Blood in the Sand Battle Report

Blood in the Sand

So tonight I ran another round of Hoplon with the younger siblings as we didn’t really get to into the mechanics of the game the last time we played. Although we did not get any melee in due to units not meeting up properly to allow for melee, there was a ton of arrows flying. One thing is for sure, the shooting mechanics working very well and are quite accurate in my opinion. Anyways, on to the battle report, all three turns of it!

So we were running a 1v2 game of 1200 points aside. I was controlling 1200 points of Assyrians split into three Commands for ease of usage.  The siblings, Sorcess and BillyBobJoe as they wish to be dubbed, were each fielding identical Geometric Greek armies of about 600 points each. Let’s start with army lists so that you can see what was fielded.

Assyrian Command 1

Ishme, Sub General mounted in Light Chariot

Sha Shepe, Light Chariots 15 elements

Assyrian Command 2

Tukuti, Sub General mounted in Light Chariot

Irregular Peltasts, 36 elements

Irregular Bowmen, 18 elements

Assyrian Command 3

Ashur-ubullit, Commander mounted in Light Chariot

Palace Chariots, Light Chariots 10 elements

Regular Swordsmen, 12 elements

Regular Bowmen, 6 elements

Irregular Peltasts, 18 elements

Irregular Bowmen, 9 elements

Greek Command 1 & 2

Sub General mounted in Light Chariot

Irregular Light Chariots, 6 elements

Irregular Cavalry, 10 elements

Irregular Swordsmen, 24 elements

Irregular Peltasts, 20 elements

Irregular Bowmen, 12 elements

Deployment Phase:

The Greeks won deployment initiative and elected for the Assyrians to be deployed first. After rolling for Command Points, I elected to have the 1^st command attempt an outflanking move and so left them off the table. Command 2 was placed on the left half of our six foot long gaming table. Command 3 was placed on the right flank. Both commands than made a single movement bound (10cm) in deployment mode.

BillyBoeJoe [BBJ] opted to deploy against my left flank, not knowing that my outflanking forces were planning on arrive on the side of the table in his deployment zone. Sorcess deployed his forces along my right flank and both players opted to only make one movement bound before the game began.

Turn One:

Sorcess advanced two units of cavalry, one unit of bow and one unit of spear, expending all of his command points.

BBJ advanced one cavalry unit and one chariot unit outside of his command range which caused him to use up double the amount of command points.

During my turn, Command 2 had first initiative and advanced four units of Hupshu militia with bow attachments. Command 1 arrived from their outflanking maneuver and attacked the rear of a Greek Peltasts unit, killing two elements. A failed test caused the unit to route back into the command which in game terms means they were massacred. Command three only managed to advance three units of shock with their attached bow.

Turn Two:

Sorcess won initiative and advanced all of his troops due to a large amount of command points.

Command 1 was second in initiative and marched forward to find the rear of another Greek unit. They fired on swordsmern, killed three elements which caused them to rout back into the chariots resulting in another massacre.

Command 2 advanced 4 units forward and fired at Greek cavalry and light chariots. They managed to shake the cavalry and kill one element of chariots.

Command 3 moved several units forward to close into shooting range. Asharittu archers fired on Greek cavalry and killed three which caused them to route from the field. Another unit Asharittu archers fired on Greek bowmen, killing two elements.

BBJ ended the turn by advancing his units forward as best he could.

Turn Three:

Command 1 managed to win imitative and earn a total of eight command points. It used nearly all of them surging forward to find more prey and fired upon the rear and flank of Greek bowmen, killing three which caused them to route into the chariots for a massacre.

The loss of the bowmen dropped BBJ’s forces below fifty percent and so he had to take a demoralized test to see if his army still had the will to fight. Due to losses, his result was negative which means that every unit has to test to stay or rout. After rolling for units left, two units of cavalry and one unit of swordsmen broke rank and fled, the rest staying put but wavering.

Command 2 closed in on the wavering forces of BBJ’s Greek and fired half a dozen elements at the remaining light chariots, killing three elements and routing the rest.

Command 3 advanced all units forward and unleashed a rain of arrows upon the Greeks. Two elements of BBJ’s Spearmen were cut down, the rest of the unit holding their ground but shaken. Three elements of bowmen belonging to Sorcess were killed, the rest broke and ran. Two other elements of bowmen were killed by Asharittu. The Greek general was left in the open and suffered the shooting of Asharittu and Palace chariots which saw the commander slain. His fall required a demoralization test for the Greeks which resulted in a negative and saw the majority of the units fleeing the field.

We ended the game after that even though a few more round of combat could have been fought just for fun. I think it was a good learning game for the siblings and hopefully we can get them to improve their tactics. I might try to give them a different army, perhaps advancing to the city-states of Greece to see how they do as the Greek at the current era is rather unreliable and fragile.

Just for fun I decided to add up the represented numbers of soldiers present. Hoplon gives you a general range that stands represent.

Assyrian Army

Command 1         750 chariots

Command 2         250 chariots

                            13,500 infantry

Command 3         500 chariots

                            11,850 infantry

Slain                     0 total

Greek Army

Command 1&2    600 chariots

                            5,000 cavalry

                            30,400 infantry

Slain                     9,890 total

Forces of the Assyrian Empire

So I have had the itch to do some ancient warfare and with the discovery of Hoplon I have really wanted to get some pieces on the table and go a few rounds to see what would happen. I discovered two things about the game today. One that it is really quite deep and takes some time and two, that the siblings do not have the patience for the new system. Oh well, guess there was only one way to figure that one out in the end.

Anyways, last night I was trying to figure out how best to go about making pieces. I busted out a ruler, a pencil and a clean piece of paper; along with the converted measurements I would need and set to work. After drawing the lines for eighteen pieces I wondered if there would be an easier way. Wouldn’t you know it; I looked at a word document, saw the insert table tab and wondered. Turns out I can make all the pieces I want, in neat, tidy groupings with word. Gee, I wish I had considered that route back when I was making the Napoleonic pieces. Anyways, without further a due, here are some pictures of the pieces. They are shaded red so that it will be easier to distinguish them on the battlefield with the camera.

Starting with the leader or leaders of the army, we have the Sub-General unit that is representing a light chariot. The ‘BIF 2’ is the command score of the unit and it applies to various rolls in the game. I only use one at the moment but have the second for when I split the forces as I plan on running a hammer and anvil type tactic with the footsloggers and the fast chariots.

Next we have the She Shepe chariots to cover my flanks. There are eight pieces here though I can potentially field up to thirty six of them in a single army. They each have a bow and are able to shoot in any direction, making them great for hitting the flanks of the enemy. 

 

Onward, to the infantry of the army. Here is a combination unit of Asharittu Shock troops that are swordsmen and Asharittu Archers, that act as their support. This is the way that the army list requires them to be fielded and I would probably do similar if they weren’t as it is a good support element.

Here are the Hupshu Militia units that are a combination of Spearmen and Archers. You’ll notice that the pieces are a bit bigger than the Asharittu Shock as they are all loose order units compared to the Shock being close order. Again this is how the army list requires them to be fielded but I think they are a nice combination.

The battle itself was quite crazy due to trying to teach three people and learn at the same time. Managed to get a few rounds of shooting in once the forces closed ranks and found that the chariots can deliver an impressive amount of damage in the game. Didn't get to try the melee due to time constraints but there is always next time. Hope you enjoyed the pictures and thanks for stopping by. 

War Photos

This will be a short post. As promised I have uploaded the pictures from the large battle that I held last week with my siblings. There is a link to it on the left side of the blog under army pictures. While I shall be posting pictures here, the majority can be found there.

Battling the Ancients

I have always found ancient warfare to be quite interesting and strategically thrilling. Forces were rather simple and similar so it really came down to the ability of the commander to guide his forces and to keep them encouraged in the face of certain death. Due to a painfully small budget I do not have the chance to invest in rule books to sample and so I turn to the internet. Luck was with me when I happened across a set of rules for ancient battles that runs along a similar vain of the Napoleonic games, an easy transition for those younger siblings.

The rule system I am currently working with is called Hoplon 3 and though dense and a bit coded when you first get into it, it rather straight forward and seems to pride itself on the lack of book keeping that is needed to play the game. I have spent the last couple of days reading through the rules, understand the concepts and trying to run the system through my head a few times and for the most part it seems like a pretty straight forward system. Hopefully I will be able to get some games going here in the near future so that I can see if the rules really are as simple as they seem.

The one hitch I am running into at the moment, at least in my eyes, is the number of stands that is required to run a standard force. The rule set comes with a series of army lists spanning the biblical era to the medieval era and should prove to be amazing for transitions and those laughable clashes of civilizations separated by hundreds or thousands of year. Hey, if Age of Empires can do it, why can’t I? Anyways, the hitch is that I will have to make all of the pieces needed to field a small force and at last count that would be about fifty four pieces.

Obviously I will be making these pieces in the same fashion as I did with the Napoleon ones as I am mainly interested in cheap, fun war gaming until I can get a disposable income to support this wild little habit of mine. I shall keep you posted with units as I develop a good way to create and label them. 

A Grand Old Battle

So a few days I got the siblings together, designed a battlefield and set up the points values for a series clash of forces. Trying to keep within history as much as possible, I kept the alliances to a feasible level. On one side were the Swedish and the British. Across from them were the armies of the Italians, Denmark and the US. True it is not very accurate to have the American forces on European soil at the time but my brother is young and that’s the army he wanted. Because I have scaled down the system to some degree we were able to run all the forces on a standard six foot by four foot surface though things did get a little crowded whenever terrain was encountered as there just wasn't enough room to manipulate forces without some overlay. Intermingling probably would have caused disruption in the ranks but I try to keep the game on a simple level so did not bring it up.

As it was an assault mission, there were two objectives in the enemy deployment zone, which belonged to Italy, US and Denmark, and two on the field for both sides to fight for, a large manor and the town square.

Unfortunately we were under a time constraint and had to deal with a couple siblings needing to slip away for various other activities. We agreed to try and get in the full six rounds as is normal for the game system and managed to pull it off though just barely.

Turn one saw a lot of moving and plotting with little combat due to short range of muskets and even the cannons were a tad out of range. Turn two was along the same lines with units marching, rushing or changing formation all over the field in preparation for the coming storm of lead.

Turn three saw combat on the left flank and in the center between the Swedish, British, Italians and US. The Denmark forces were taking their sweet time advancing through the wheat fields on the right flank and refused to rush into combat.

Turn four saw more shooting and a daring assault by the US forces against a steady, double line of British infantry. Losses were severe for the British with five stands being cut down. But they held ground, regrouped and cut the Americans down to a man in the retaliation. The Swedish Jaegers also saw some action after securing the cathedral in the center of town and shot up an entire troop of Italian medium cavalry, killing every stand.

Turn five found the forces of the Italians and US, wheeling and shifting to try and recover from the heavy losses in the center as reinforcements rushed forth to support the British lines already in place. Swedish Jaegers decimated another band of cavalry, this time Denmark Heavy Cavalry, and sent the remainders fleeing the board.

Turn six was pretty one sides. The left flank, which the Italians had been attempting to hold, was crumbling under artillery and a combined line of British and Swedish Line Infantry. Swedish Light Cavalry went on a rampage, singlehandedly wiping out two Grenadier battalions, a battalion of Militia and a battalion of Line all belonging to Denmark.

Final points came down one sided as well. The British forces held the manor and the Swedish were in the center of town and routing enemy forces at the end of the game. Amount of forces still standing as well as the number of forces routed or destroyed were tallied up. Final victory points came down to 32 points for the alliance of Sweden and Britain and 13 for the combined forces of US, Italy and Denmark.

Overall it was a good game and a good chance to work with the mechanics of the game on such a large scale. Some tuning may be needed in the future as we work out more historically accurate encounters. We are also planning on holding another match with the same sides but trying it from the other side of the table to see what the result will be. Stay tuned for that report and the photos from this one.

NFOW British Forces

Here is a look at the pieces that I use for NFOW. This is just going to be an overview and some brief explanations with historical estimations of the number of men represented by the individual pieces.

[Click picture to expand]

The above image shows the majority of the infantry forces that I use. Going from left to right, the first three columns of the pieces are battalions of Line infantry. Each piece, or stand, is to represent roughly sixty men as there were approximately six hundred men in the standard battalion of Line infantry for the British. The two stands directly behind the columns represent Grenadiers, the heavy infantry of the day and are meant to support the flanks.

Behind those three columns are another three battalions of Line making it six full battalions of Line infantry, each with an attached company, two stands, of Grenadiers. Off to the left are four small stands of Light infantry, two stands representing a company in the British army. Below those are my two flavor battalions as I like to call them, one to represent an Irish battalion and the other and Scottish one.

At the bottom left is partial squad of Heavy cavalry and then the current general of my forces. This is an early picture of my army which now includes various cavalry and artillery to support the masses of infantry that I have. 

Napoleonic Flames of War

This isn’t a very well known game, at least to my knowledge so I figured I would spend some time today to talk a little about it while I am between rounds in a battle.

The basic format is based around the popular Flames of War, a WWII table top game using miniatures. It is still in its trial forms and the rule set that I use is only one of five different rule sets while the group developing it works out the historically specific rules. Though you can tell that the rules are rough, I think they do their job well and have made for a multitude of gaming nights with epic battles and glorious victories.

As mentioned, this is a miniatures game and is meant to have actual models to represent the men that were engaged in such conflicts. To be representational of the time period would be difficult to do as there would be literally hundred of soldiers to model. NFOW uses a scale system that is only meant to represent the numbers of men and to make modeling easy on the wallet and on the players. Because I like to test out games before I invest in them I have been using paper pieces to proxy the various pieces.

Being a fan of large conflicts and really wanting to get a feel for the dynamic battles of thousands of men, I scaled down the pieces even more, allowing twice the number to be used on the table at once. This has provided intense battles and a better sense of the multitude of men clashing with musket, bayonet and saber.

The next couple of posts will be focused on units that I have, the pieces that represent them and the various battles that have been played so far.

On a side note, if anyone is interested in trying out this game or just having a look at the rules I shall provide the link to the forum. http://forumnapofow.free.fr/index.php

First Post!

Alright so it is a little late but I have been meaning to put this thing together for a while now. I have been playing war games for about eight years now ranging from Warhammer 40K to Napoleonic battles. I am always looking to try something new and figured I would share my experiences so that other people might grow interested in these wonderful hobbies and try them for their selves.

Feel free to comment and leave notes on things. I will do my best to answer questions or help you find a direction to search in.

Currently Gaming: Napoleonic Flames of War