Thursday 17 November 2016

Battle Report - Art De La Guerre - Reduced Format

Hello,

Time for another Wednesday wargaming battle report! This time we decided to try out a new ancients game ADG (Art De La Guerre). There are a couple of reasons why I thought it would be worthwhile to give it a shot. The main one is that I saw that the first print run had sold out and another print run was just starting, and it seems to be gaining popularity at the conventions in the states that I attend, so seemed like there might be something to it. Additionally DBMM was re-printing all 5 of the books and I am not very keen on that game due to complexity, so seems like a good time to try a change.

As seen in the last painting update I re-based my Roman DBA army and added in a bunch of new stands so that I would have a good army try this out with. You don't have to re-base of course but I just felt like it for whatever reason. Good excuse to add to my Romans that haven't been used since the campaign and refresh it. Serge had his Byzantines.

We tried the reduced format for the first try as I thought it would be an easier way to get into it. Basically you get half as many points and one command instead of 3. At this size it feels allot like DBA but with different rules.

I have 2 Elite Legions, 3 Legions, 2 Cav, a mediocre Elephant, a Light Horse with Javelins, and 2 Light infantry with Bows. The Byzantines have 4 Knights with Impact, 1 the General, 3 Cav with bows, 2 Mediocre Heavyspearmen, and 3 Mediocre Bows.


My thought is that I need to get my good legions to beat up on the mediocre infantry before I get killed by knights.


First turn the Byzantines move in with everything and I mostly stick my ground. I wanted to use the small forest to protect the side of my line from the 3 cavalry. I sent my one light infantry on the other side into the woods as well. The other one has to stand in front of mister elephant to protect him from arrows.


The byzantine start shooting arrows and get a hit on my Elite Legion doing a point of cohesion and disordering them. (this game uses cohesion points like Lasalle instead of the recoil back and forth). The Knight have a good start routing one of my cavalry units right away but take disorders on the other 2. The Elephant panics all mounted units that touch it even on the corner so the last one didn't have super great odds.


My Legions then charge in to try and do a number on all the mediocre infantry. The cavalry battle remains indecisive, but my legions kill one unit of bow and slide over to fight a spear. The other units all take some hits disordering them.


The knight general plus the hole in the line and provides support, but mediocre bowmen and no match for legions in melee so another one of them routs. The Knights start winning the Cavalary battle again but is to little to late.


On the next round the Knights clean up the rest of my cavalry, but my Elite Legions kill another 2 stands of infantry, so that is enough to break the Byzantines!

Game 2:

That was fast so there was time for a second round. This time the Byzantines changed things up getting rid of as much infantry as possible and loading up on knights.


Here we are after the first turn. That is allot more knights. I put the Elephant with the Elite Legions this time. I am not confident about fighting knights so I am hoping at lease those 3 can win. My cavalry are a bit less interesting in fighting now so they are cowering behind a bit.


The battle is about to start for real now. I moved up my lines and unpacked the mounted units to protect my flank. My light horse rode up to be annoying and try and get a lucky disruption. The Byzantines have been getting bad rolls for commands so I have a bit more freedom. In this battle the way the pip rolls work we can get between 1 and 4.


On there turn the Knights split there line, wanting to avoid the Elephant, so I sent them forward on my turn. The fights go fairly even for now with both sides taking some disruptions. The Knights have more of an advantage on the charging turn so it is not good for them to take a hit. It evens up the fight and they can only take 3 hits vs 4 for the legions. I killed the one bow but the general came in to cover.


The Knights are easily able to kill the Legion they had disordered and overlapped. Whcih had me worried. But some abysmal rolls lead to a pair of other Knights routing. So things are starting to look grim for the Knights.


But things mostly continue to go poorly for them. The General is pounding my Elite Legion into the ground, But yet another Knight routs.


In the end the Knights break as they are not able to kill my mounted units fast enough. But it is pretty close this time. Both of my mounted units are 1 hit away from routing, and the general is about to finish off a legion!

So far I like this game. It is allot simpler and easier to read and figure out. The troops still have the same game of being good at fighting some things and abd at others but there are less intersctions. Looking forward to trying the full size game at some point.

Thanks;
Mike

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