil Indian.
We set about throwing them at each other, and at other
proxied armies with two purposes in mind; 1. test the relative armies, and 2.
try to learn the rules a bit more!Because,
lets face it, these rules are new to us and we seriously needed some practice.
For various reasons, best not gone into here, we decided on
Tamils.Oh go on then; mainly we chose
them because they were fun to use.We liked
the fact that the impetuous troops forced you to be aggressive, and that we
have a troop mix that could take on both mounted and foot troops with a fairly
good chance of winning.The only
downside was if enemy knights going into our impetuous swordsmen – bad news
there!
Anyway, here’s the list.
Tamils
350pts / 45 units
Command 1
Competent commander
2x Med Cav Mediocre
2x Elephants
3x Med swordsmen impetuous
3x Bowmen
2x Lt Inf javelins
Command 2
Ordinary commander
2x Elephants
3x Med swordsmen impetuous
2x Levy
2x Lt Inf javelins
Command 3
Competent commander
3x Med swordsmen impact elite
3x Elephants
3x Med swordsmen impetuous
3x Lt Inf bow
Command 4
Competent commander
2x Med Cav Mediocre
2x Elephants
3x Med swordsmen impetuous
3x Bowmen
2x Lt Inf javelins
The next stage was to try the army out against another
team.John and I hadn’t played together
before, so we needed to figure each other out.We therefore had a couple of practice games against Mal and John and
their Samurai army that was also going to BadCon.Its safe to say we considered this a serious
army to face, as it had a lot of advantages over ours.In practice there were some losses and some
wins, but lots and lots of learning.
The big weekend came and we drove the 3 hours south for a weekend
of games, beer, Chinese food and general recreation!
So to Saturday morning and the games.Our first ADLG tournament game…
Games in full swing - i'm sensing a certain demographic tendency to the participants.
In our first draw we found ourselves facing another South East
Asian army in the shape of Martin Routh and Andy Wallace’s Khmer and Cham
list.Although they were about the same
size as our army, they’d crammed 13 elephants into it compared to our 9 and some
of theirs had artillery on their backs!The
payoff was that they infantry wasn’t quite as good.
John carfully places our levies, enruing we know exactly where they'll die. We'll ignore the fact that our village and their field are the wrong shape...
The Khmer Burmese allies, because 9 elephants wasn't enough...they look splendid though!
The elephants clash! At this stage, we're surprised to be in good positions on both flanks, but all the action is up front - there's ivory and trunks everywhere!
And as the battle dies down, our Tamils emerge from the carnage victorious!
It was a fairly brutal up-front fight and to our surprise we
managed to pull a win out of the bag. Martin and Andy were great chaps to play
against and it was a fun, challenging game.
Happy to have our “only win” for the weekend, we set about
lunchtime with gusto before rolling up for the second match of the day.
It’s at this point that I forgot I had a camera, mostly
because playing ADLG is really quite intensive.There’s a lot of concentration required.So sadly I don’t have pictures from the rest of the weekend.
However, game 2 was against the largest army in the tournament;
Dave Allen and Gordon Jamieson’s Christian Nubians.
This was quite a surprise as the army was filled with
impetuous camelry!This was ably
supported by cavalry and infantry of course.We lined up to find ourselves overlapped, but then Gordon dismounted his
camelry, presumably no fancying their chances against our wall of elephants.
The game ensued and not only was it our closest match of the
weekend, it was also possibly the most enjoyable wargame I’ve played in my *ahem*
years of gaming.The battle went right
down to the wire and in the final turn, we were both teetering on our armies
breaking.We had the advantage of
playing the crucial “break turn” and with a couple of points rallied back and a
couple of kills inflicted we took the narrowest of narrow victories!Dave and Gordon were top chaps and worthy
opponents, and I very much enjoyed chatting with them throughout the weekend.
So John and I ended the day 2-0 up.This was very much unexpected.
The evening passed in a blur of whiskey and Chinese grub,
and Sunday morning came too quickly, and we started of course on the “top
tables”.This meant we’d be fighting
other teams that had wins from Saturday.
Checking the draw we found ourselves facing the sort of army
we’d expected to dominate – in the shape of Chris Tonge and Tony Parkin’s
Communal Italians.
The armies lined up and facing us was a vast screen of
skirmishers behind which there was a vast wall of very unpleasant European
knights with heavy spearmen in support.These
would make short work of our infantry, but hopefully our elephants would do the
business.
The game kicked off and our opponents engaged in some
impressive mounted dressage with knights making a bid to get round our
flanks.Only our trusty infantry archers
would stop them!We adopted out usual,
and so far highly successful (and only) tactic – a headlong charge into the
jaws of death!We charged the
skirmishers off, smashed into the knights and their supporting spearmen and…
…in the swirling melee our swordsmen were cut to
pieces.Nil desperandum however as out
elephants were having a field day and the Communal “Italians” (actually a
farrago of European nations) knights were falling like nine-pins!The battle didn’t last long from there and
soo we’d won a fairly comfortable victory.
John and I were now 3-0 and neither of us could really
believe it.
And so we came to the final battle and we thought it likely
we’d be matched against Feudal English.We didn’t mind that too much.But
then, it turned out we were facing Tim Porter (Madaxeman) and Adam Worsdale
with their Samurai.
Having trained against Samurai armies we knew this could
very much go one way or the other, so we pitched in and set up.
It’s safe to say that the terrain was disastrous for
us.We had a plantation splitting the battlefield
and the Samurai had a hill to plant themselves on, pretty much shutting off our
right flank.So it fell to me on the
left flank to try and do some damage while John held his flank back – attacking
uphill would be a guaranteed loss.
Following our standard tactic I pushed in quickly, making it
through the Samurai archery relatively unscathed.That said I was severely outflanked with the
Samurai cavalry threatening to envelop me, but I managed to contain the threat
with my archers.
Then the lines clashed and a spectacular round of impact
fighting saw the Samurai army essentially break.Die roll after die roll went my way and
despite taking losses in the ensuing melees, it was all over bar the shouting
and two turns later the Samurai broke! Pictures from Tims Facebook page.
The nellies approach...its all still in the balance...
The lines clash, the dice gods smile on our elephants and its all over...
Tim and Andy were fun chaps to play against and indeed we
didn’t have a bad experience in any of our games.
We really couldn’t believe it, but in our first ADLG
Tournament John and I had won!!
