Philosophical title ... Ah well sometimes one muses upon the infinite questions, cating thought about in the ether of the endless unfathonable mind then again you might jusy want a beef buttie and a pint so I hies myself to the Commie to meet Flaoting Jeff and Jim the painter to tabletop battle using Jims fine collection of 15mm Ancients. Macedonians and Persians are the chosen adversaries and for the firt time Field of Glory the chosen rule set.
Now FOG is a superbly produced system- sahould be being published by Osprey- I've had a set and most of the supplements for over a year but never until today actually played the game. Its written is a sort of English which - when reading the idiot books(sorry Army lists) seems clear and mostly to the point. Only a few niggles spring to mind why are the units called "Battle Groups" probably becasue BG looks good in the lists- completly pointless they look like units and act as units so they are units however that is mere grammar On to the game.
The Macedonians had 11 units (3 phalanx , 1 companion, 1 Hypaspist, 1peltast 1 psiloi Javelins 1 Thracian Horse 1 each Thessalian and Prodromoi cavalry and 1 Cretan Archers.
The Persian 13 units (2 hoplites 2 Kardakes 4 heavy Cavalry, 1 light cacalry 1 Horse Archer 2 foot archers.
Unit sizes were as per the appropriate list from "Immortal Fire" and nothing too contoversial here except that perhaps the Kardakes were bowless which - depending upon the evidence you read they may or may not have been. In the event it mattered hardly a jot.
Now the actual fighting was slow to begin 2 reasons for this.
A/. Me and Floating Jeff know each others style pretty well so we tend to be cautios
B/. The Movement rates are short slowing upo the game and giveing an advantage to the defensive player.
Table size was for us average being only just over 6 feet by just under 4 now a smaller table say 5 by 3 would have speeded things up a tad but not that much as our assingned deployment areas "up to a foot in " meant that the outer ends of the table were never really used.
So it was at least 4 moves of fiddling about before the troops came into missle range.
Now the games mechanisms themselves are fairly simple and precise but sometimes odd - now as a first game there was stuff we were doing wrong- the second mpove thing for a start- never used it- that would have speeded stuff up a bit. But Jim never mentioned it and I only just noticed it as I write this so Hey TS boys it didn't happen. I'm still not convinced we used whatever passes for Morale correctly either. There was a distinct lack of Cohesion tests in the game bvut maybe Jimbo was umpiring close to his chest and didn't tell us. Nevertheless the random Charge move was well odd when a charge move can be less than a normal move but without any recouse to WHY that should be it just feels odd thats all.
Find out mre next time we play .
It strikes me that this set will be a godsend to fiddle-farters and Rules lawyers but since I don't play competitions I'll never encounter them. I don't know what the sentence would be for "inserting a Macedonian pike Phalanx up your opponent with intent to harm" but fortunately I'll never find out.... except perhaps as a witness.
Being element based the casualty system is either non- existant or severe- a fault of all element based games I feel and this - combined with - in this game at least- some extreme dice on both sides - gives odd results. Its possible for a losing unit to kill off the opposition and win a melee assuming it succeeds on its hits and the others don't. Yet its alos very difficult to fight back once you start to lose a melee. Still far from sure if we were doing this right - those 2 instances just felt odd.
Also I can't yet- under this system see the point of pikemen they have a + but apparently 1 + isn't enough you need 2 so its redundant.
Cross referenceing thew jargon without a quick reference sheet is a real pain. Since its highly unlikely that I'll play these rules more than occaisionally- 2 or 3 times a year - than I'll never learn the fiddly bits of which there are many but having said that with a single game under my belt I want another go- just to see if I'm totally wrong about this or if different troop types do actually matter.
The Pictures.
Give a totallly misleading view of the action. Franky I came second but the pics don't really tell you that. After all there is one of my Peltasts chasing off a large force of Persian Horse- and yes it did happen that way. Very odd indeed.
I've missed out the bit- sorry bad pic out of focus.... of the siver shield being broken by mercenary Hoplites I had 4 dice - re-rollonmg 1s so of course scored 3 2s and a 1 - re-rolled to another effing 2 - laugh I thought I'd never start.
This is what I mean about the nature of Truth. A picture may be worth a thousand words- but only if you put the right caption on it.....
Nevertheless we'll go back to FOG with other armies definitely more testing required.
0 comments:
Post a Comment