Parthian's At The Gates AAR

Got another Hail Caesar game in with Matt last week, we pushed the points up to 550 so both of us had a few more options this game. I went with two commanders (half) with activations of 8 opposed to the normal 7. Matt went with Camel Resupply for his horse archers, a very nasty ability giving his archers the opportunity to re-roll missed shots!

The large mass is my Persians whilst Matt has the more compact Parthian's. My plan was to storm ahead and try and pin Matt's troops against his table edge. This got off to a good start as I had good moves and stormed ahead.

Then Matt on his turn blundered and was forced to charge his horse archers into two of my Medium Cavalry units. Here we made the mistake of allowing one of his units support which lead him to win the first round of combat on my right though the second round went my way, pity I had become shaken and disordered by this point! The other melee saw me shatter his archers and Matt lost the first unit of the game.

Another angle showing I had gone heavy with the cavalry, four units of mediums on this flamk and five heavy on the other flank.

Matt did his usual flow round my flanks, this being my left flank, however it woke me up to the need to be wider than Matt, very much possible given the extra troops I had. Unfortunately I did not really come to grips with that till late in the game.

Back on the left with the red die showing I am disordered. I was to suffer so many disordered units I started to struggle to move forward.

Same right flank but the situation went from looking like I was going to defeat the flanking light cavalry division and swing into the next division and roll them up, instead due to disorder I was starting to look in trouble.

In the middle I had two units save their casualties but Matt having rolled a six I was disordered and unable to move. Extremely frustrating and shapes of things to come.

My turn to start throwing buckets of dice as my Levy Persian Bow went into action but could I roll a six? Well maybe next turn.

As Matt brought up his Cataphracts I prepared for the big clash. I am better allowing Matt to charge and stay stationary so as to count supports as I would loose my counter charge bonus as he has Contos (Lance) At lest the rear unit of his Cataphracts was taking missile loss and even disorder!

Back on the right flank the only real change was the amount of casualties I had collected, though I was temporary out of disorder.

Disorder stopped some of my Hoplites from charging forward whilst the ones able to move forward failed to even force the Parthian's to evade.

I moved my small units of bow and sling out of the way but another turn of no disorder or casualties, I await their charge and forget to fire them bows as I am charged!

I was able to break up the left flanks attack by forcing one Cataphract to retreat but Matt was confident of getting the other into melee whilst bowing me off the table.

My right flank is starting to crumble, two units of Medium cavalry have been broken and the two remaining are high on casualties and low on results.

I just needed a couple of good rolls and I could have caused an upset but a combination of being under disorder and failing the pre turn removal and my then failing to get the moves meant I could not remove screen and charge into the Cat's as they passed by.

Oh too many disorders to count! My frustration knew no bounds. I think the Parthian's can be one of the hardest armies to fight. However I think I have a possible answer I just did not work it well.

With so many of my units now both disordered and shaken we called it. A few rule mistakes and definite tactical errors made this one very one sided, though we had a good laugh. Our next game will feature Matt's Han Chinese so will be a very different flavour to these Parthian's though I will be seeing the Parthian's again no doubt.