Friday late afternoon at this year’s Britcon saw an opportunity for a warm-up game where my Venetians (Abroad) would flex their muscles against Richard’s Later Achaemenid Persians.

The Venetians lost the scouting, with the Persians taking full advantage to load their cavalry onto my open right flank whilst countering the Knights on my left with their mercenary Hoplites.

A Potentially Unfortunate Deployment for the Venetians

As the game began, I advanced forward rapidly on the flanks, determined to use my Knights to smash through his first line of cavalry on the right whilst attempting to slip around the Hoplite flank on the left.

On the left, my plan initially succeeded, with one unit of Knights getting well behind the enemy line, poised to turn and go crashing into the rear of the enemy infantry. Unfortunately, the Knights then decided that what they had achieved was quite enough, thank you, and decided to stop for lunch: refusing to turn and charge the Hoplite rear for a couple of turns.

This then allowed some Persian javelinmen to get into the rough ground anchoring the Achaemenid flank and, for some reason (probably incompetance) I allowed myself to get tangled up in dealing with them rather than focussing on smashing the Greek heavy infantry. You’ll also see, in the photos below, how my other unit of Knights has got itself trapped on the sideline: more stupidity on my part!

As the very promising situation on the left now looked like a pile of poop, it was time to focus on the right!

Here my Knights had sallied forth determined to kick some Achaemenid butt: we might be outnumbered at the moment, but smash a couple of units from the field with your first charge and the numbers start to make sense!

Unfortunately, although I disordered both units of veteran enemy cavalry on first contact, I didn’t break them, meaning that they had the opportunity to pull back and rally.

This also allowed the rest of the Persian cavalry to break off from that melee and hit my units in the centre: the result, combined with some devilish missile fire from some Persian Lights, being the loss of two units (the militia spearmen and the crossbowmen) and a hole the size of the Blackwall Tunnel right in the middle of my line and, more worryingly, in front of my camps!

The Persians promptly poured some light infantry and their “spare” cavalry into the gap, and suddenly what had looked like a great position on both flanks now looked like Armageddon in the centre!

I desperately needed to free up my units stuck on the left, but an unwise decision not to lead with the Knights bit me firmly on the derriere when my Balestrieri montati (mounted crossbowmen) failed to activate on an Ace and so condemned their entire command to sit there doing nothing for another turn.

All was not lost, however: all I needed was the Alabardieri (halberdiers) to charge back into my camp, disperse the enemy Lights there, and thus rescue three coins and the battle from disaster.

All I needed…

Now the initiative passed to the Richard and the Persians, who clinically finished me off by hitting a unit of Venetian Knights in the flank and front with the cavalry whom I’d failed to destroy in the first melee of the game. He didn’t even need his Lights in the camp to move sideways and take another three coins!