George was back with his toys again last night but this time we had my friend Marc along for the ride. It was 325 points of Macedonians versus the same of Persians again with me taking the Persians this round and Marc and George splitting the Macedonians.
I set up with a spear block on the left slightly ahead of centre, cavalry in the middle and light cavalry on my right. All my troops were in blocks of columns to allow for rapid movement and deployment. George set up with the companions on his far right, pike centre and light horse left. However as he does everytime, he managed to slide his troops to line up his pike against my spear.
I didn't have much luck with the pips and as usual found George's pike stomping across the board to hit my spear before they could deploy. The box formations of columns coupled with the low pip die and poor rolls made it impossible to deploy the spear properly before the pikes hit. and who was supporting the pike? The Companions of course. The middle and right flanks were better with my horse pushing forward. Pip starvation didn't help speed things along and Marc was able to form a ragged line to block.
As expected the main combat was on the left with pikes, elephants, and Companions grinding my spear to a pulp. Some piss poor rolling on my part stopped my cav from crushing the right wing and that decayed into a series of inconsequential fights. With the left flank crushed, my baggage was exposed. It bought a little time by running away from the Companions but that doesn't work for long. With the baggage gone, it only required a few horse casualties to break the army.
I always enjoy playing but I am consistently missing something. Last night I actually got angry - not just ticked at bad die rolls but angry enough to want to chuck the game. I just can't seem to get tempo in any of my games. I will not blame it on bad pips or dice rolls - there is something I'm just not grasping.
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