"To the strongest" - Successors WAB Game

Being Northwest Historical Miniature Gaming Society's monthly game day today, Old Bob from Oregon and I met at the Game Matrix in Tacoma, WA for a fairly large Successors game using WAB 2.0 for rules. Bob brought his Ptolemaic army and I dusted off my old Seleucid army. As may be evident in the photos, I haven't rebased my phalanxes to the more optimum three ranks for wider frontage per 2.0. I don't play WAB often enough, so don't really mind when the Cool Kids lap me a bit in Combat. Pat L. (Socal Warhammer) also showed up with his Seleucids and played Bruce D.'s NKE army (which hadn't seen the gaming table for several years also).

Seleucids at the start of the battle. From their right to left: Agema cav in wedge, four units of phalanxes with two elephants in between the center units, Cretan archers screening, a scythed chariot, and out of the picture is a unit of Scythian mounted archers (who did very well the entire game). Unfortunately, the scythed chariot was destroyed by enemy missile fire before it could get into charge range. The Cretan archers did very well by taking out a battery of heavy ballista early in the battle.

Ptolemaic army arrayed in the distance

Agema cavalry wielding xyston in wedge on the Seleucid right. The phalanx units each had a character to boost their Leadership. The phalanx unit to the Agema left has the Army General, the one next having the Army Standard, and the other two having a taxiarch each. Both elephants have barding, howdah with shields and three crewmen - one each pike, javelin and bow - actually one only had two crew models, but I paid for three as I wanted the archer.

Seleucid center with elephants interspersed between phalanxes.

After losing an Agema cavalryman from pesky bow fire on the steep hill, the Agema wedge charges into a Peltast unit with javelins and thrusting spears. The missing rear rank of Peltasts being taken out by the charge.

Agema cavalry flattened out after combat, but the Peltasts having passed their Leadership test held the cavalry in combat. With typically bad dice rolls, the Agema cav would eventually be whittled down to four and failing a Leadership test,  had them fleeing off the table by Turn 6.

Ptolemaic and Seleucid center units bravely advancing towards each other. The elephant and phalanx on its right managed to charge into the  phalanx unit to their front. Don't ask me why Bob had one of his cavalry wedges behind the phalanx - but I was thankful for it.

The Seleucids won the first round of combat, but the Ptolemaic forces consistently passed their Leadership tests to have multiple rounds of combat which eventually wore my phalangites out. Yes, the overlapping did come in handy for the Ptolemaics, but my attacks were pitiful unto themselves.

The elephant eventually lost a round of combat, and failing its Leadership test stampeded back whence it came from - never to return to battle.

Bye, bye elie. The phalanx unit with the Army General eventually failed a Leadership test after losing a round of combat in Turn 6, and decided the game in favor of the Ptolemies. At least the three other phalanx units, as well as the other elie managed to survive the battle.

Anyway, we played a grueling 6 Turns and the Ptolemies got the better of the Seleucids through superior dice rolling. For once, I can say I was very satisfied with my tactics - but I am convinced my dice rolling is worthless. For instance, I don't remember how many times I rolled 14 dice and scored 2 hits - followed by even less wounds. My Army General with 3 attacks normally had no hits whatsoever! Oh, and when I needed to roll low for Leadership tests, I'd roll 9's or 10's followed by 11's or 12's with the Army Standard re-roll. Anyway, it was nice to take the Seleucids out from the cabinet where they hadn't seen any action for several years.