Saturday 10 March 2018

More fun for the Hun

After their disastrous showing in their first game I decided to take the Huns out for a second crack at the Eastern Patrician Romans last night. This time I was a little more thoughtful in my deployment, utilizing the lessons from the previous night.
The Hunnic hordes deploy facing the Romans.

First moves - light cavalry skirmish on the flank. And the first PIP dice sees the plough out of play again.

First blood goes once more to the Roman archers, taking down a Light Horse with a 6-1 opposed roll.

Mean while the Roman lines angle themselves to allow the general to enter the fray against the warbands

Closing the door on their left flank, the Huns take their first ever kill - a Roman Light Horse element.

In response the Clibinarii charge the offending Huns, but merely recoil them.

Warband clash with blades supported by Gepids, while the Hunnic left deploys for a telling overlap on the remaining Roman Light Horse.

Down goes the second Roman Light Horse, and on the other flank warband kill their blade targets. But elsewhere things are not as good. Blades manage to destroy the Gepid knights who end up overlapped on 2 sides. The resulting dice roll is once more a 6-1, and the Attila is forced to send his element into the gap. The Hun Psiloi is also destroyed by the Roman bows, again with a bad 5-1 roll. 
Having pursued through the Roman lines the Hunnic warband is exposed to a flanking and rear attack. 
There is only one outcome for this. The Huns lose their last elements and can-not make up the deficit elsewhere on the field. 
 Game over, but a much closer battle this time. To be fair, the Huns had some rotten luck with key dice rolls. Rolling 1s against 6s is never good. Had just one of those rolls gone the other way, who knows what may have happened.
One constant has been the very impressive shooting of the Roman bows. They have been a major contributor in both battles, taking out 2 Hunnic elements this game. Losing the psiloi also effectively isolated the warband and allowed it to be surrounded and destroyed.
I feel yet another game is needed.
The causalty list. The loss of the two warband elements at hte end of the game makes it look nowhere near as close as it was.
Nate

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