Friday, August 18, 2017

FoG - Carthagians hit the table

General Nate and myself got another game of Fields of Glory in recently. For the first time I tabled my own painted forces, which is always exciting. The Carthaginians I received early of 2016 so it's been a while, but then again a finished project is pretty amazing. I'll have to do a parade post soon.



My opponents were the Gauls, who it seemed often were either facing even odds in combat, or had slight edges. It was quite disconcerting, outnumbered, without any obvious advantage. I suspect this is the nature of the Carthaginian army....lots of options but not great at anything. What a choice....

To battle after the jump



I attempted to anchor my right side against uneven terrain. My heavy foot spear would hold the centre.

I raced forward my skirmish cav to try and disrupt the gauls as long as possible and possibly drive off his foot skirmishers.




Unfortunately for myself the Gauls had medium foot that could move easily through the corn field in the middle. This would create a lot of issues for my heavy foot in the future.

My cavalry got stuck in early to try and drive off his large blocks of foot. One of the many rules for FoG is that cavalry will charge formed foot, and then bounce back if unsuccessful. They will basically not get 'stuck' in combats with foot that doesn't work for them. 
 My cavalry on the right was managing to inflict disruptions and slow the advance. Similarly on the left my cavalry was keeping nate to a slow advance of his cavalry to the same speed as his foot.......slowly.
I do make a mistake and charge them both......which resulted in losses and disruption, losing me my influence on the left flank.
 The corn field has allowed a rapid advance of skirmishers and medium foot against my centre. In a total upset victory Nate crushes my heavy foot spear who fail two morale checks in a row (in a single turn) and break and run.
This would be repeated against another unit for heavy foot spear. There's some saying about losing terribly with your brand new painted troops.....

My left flank is sitting on the hill to try and interfere with the ability of his troops to swing onto the flank of my centre groups.

On the right my 'good' cav is still stuck in a fight, and 2 units of light cavalry are getting steadily driven back.

It looks pretty dire for my chances.

Leaping forward a few turns my centre is falling back fast, but has rallied enough to be a speed bump.

On the left flank one of the heavy spear has ignored the skirmishers and turned to flank his infantry while my cavalry distract him (the distraction being they are dying in combat to Nates charge).

On the right my skirmishers managed to hold in uneven terrain against his cavalry. The light horse manage to set up a flank charge (which is *very* decisive in this rules set). My 'good' cavaly has won it's fight and aggressively followed up into some shaken troops in his back field. We have both tottered on the edge of breaking for a few turns.

Search and destroy acts have allowed me to pick off enough shaken units to push Nate past his break point.

It was a *very* interesting game compared to many of the previous games I've played of FoG. The typical lines of heavy infantry clashing in the middle and the fight being resolved by a mass cavalry fight on one flank was changed up. There was a fair amount of learning, but we seem to be picking up the speed of play as well.



8 comments:

  1. Interesting how that one ended up. 2/3's of the way through reading this I was sure you had lost.

    Armies looked lovely too. Looking forward to that parade post.

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    1. Hah, yes. I was pretty sure I'd lost too. One of the delights of closely fought games is the surprise at the end.

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  2. Nice looking game...and your Carthaginians are really impressive!

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    1. Thank you very much =).
      I tried to be utterly secretive about my army till suddenly they were all complete. Now I'm being lazy about photography....

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  3. Beautiful work on the minis! They must be a joy to game with.

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    1. It feels pretty good to deploy a fully painted and based army (that belongs to me!). Having thicker bases i've discovered is really handy for manipulating your army without having to grab pokey spears too often.

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  4. Hi Dave, your Carthagenians look great. It's a great sense of satisfaction putting a finished force on the table for the first time. I find it it inspires me to keep going and paint more!

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    1. I lost your comment in the shuffle of life! It's so rare for me to have a fully painted force. I quite agree: inspirational stuff for working towards another painting goal.

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