WAB Gaming with a Tournament Veteran - 2/11/12

Had a great time gaming - actually being schooled - by longtime gamer and tournament veteran Pat L. Pat was kind enough to share some of his vast WAB knowledge with me before heading out to Strategicon next week. Pat brought his Macedonians (with stand-ins for his Scythian cav - still on the workbench). I again used my Late-Japanese army.

We threw a few ad hoc terrain pieces on the table that The Game Matrix has on hand. I won the roll to start the game and opted to go first. Again our armies were capped at 2,000 points in anticipation of Enfilade!

My Japanese had Bushi cav and spear on their left flank and two each units of Retainer spear and bow in the center and on the right flank.

In Pat's turn, he maneuvered a few of his Macedonian units around, as well as firing, unsuccessfully, his bolt thrower. Pat taught me a lot of useful moves, and formation changes with both Close and Open Ordered units. One of which was to have my Bushi in Open Order reform into two ranks to best utilize their massed-missile fire.

My Retainer unit with pikes did some damage to his Companion wedge - enough to make the unit flatten for their turn of combat.

The Macedonian phalanx on their left defeated a Retainer pike unit in combat; not helpful that the Retainer unit only had two ranks and aren't allowed a standard. They were within 12" of the Japanese army general though - who had a Leadership of 9. However, they rolled double 6's and ended up routing off the table. Due to their breaking, the general rolled and passed, but two other nearby Retainer units ended up rolling 10's! Another Retainer unit in the center ended up losing in combat to the remnants of the Companion wedge. The Bushi cav and spear on the left held up well with their BS and WS of 4 - not to mention the Lords in each of the units.

 

At the end of Turn 6, it was declared a Macedonian Victory - they had most of their infantry units intact and also controlled most of table.

As I mentioned, I really picked up a lot of tips and tricks from Pat. After the game he gave me some detailed pointers for the Japanese, as well as other armies, I plan to use in future games. One thing I plan to incorporate right away is the use of generic movement stands. This would, for me anyway, make formation changes more readily implemented during a game. Specifically, with nicely edged and flocked movement trays, I tend to want to leave the unit as is during the game, come what may, regardless of the tactical advantages otherwise.