OT Round 1 - 418 Naissus
Game 1
BrentS (Rome) 7
Steve (Goths) 0
Game 2
BrentS (Goths) 7
Steve (Rome) 3
Steve was harshly handled by the dice and in the banner counts in these matches. I’ll paraphrase what we discussed after. While it’s not always the case, many of the best Ancients games mirror historical ancient battle. Tactical positioning and skirmishing until one side pulls the trigger and the battle quickly cascades to a result. Often that key moment pivots on one set of attacks, either breaking enemy lines or failing to do so, and the outcome depends on whether one side can press advantage or the other can rally from a setback. In this case, ironically, that pivotal moment was nearly identical but on different sides….a high odds Heavy Cav attack against a depleted Auxilia unexpectedly failing, leading to disaster.
Game 1
In this match the pivot came very early. Rome started with a standard Order Lights attack across its Light Cav line and the Goths, recognising the risk of sitting there and talking unanswered fire, immediately Double Timed their Warriors into the Roman Light Cav, forcing them to evade with block loss and threatening to pin them. Once the Warriors are committed they’re committed but maybe they didn’t have the cards to press on because there were a couple of rounds of ordering lights on both sides which gave Rome the breathing space to reorganise their lines and, crucially, pull Aurelian from the right onto a centre Heavy Infantry. The Goths did then push deep and hard into the thin Roman line with both Warriors and Heavy Cav. The critical moment came when a Goth Heavy Cav failed to kill a 2 block Roman Auxilia, which killed the cav and its attached leader on battle back. It went south for the Goths from there as Rome pushed both its leaders on Heavy Infantry forward and massacred the leaderless Goths, ending with four Spartacus boosted Roman units trapping a Light Infantry for the final banner. Dice and the resulting momentum in Rome’s favour really determined this one.
Game 2
This was a more balanced and interesting match up. A lot of tough and cagey positioning, move and countermove. Drawing an opening Mounted Charge, the Goths repositioned their central Heavy Cav toward the right and although they took some attrition from ranged fire were able to hit the Roman left with three have Cav, losing one of them but killing an Auxilia and forcing depleted Roman units to their baseline. While Rome was able to tuck those units in toward their centre and there was never any further major action there, the threat was always present and key to influencing what happened elsewhere. Within the first two turns I had two Double Times but may have been reluctant to use them too early after what I’d seen happen to the Goths Double Timing in our previous match up and delayed using them longer than I might otherwise have. After some jockeying and positioning of lights, including trying to get the units out from behind the Wagon Laager, which took time and didn’t really have any impact, I eventually dropped the first Double Time. Rome responded by attacking a 2 block Gothic Auxilia with a Heavy Cav and failed again….no leader death but it left the Heavy Cav pinned and two exposed cav on the Roman baseline. Now the second Double Time for the Warriors to kill all three. Rome took a couple of banners in response but Aurelian was forced to retreat off the map and the surviving Warrior killed a pinned Light Cav with a Clash of Shields to finish it.
Steve played very strongly as usual but a couple of key failed attacks opened the floodgates, particularly in the first battle. Thanks for some fun games. Same city, same timezone, same accent
so we voiced and there’s minimal text in the logs.
Brent.
