Well, it was with much anticipation that our biggest ever team of 14 players embarked on our way to Liverpool. We had won the system shield for WAB in 2008, had a strong team for War Machine/Hordes, a mix of grizzled experience and confident youth for FoW, a mix of veterans and rookies for WFB and a pretty decent 40k pairing. Of course, that was on paper and we don’t play toy soldiers on paper!

I fielded a Later Seleucid army comprising of:

Gen on foot, ASB on horse
3 x 25 Phalangites
10 Hetairoi
Armd Ellie
10 Escort Infantry
Scythed Chariot
15 Thracians
16 Palestinian Archers

11 Palestinian Light Infantry
2 Bolt Shooters

More soldier picks are here:
http://s492.photobucket.com/albums/rr285/Viet_Taff/Seleucids/

5 games, different scenarios and, interestingly, all hidden deployment! This is where the players draw a map of the tabletop and mark the deployment of the units in secret before revealing them. A much more civilised way to play!

My first game was against my NMA chum, Paul Scrivens-Smith and his lovely Gallic horde. As my skirmish screen protecting my artillery on the right collapsed, my cavalry and Thracians broke through on his right, destroying his horse and a small warband.  Then the heavies hit. The elephant repulsed a large warband and the phalanx held. One warband broke the following turn, panicking Paul’s general’s unit, enabling me to finish off the unit fighting the elephant, scatter his infantry and tidy my line. In he came again, breaking one phalanx with his warlord. The exhausted combatants then manoeuvred into position in the centre. As one mob of Gauls desperately held of the Seleucid general’s phalanx, the warlord crashed into the flank. Well, following some comedy dice rolling on Paul’s part I won the combat, though he held.  That just lined up another phalanx and the scythed chariot and it all ended up in a pile of squished Gauls! 26-6 in tournament points to the goodies.

Game 2 was against my old chum Tim Dagnell and his all horse El Cid Spanish. All phalanx against all cavalry…rubbish! We had a good, if indecisive, game. He threw a few pointy sticks, I threw a few back, some of his light horse ran, some of my skirmishers scarpered. 16-16.

Game 3 vs Chris Stone’s Crusaders. I’ve played Stoney once before in an all Republican Roman game which he jammily won!  He had 3 blocks of crossbows backed up with bad-ass spearmen (Str 4!), 2 skirmishing crossbows, a mob of zealots (best troops in the game for the points) and 2 nasty units of knights. Well, I just had to close as fast as I could against the infantry camped on a couple of hills in his deployment area. The scythed chariot and ellie bought it on turn 1; all the beast’s crew were killed by crossbows and the great lump stampeded.  My cavalry went headlong for his left flank as my phalanxes edged forward. The hetairoi gambled and drew his knights into a charge, defeating them and hitting the flank of one of his infantry blocks.  They reeled back and his general and ASB had to plunge into combat, routing my cavalry. This had sown enough confusion for my pikes to close in. On my left, the stampeding elephant panicked his other knight unit and crashed into his warband, lost, and stampeded into crossbowmen! Well done!  When the phalanx engaged, both sides struggled and the Crusader general got entangled with some particularly angry Thracians wanting to add his head to their mantlepieces back at home. He beat them back once but on their return, his head was removed and stuck on a pole! The Crusaders broke en masse. 32-0.

Game 4, top table, my evil nemesis: Dan Atherton!  Early Caliphates with plenty of awesome cavalry, some light infantry and one big spear unit. I set the phalanx 2 ranks deep in an oblique line from my table edge to near the short edge on my left, allowing enough room for me to feed troops to attack his right. Dan had horse archers, arab cavalry and Daylami light infantry facing my strike force consisting of, initially, the elephant and its escorts. All of the early action took place in a small area on this flank while minor skirmishing broke out elsewhere. Their was an objective in the table centre that I was determined to ignore until I was sure I could cover the vulnerable flanks of any phalanx advance. I knew he’d shoot the ellie up and he stampeded it early on, sending it on a long trek along the whole length of the table (it actually never got anywhere near the other short edge!).  The escorts avenged their charge, routing the Daylami and sending the horse archers panicking through a small wood.  This was the cue for the Hetairoi to be fed into the action, occupying the small hill on my left and facing off against fierce Arab horsemen.  As the cream of the Muslim cavalry began marching to this flank, the Hetairoi took the initiative and charge, sweeping the enemy away and halting in good order.  As they withdrew, with the Arab general in hot pursuit, the phalanx advanced.  On the right, Dan had foolishly strayed too close to my scythed chariot with heavy cavalry and had to flee from its charge; they never recovered and left the table.  As my phalanx was free to advance, I was desperate to destroy the spearmen who were now camped in the centre of the table.  I engaged them with phalangites but stupidly elected to hold with the chariot against a skirmisher charge.  The fleeing machine panicked the phalanx just as my Hetairoi swept in for the killing blow.  The courageous Arabs were broken.  My hex over Dan continues! 20-12. 

Game 5, Justin Taylor and his medieval Hungarians. Lots of crossbows, archers, 2 war wagons, 2 cannon, a block of spears, horse archers and a big unit of fearsome knights. I know how to deal with these: advance!  The Palestinians and Thracians were to assault the left where Justin had skirmishers, his guns and a wagon.  The 3 phalanxes and cavalry went down the centre, heading for the low hills that dominated the centre of the table whilst the ellie and its escorts protected the right flank.  It pretty much went to plan with the Palestinians destroying Justin’s archers and harassing the guns.  As with the left flank, my centre ignored the war wagons and went for the throat.  The Hetairoi tore forward and charged the crossbows encamped on high ground. In turn they fled from the Hungarian spearmen and the phalanx engaged. As the Hungarian cavalry trotted to the top of the main hill, my ellie bounded through the spearmen.  Well, the phalanx just had to start rolling uphill against the knights.  My general wounded his in the melee but the stubborn knights held. His spears broke, the elephant careering into his knights’ flank! Justin informed me, to my initial misunderstanding that his horsemen did not have to flee from the beast (it contacted them as a pursuit, not a charge).  I almost had to start apologising for Justin’s terrible dice rolling as he usually failed his 3+ saves and my Str 3 general on foot slew his without taking any damage in return. A very good game against someone I hope to play again soon.  29-3.

My plan of selecting a balanced army, with good infantry, decent missile support, good supporting cavalry, quality light troops and special stuff (the ellie and scythed chariot) worked extremely well.  Only two heavy phalangite phalanxes broke during the weekend (and only one was destroyed) and the Hetairoi caused havoc when I used them aggressively.  The Thracians did a half decent job, despite embarrass themselves once against missile troops and the escorts usually managed to exploit enemy attention placed on their elephant. The elephant was hit and miss, but the attention it drew was huge, often forcing my horse bound opponents to alter their plans and hand me the initiative. The best thing the bolt throwers did was to force my enemies to consider them, much like the scythed chariot (which only impacted once but drew huge amounts of missile fire).  The archers did a good job and earned more points back than their cost. Stars of the weekend were the Palestinian light infantry who accounted for a small Gallic warband, a light horse unit, an Arab heavy cavalry unit with the ASB and a Crusader cavalry unit.

Overall, the team finished 8th out of 9. I think we missed out with the jokers, only scoring 4 wins out of 9.Still we won 4 trophies:


1st place WAB
Best Army WAB
3rd Place Hordes
Best Army FoW

Pete also was joint for Most Sporting (an award that should get more prominence in my opinion) but lost the dice off.

Paul Phelan – Experienced/WFB Dwarves  32nd
Guy Palmer – Veteran Captain/WFB Wood Elves  34th
Paul Newman – Veteran/WFB Lizardmen  42nd
Mohammed Sabeel Javaid – Rookie/WFB Ogres  55th
Shane Evans-Pask – Rookie/WFB Orcs  64th

Chris Miller – Experienced/40k Orks  19th
Paul Price - Experienced/40k Marines  38th

Stuart McCorquodale – Veteran/WAB Later Seleucids  1st
Phil Johansson – Veteran/WAB Danes  11th

Mark Mainwaring – Veteran/FoW British  4th
Peter Fisher – Experienced/FoW Germans  8th

John Johansson – Experienced/WMH Everblight  3rd
Alun Evans – Experienced/WMH Trolls  9th

Chris Reavley  – Experienced/WMH Skorne  12th