To The World's Strongest, Game 2: Venice Abroad vs Early Imperial Romans
/Game two at the World’s, and it’s another Roman army: Principate or Early Imperial commanded by friend Dave.
I have an EIR army myself, and I know that one potential weakness is the fact that you only really have enough cavalry for one command…so assuming that would be on one flank, my plan was to smash it off the table with one command of my Knights and then loop back into the centre. The rest of my army would pin his heavy infantry in place.
I duly advanced forward and, before long was in range to charge.
For once my Knights had their metal as opposed to cardboard armour on, and soon the enemy cavalry was beaten back and I could turn to face the Roman flank.
Unfortunately, poor follow-up cards and Roman manoeuvrability meant that it took me a bit of time to actually finish off the enemy horse, by which time I was facing a wall of Legionary steel that wouldn’t be easy to break through.
Meanwhile, on the right hand side of the table, both Dave and I deployed our stratagems: Flank March for me, Lost Unit for Dave.
My flank marching light cavalry failed to dent the Roman infantry they appeared behind, and were then shot down by the Saggittarrii archers: disappointing in the extreme.
Dave’s Lost Unit however, ended up arriving right in one of my camps: highly annoying, and although I did manage to evict them fairly easily, they went on to threaten the flank of my other Knights, meaning I had to spend some time and sacrifice some territory to redeem the situation!
Back to the left, and I was still trying to bash my way through the Roman troops on that flank, but nothing I did seemed to work. Dave made excellent use of the terrain and the ease with which his Legionaries could manoeuvre: add to that a run of poor attack cards for me and great saving cards for him, and I was making little if any headway at all!
Then a crisis developed in the centre. My now-disordered Alabardiers were forced to retreat back to the camp, and those pooping light cavalry were back: sneaking through my lines to add to my problems.
Fortunately, the Alabardiers were made of stern stuff and resisted all attempts to break them and, as you can see in the picture above, I had reinforcements available to sort the situation.
I was also now in a position to essay an attempt on the Roman infantry on the right: a bit of manoeuvring would be required, but I ought to be able to get a decent flank charge in somewhere!
Unfortunately at this stage we ran out of time. The first morning session had overrun, and combine that with all the time spent failing to break the Roman left flank (despite multiple flank charges) and then dealing with the situation in the centre and on the right, and Time’s Winged Chariot was upon us and the game was over! A technical 8-6 victory to me, but not the Total Victory I was looking for.
Very frustrating after the initial success on the left. I only needed to break one more Roman unit (maybe take a Light as well) and the game would have been properly mine, but congrats to Dave for managing to stabilise the left and then come right back at me elsewhere.
A great game of To The Strongest.
