Again I roll to be the defender, which at least allows me to pick my terrain. The home terrain for my army is 'Littoral', so we'll have some coastline on the battlefield, otherwise I get to choose between steep hills, woods, river and Town/City.
I choose a couple of steep hills with a pair of woods, one at each end of the hills to extend the rough terrain. The nearly symmetrical board layout, narrows Steve's options on deciding how to play the battle. This also sets up the centre of the battlefield as a valley between the hills and woods, which hopefully will channel the phalanxes down the narrow centre and give me the chance to use my superiority in light troops to harass his flanks from the rough terrain .
My Athenians set up at the head of the valley
Spartans advance towards them
I decide this time not to advance the phalanx but send forward the light troops on their own, the Light Horse aiming to slip between a gap between his line and the valley side
Steve takes a detachment of hoplites to try to block the gap...
...But fails and my Light Horse slip through, while my light troops continue to advance along the ridge line.
The Athenian phalanx holds its position as the Spartan hoplites continue to advance, throwing out a detachment and psiloi to screen their left flank...
My Light Horse gallop on straight towards the Spartan camp. They see off the camp followers and proceed to loot it! As long as I hold it I'm TWO elements ahead! The battle's half won already!
On comes the Spartan phalanx as I hold my ground...
...and ever forward...
...and phalanxes charge in and lock in combat! My light infantry at the same time swoops down to ambush an element of his psiloi...
A close up of the phalanxes
The Spartan psiloi repulse my peltasts and javelinmen...
In a virtual repeat of Megara, the right flank of my phalanx pushes back their overlapped opponents, but centre, and this time also the left flank held by the cavalry are pushed back...
And with a great PIP roll of 6, I can seize the initiative...
My peltasts and psiloi turn their attention to the detachment of hoplites...
...and I charge back in to straighten my line
The line holds on both sides,but over on the left flank my cavalry are at a disadvantage to the spear armed hoplites...
...and when Steve counterattacks he starts with them...and down they go...destroyed...
With an overlap created and some good rolling by Steve, his double line phalanx takes out the one element of my force in single line....
...which helps him repulse what is now the hoplites on the left of the line, even though my right has pushed back his left...
...Steve uses his move to move his left flank back into the action...
...But it is the combat to his right which proves decisive...A SIX to ONE dice roll against my overlapped hoplites, and TWO hoplite elements go down........and that's it. Four of my elements lost. Game over!
Despite gaining the early advantage by capturing the Spartan camp, I just couldn't capitalise on it. My light infantry completely failed to use the terrain to ambush. When the phalanxes hit, the entire left side of my phalanx just went down like nine-pins....
We thought we'd leave the fate of the Athenians there for the evening. I'll have to discuss with Steve what to do next time we play again...it seems a bit early in the campaign for the Athenians to loose Athens. Perhaps, they counterattack to try to retake Attica...or the action could switch elsewhere in Greece...or they could stand siege behind the 'Long Walls'...
...Steve and I agreed that, though a simple, quick play and now 'ageing' set of rules, DBA had worked well for this period. The rules on overlapping and PIPs which encourage tabletop generals to keep their armies in closely formed up battle lines works particularly well for phalanx warfare. Using WAB rules, would have given a quite different game. WAB units tend to act independently and it much more about trying to trigger army panic rather than the pushing and shoving of hoplite warfare, eventually producing a break-through, either leading to one side to collapse, or disintegration of the battle into confused melee, which happened in our battles. Most importantly, they are a set of rules that make you stop and think a lot, without getting you bogged down in the detail of the mechanics...
...but with time for one more game, we thought we'd switch the field of combat, and armies and wind the clock back 20 years to 480 BC and the setting to the island of Sicily...
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