WAB Warm-Up Game, 4/27/12

My buddy Pat L. (formerly Socal Warhammer guy), having just returned from Adepticon, and I got in a nice WAB game today at the Game Matrix using 2,000pt armies. I brought my Late-Japanese army and Pat configured his for a Twilight of Greece army. Both armies are from the new Armies of Ancients WAB supplement. The Twilight army (sounds like that girlie TV show) covers the period 300 BC to 146 BC. According to the the AoA brief, the list covers, "the Greek states and alliances from the abandonment of the traditional phalanx until Greece fell under the sway of Rome." My army has some great troops - the Bushi (like Samurai) have WS and BS 4 - the foot guys have bows AND thrusting spears; the mounted guys can shoot without movement penalty. The Retainer guys (like Ashigaru) with yari are considered Close Order with pikes.

I won both terrain set up and game start rolls. My luck continued when my Bushi infantry shot up his single bolt thrower enough to have his crew taken out of the game. My luck soon changed and his Cretan archers with BS 4 started to do damage to one of my Retainer archer units.

Next, Pat's wedge charged into the same bow unit, which chose to stand and fight - it was too close to stand and shoot, and would surely have been overtaken if it fled cavalry. The wedge killed off all of the contacted figures on the charge; the bowmen did get to fight back with half the number of attackers in the wedge.

Bad die rolls resulted in the Retainers losing the combat and subsequently fleeing; they were pursued and over taken by the wedge.

The Japanese right flank did well with the Bushi cavalry unit in the first few turns; it managed to decimate the Tarentine cavalry. Later, however, it managed to get charged by a phalanx - bad positioning allowed this to happen. Losing multiple rounds of combat it too broke and left the table. Another Retainer bow unit on this flank also lost in combat to another phalanx unit. The Retainer yari unit next to it failed its Panic test and fled off the table. We played 6 turns, and the Greeks were clearly victorious. The foot Bushi and one Retainer yari unit managed to survive - as well as the general.

As always, Pat was very generous in sharing his vast knowledge of game-play. He also patiently explained various options and possible outcomes. He made some suggested changes to make my army better, but I will wait until after Enfilade! to do this. They are definitely sound changes, but I don't want to reconfigure my list this close to the convention as I have to concentrate more on my Black Powder game. Oh, and speaking of Pat's generosity - he gave me a Marshal Ney figure he picked up at Adepticon. This figure was sculpted by Mike Owen and a part of the Adepticon registration - it will also be sold through Gorgon Studios.

As you can see, it is a superb sculpt. I'm looking forward to painting him up. Thanks again, Pat!