This weekend I attended a WAB 2.0 tournament called "Glory or Dishonour" and what an appropriate title it turned out to be.. First of all the Glory part > all the painting on my Spartans paid off with me actually getting voted for Best Painted Army. Now if anything this is the only price I would ever like and hope to get in any wargaming I do.. not being a particular competitive games player, let alone a good one, my focus should be on the things I might actually get some credit for.
The dishonour.... hope you have a couple of minutes left:
Won the first game by throwing ridicilously well with my light armour Phalanx with ony a leader in it (17 attacks in total) against a Macedonian Pike Phalanx INCLUDING a Hero, Army Standard Bearer and his Army General. Seing the army general fleeing, all but one of his remaining units had to flee.... this basically settled the game, but still Don recovered a lot from his terrible predicament and was able to score some points.
The next game I played Jasper (he of Ancient/Medieval Warfare and Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy fame)length ways on the table. Again a Macedonian(ish) army but with a lot less pikes in it and some hefty auxilia troops which I had noticed I was lacking completely (Leadership 5 skirmishing units dont tend to hang around long enough to actually come up with a plan to use them) Jasper played a very good game with him going for both my flanks straight from the off. He was able with some great tactics to turn both my flanks which settled the battle in a good victory for him and a ridicilous 0 points for me remaining.
The third and final battle of the day was played against the later to be winner of the tournament. Frank played a very interesting army consisting mainly of the Italian(ish) tribes from the Carthaginian list. Light Infantry units with some hard hitting cav and big skirmishing units. He used the army with a lot of skill and my army lacking in mobility and maneuvre capability (something to think about come the next additions to the army) was eventually drawn out of line and munched unit by unit. Again scoring me 0 points (sounds like our European Songcontest Entry scores of late).
After a good night sleep and the ritual burning of my dice used during the day I turned up fo game 4 the following day to meet a very nice opponent from Germany (which name unfortunately has not stuck with me > OH Dishonour AGAIN on my part) he played a Thracian(ish) list with a big wedge, nice unit of ligt cav and lots of Thracian light infantry, bows a phalanx and Thracian warband. Again I could not be made to stay in place and altough using some advice I had gotten from jasper in deploying one Phalanx only 2 deep thus making its front much wider I did AGAIN, search for a too offensive approach. He is a very skilled player and was able to draw me out and squize his light cav between two of my Phalanx units. This basically settled the battle in his favour.... or so we both thought. In order to score some last minute points he decided to charge my left hand phalanx unit with no less than 3 units His wedge,including Champion, Army General and Army Standard Bearer, light cav in the rear, skirmishing thracians in the flank). Both our conclusion that my unit would be hammered and spit out like scrap metal turned out very different. His wedge unit against a Phalanx actually lost its wedge and all its charge bonusses, but also this turned out to be the first time in the game he was not able to deal a single casualty on my unit. Since I was able (the first time in the last three games) to actually deal out some serious damage I was able to flee all his units !!! Shamefully for me he managed to rally all his fleeing units just in time to score me some meagre points.
It turned out that he was less than 100 points short to win the tournament.
After this we played a large fun game with Guy (he oh mighty one of WSS) and Jasper trying something out with card based initiative instead of IGO UGO and this turned out to be a lot of fun (more on this in a future WSS I think).
Being my first games of WAB 2.0 ever I found them to be very interesting. My army choice did not turn out to be an army suited as is for any serious chance of winning. So i need to add some Peltast / Cavalry choices instead of one of the Phalanx units to add some mobility and some better flank protection. The skirmishing units need to be a tat larger to gain some more staying power.
Will I be playing WAB again ? Absolutely, certainly after having such a great experience with all the players at Uden.
