Manlii v Julii Game 7

Game 7 – Roman Era 4: Late Republic

Later Republican Roman (Alec 7,000 pts) v Armenia - Tigranes the Great (Gordon 7,000 pts)

Major invasion 83 BCE (MeG Magna, 1-Feb-2023).

Battlefield Effects: None

The Plan (penned in advance of the battle)

My MeG Magna army selection for the upcoming battle is as follows:

• Four professional generals, one talented, one competent and two mediocre.
• Eight TUGs of legionaries, four superior quality, four average. All have been given the Melee Expert characteristic
• One archer TUG.
• Two SUGs with javelin - one light horse with the Cantabrian characteristic; one "Velites" infantry, protected.
• One fortified camp.

As the Roman cavalry wouldn't be able to compete against the Armenian cavalry in the field I have only included one light horse auxiliary unit armed with javelins.

My plan will be to match my superior legionaries against Gordon's cataphracts, which I will try to hold up as long as possible, whilst I use my other legionaries to destroy whatever else he puts in the field, be it pikes or imitation legionaries. Hopefully destroying these will take down the Armenian army without the need to destroy the cataphracts.

As I won't be able to catch the Armenian light horse archers I will try to close down the battlefield as much as possible with mountain terrain, ideally by getting a strategic intercept.

The Battle

The Setup

The game started poorly for me, I failed to get the MeG Strategic Intercept, failed on terrain choice and then, even though I had more PBS cards than Gordon, I failed to move the marker (i.e. move the battle site) from his chosen deployment area. The result was a we were going to fight on a flat plain with almost no terrain. I surmised that he must have maxed out on light horse - not a bad idea at all when facing an army of heavy foot.

After achieving the open battlefield he wanted Gordon surprised me as he then placed some brush in, from my perspective, the middle right of the battlefield and I managed to get a brush-covered hill on my baseline in line with his brush. 

I wasn't actually too unhappy with the result, it would give me a way of securing my flank as I advanced up the left of the table. Gordon's cataphracts would have to deploy opposite in his centre right to avoid the rough and so I could place my superior legionaries there in the fairly safe knowledge that they would be in the right place. The only risk was going to be if he went for a flank march around my left, and he did indeed put down a Flank March card, but as he has been loathe to attempt any in the games so far I decided to proceed as if it was a bluff.

True to how the rub of the game had been going, even though I picked a red and a yellow card, I was still out-scouted by 20%; no matter. I lined up my legionary TUGs, with my superiors on my left and the average ones on my right. I placed a light horse SUG on my left flank and an archer TUG plus a SUG of "Velites" on the hill where they could hopefully hold off any attempt to flank me.

Gordon did indeed have five horse archer SUGs, placing one on his right, two in front of his predicted centre of three cataphracts and two on his far left. I wasn't too bothered about them getting around my flanks as my camp was fortified, though I suspected he wouldn't be able too. One of his commands, on his far right, turned out to be an ally - Media Atropatene. This enabled him to deploy four cataphract units in total, though thankfully none were superior quality.

The mystery of why Gordon placed some rough terrain after achieving the open plain was answered when he put down two TUGs of loose formation hill tribesmen and a SUG of poor javelinmen ready to take possession of it, plus a TUG of fake legionaries between them and the cataphracts.

 I could see that his plan would be to advance with the horse archers and try and weaken me with bow fire before sending in his cataphracts to finish me off. In order not to let that happen I would have to close with the cataphracts as fast as possible, trusting to my legionary shield cover ability to reduce casualties as much as possible.

                                                    The situation immediately after setup

Below is a closer look of Gordon's army - the Media-Atropatene allies on the left, including an infantry TUG of archers that took no part in the battle. In the centre behind the horse archers can be seen the imposing block of three TUGs of fully-armoured cataphracts - very scary indeed, with the ability to cause "Shatters" in charge combat and "Shoves" in the melee combat phase if they get the right die rolls. If they can get some momentum going they can walk over anything.

    

The Action

And so, battle commenced. It went fairly as predicted, the Armenian horse archers came forward to skirmish with their bow fire and the hill tribesmen began to occupy the rough terrain. I pushed my superior legions forward, expanding out on the left to join the centre, supported by the others curving round to cover my right flank. My original plan was to try to take out his weaker TUGs which would require me to be more aggressive on my right. 

 

By turn two we were in close proximity. Gordon moved his two horse archer skirmisher SUGs on his left unnecessarily close to my line allowing me to get my Velites right around behind his end one and trap it. It didn't last long, neither did the one next to it as he inexplicably failed to withdraw it to safety when he could have.

 

In the centre and his right, after seeing his horse archers get in trouble on the flank Gordon abandoned his plan of letting the horse archers do their work of softening me up and, as you can see from the above picture, moved his cataphracts forward; closing down the room available for his horse archers deployed in the centre to evade in as I advanced. After only one turn of ineffective shooting my legions were consequently in charge reach of his cataphracts with the horse archers pinned in front of them.

 At this point the luck turned, up to that point things had been going all his way, now they went mine. In the following turn I can only assume Gordon didn't get the cards to hold his impetuous "devastating charger" cataphracts from charging, nor did he have the cards or room to get his intervening horse archer SUGs completely out of the way. The result was, of course, the cataphracts were forced to charge straight through some of them, dispersing them, and one picked up a wound marker on the way.

 

The cataphracts go in! The blue Charge indicator markers showing the four charge paths.

The cataphracts have gone in a touch prematurely, not only have none of my legionary TUGs taken any wounds from bow fire but the Armenian infantry haven't been able to keep up to support the charge, consequently there are already gaps for the Romans to exploit should they withstand the initial onslaught. Gordon's hope was for the cataphracts to roll some skulls and Shatters to destroy their opponents before I could do so. It could easily have happened, particularly against my right hand - average quality- legionary TUGs.

Unfortunately for Tigranes my change of luck held. Suffice to say, Gordon didn't achieve any Shatter results in the charge phase whilst I managed to roll consistently well including several skulls. In the following movement phase, because of the gaps in the Armenian line I was able to turn on the flank of one cataphract unit. By the end of the melee phase, after falling to achieve any Shoves either, two of Gordon's cataphract TUGs were history (pardon the pun), the resulting morale KaB tests took out the remaining two; taking his army down with them.

 

The end of the game, a big hole where the cataphracts once were telling the story.

Gordon's Comments

Pre-Game

As the Armenians I will be facing an army of good flexible heavy infantry. They will haver shield cover and probably be melee experts. There might be a couple of cavalry units and some lighter infantry. Looking at the Armenian list I should take the maximum pikemen and imitation legionaries. Some cataphracts for the off chance of a spectacular breakthrough. Horse archers will be of limited use on a Magna battlefield, especially against shield cover.

However, Tigranes fought Lucullus with an army of cataphracts, horse archers and local infantry. So, that is what I will go for. I do know the historical outcome and don’t expect to do any better. But let’s see what happens.

The army is going to need good terrain, so I will make Tigranes talented to maximise the chances of fighting in the plains rather than mountains. So, not quite prepared to lose without a fight.

Roman professional generals will be hard to outmanoeuvre even with light horse, so I will take 4 instinctive generals. A tribal army needs all it can get.

The game

Talented Tigranes gets the terrain he wants. A couple of bits of rough terrain, one of which will give my tribesmen some chance of standing up to the legions. Couple of light horse on my left flank next to the infantry. Block of cataphracts under Tigranes in the centre. Median ally with cataphracts on the right.

Alec has wall to wall legionaries except for his right flank. So it is going to be a straight forward advance to contact and hope for the best. I put some light horse in front of the cataphracts to slow him down and perhaps inflict some casualties (unlikely, and even if I do they will be rallied). This is where it all starts to go wrong in practice. I am confusing the rules for ADLG and MeG:

·        Light troops don’t slow anyone.

·        Light horse cannot pass through cataphracts. I am quickly reminded of this.

·        And also that the command radius is only 5 units for all units. (Silly to forget that, as I had raised it as we set up).

I also lost my left flank light horse by moving them too far forward and allowing them to be outflanked. So far, so bad. Still, the cataphracts might save the day. All charge into contact with his legions. Looking for the shatter and shove to break through. Didn’t get one. Instead most of the cataphracts died in one turn. All over with almost no loss to the Romans.

Post-game

Well, no surprise but it was a lot worse than I thought. Confusing different aspects of the two rules set didn’t help. Choosing the historical army rather than one with a better chance didn’t help (but I could still have done better with better luck ). 

The Result

Roman win - Three Prestige Points to the Manlii