Game 1 vs Neo-Assyrian. Bassano 10/2011
The first game I played versus a Neo Assyrian army. I had a lot of respects for KnS, a very difficult troops to fight for my army, so as defender I tried to use the terrain to gain more flank advantages I could
This was the battlefield. It was good for me, with approach for enemy chariots restricted. The Assyrian side of the table was quite open, but this was not necessarily a negative thing, because it would leave enemy light troops exposed.
With no weather I deployed following my doctrine, with Nubians in the center and regular troops on the flanks. The PsS were in the Bua. Afraid of an heavy chariots charge in the center, I deployed the BwO a bit back to increase their protection.
The Assyrian, deploying second, put the heavy mounted in the center, supported by the elite auxilia facing the enclosed fields, and a corps with a great number of light troops ready to assault the town. His plan was quite simple and correct: Take the difficult goings and win with the KnS charge
I gave the lower pip dice to my center, that had the only task to fix the enemy, and started to manouver the RBwI on both the flanks.
The enemy advanced with the higher pip dice to the mounted. I could not recognize the lower pip dice corps and the less mobile corps in the first two bounds, because my opponent rolled the same result with the lower pip. I guessed it could be the RAxS corps, but wanted to know that before to commit the troops.
The assyrian auxilia superior closed to the enclosed fields, and I came out with my BdF to avoid to fight in the difficult terrain.
I let opponent to charge me taking some risks because I wanted to exploit the advantage given by the compulsory Ax follow up and the overlaps in my bound. The risk was that I had very few reserves, needing to cope with the enemy long line. This was partially compensated by the RBwI position, that could manouver to take in the rear the enemy, forcing him to use pips the lower pip dice corps.
The Assyrian, pressed close by my troops could not withdrew the supporting psiloi. This proved decisive.
On the right flank Assyrians attacked the built up area
The assyrian auxilia attack met disaster, and the command was quickly disheartened, with psiloi casualties added to RAxS because of their position. The winning egyptians mopped up the surviving assyrians
The Assyrian flank collapsed, and the Egyptian BdF withdrew to form a coherent line with the Nubian. The assyrian light troops were having the upper hand in the house to house fighting, but with a regular dice lost, the flank assyrian corps now would have had command problem I guessed, so I could leave behind the PsS survivor to dealy as long as possible the enemy.
The game would will be decided in the center.
Again low pips prevented the IAxO corps to leave behind the supporting psiloi, and egyptians charged enemy IAxO to exploit this advantage and to form a salient threating KnS flanks. I was trying to win without engaging the enemy heavy chariots.
My opponent tried to cause as many casualties he could, because he was now in a losing position. The KnS charged piecemal while the AxO were slowly chopped by the egyptians axemen
The Assyrians fought back well, doing many casualties before to break. 23-2 for the Egyptians.
The game was smooth until I was charged by assyrian chariotry. These troops in a couple of bounds killed more than 10% of my army. The game was decided by an horrible combination of lowly assyrian pips leaving supporting psiloi stuck behind the supported troops, amd my charge that killed 1,5 ME each time.
This was an important factor. The battle proved that my army was big enough to keep fighting also when taking a lot of casualties, but had problems to force a win in few bounds, needing time, focus, position advantage and use of terrain