Sunday, December 18, 2011

SPARTANS!

PREPARE FOR GLORY!

Some of you may recall about… oh… TWO YEARS AGO I painted a stand of Spartans to help get my friend Jackson's Early Greek Hoplite army started… Well he FINALLY completed them and brought them out for their first game last night… (I think the figures were painted nearly a year ago… and, after watching 300 again a month or so back, he finally got to finishing up the bases!)

Not having an Early Greek Hoplite army to oppose him…. yet… or even any of the multitude of ancient armies I have ready to paint completed… (Well I do have the Early Imperial Romans… but they’re few hundred years later and nothing like what the hoplite would have fought…) I busted out some Middle Anglo-Saxons… even later than the Romans, but the same make up as a number of other Hoplite armies:

FORCES

Middle Anglo-Saxons
1x Spear General
9x Spear
2x Psiloi

Early Greek Hoplite - Spartans
1x Spear General
11x Spear


THE GAME


(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)


Spartans defending the… er… well… Sparta, I guess…?


The Saxons advance.


Psiloi attempting to be a nuisance.


The lines close.


BA-DAM! With a thunderous din of metal on metal the antagonists clash! Lots of shoving back and forth, and in that first round I killed his general…

First Turn… First game… Dead General…

Luckily later in the bound the Spartans also got lucky and took out one of my own spear and so the game went on – though with the Spartans suffering in the PIP department due to the loss of their general.


Well, all I had to do to end the game victorious was to knock out one more stand of spear (Dead General + more lost than the enemy = game over)… but the Spartans seemed to be a bit angry and kept destroying MY stands?!


More Shoving back and forth.


Saxons even up the score….


Spartans take out another Saxon…


Battle lines looking a mess.


Saxons even up the score again – with some cagey maneuvering of Psiloi behind the Spartan line!


Even more of a mess.

Now way out on the end I had a bit of an exposed flank and Jackson was finally able to turn it. Which could have spelt disaster and loss for the Saxons. However I had one Spear in the middle of the line isolated and overlapped on both sides… That didn’t work out. then we rolled for the flanked stand at the end of the line…

50% chance he’s going to push me back into my own guys and that’ll be it Saxons lose 4-3…


Well not only did the Saxons not die… they rolled a six… to Jackson’s one… and utterly DESTROYED the Spartan Spear and that was the end of that… The Spartans gave up the field!

I can hardly say they lost because they were green and un experienced… despite the loss of their general in the first round and a more or less uphill battle they fought like deamons from the pits of hell and sold themselves dearly…


GAME #2

Well that was quick so we had another round. This time Rick wanted to play and with something a little more fantastical. Rick took the mounted Orc army- going for mobility along with some hard-hitting behemoths. Jackson ended up defending and threw a river out there. I made a few cracks about “Defending the HOTT river, where their mobility counts for nothing…”

FORCES

Orcs
1x Behemoth General (Giant)
1x Behemoth (Trolls)
3x Beasts (Wolves)
4x Riders (Wolf-Riders_
1x Shooter (Goblin Archers)

Early Greek Hoplite - Spartans
1x Hero General
10x Spear



The Spartans advance to the river and the Orcs and allies paraded back and forth along the river trying to find a place to cross where there wasn’t Spartans.


Seriously, there was WAAAAAAAAAY too much moving back and forth along the river bank - they didn’t seen to get that on a 90cm wide battlefield… with an army taking up 66cm of that… and it taking at least two turns to cross once committed… There was just NO WAY they were going to get across anywhere that wasn’t defended!


More of the same.…


Back…


and forth…


Finally Rick committed his behemoths and archers and tried to bludgeon their way across. The Behemoth/Giant General has some limited successs, but the archers were destroyed in the crossing


The Spartans closed ranks and the Giant was eventually forced back into the river.


Then the Trolls were destroyed…


Rick finally committed his wolves and wolf riders.


…and they were destroyed…


one…


by…


one…

Spartans won this one – with no losses! If this is how they do on their first outing, they will definitely be a force to be reckoned with!

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

More pictures of whatever I happen to be painting and blathering about plans for the new year…

4 comments:

  1. Nice job by Jackson on the painting!

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  2. I know! It's fabulous, huh? He even did some converting on the generals stand to put spears in their arms - actually one of them he actually added an arm to put a spear in - so it would be clear that it was a "Spear" General!

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  3. Typically, I refuse to cross a river that well-defended. I'll just look at my opponent and say "my general has decided the omens don't favour a crossing today. We'll try further upstream tomorrow..."

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