Alexander 6 - The Crocus Fields
Tags
Back to the Macedonians, with Philip II going at the Phocians. Philip II (Alex's dad), The Champion of Apollo, was bent on giving the sacrilegious Phocians a punch in the snoot after those bastards defiled the temple at Delphi and carted off all the loot. This battle is part of what is apparently called "The Sacred War," pitting multiple Greek states against each other.
Here's the setup at the start of the game:
For this game, I attempted to dictate game play using iPhone notes. It did not go as well as I had hoped, in part because the dictation software seems to operate at about a 5th grade level. It was unable to correctly transcribe enunciated names, and would correct the names to ridiculous character strings.
Here's part of the first turn:
phocian Lycophron OK I would also be at your work for which puts me in a yeah you can go next overlay or OK you don’t go next dragon eye I have a four so I just went so you can go OK with initiative, three kicks off by moving to the LM mercenarys to the northwest and following him roll nine for momentum reroll is five on momentum so he’s finished.
Macedonian Antipater moves west to activate Sitalces, who issues individual orders to Calvary, which moves to engage the previously move Phocians in shock combat.
All units past troop, quality, check.
All right, let’s see Ellen so I’ll see is attacking to OK so there’s no there’s no shock superiority and then we go to our class is spears LC 2LN is column 7.
size ratio is eight on attack 10 on defense. no column shift for the attacker. I shock results are three and two and two and two.
Antipater rolls for momentum and fails.
Sitalces advances his skirmishers.
Phocian Neeses issues like him out to move all the skirmishers rose momentum passes momentum like him out to move up all the medium infantry and he’s finished. I have a five piece finished.
This is for Parmenoion OK I’m gonna issue a command activate and then I’m going to move all these guys forward. OK OK so he has arranged in definitely move. 12345 OK 12345 OK and who is this guy was a palm Armenian OK. Also activate Attalus who will move three units.
Parmenian gets momentum,
oh no marches (Onomarchus) issues individual orders to move Greek mercenary hoplites into shock combat Raz momentum issues individual orders to move Argus hoplites into shock come back with my Pastis
I attempted to correct it as we went, but it was time consuming and broke the flow of the game so I gave up half way through Turn 1. I think there is some potential here, but it's going to take serious work to figure it out.
Here's the end of Turn 1, followed by Turns 2 & 3.
AAR
The Macedonions are just really, really strong in this game, with both Phalanx units and average higher troop quality. The Phocians really have to do a lot more manuevering to try to get position on the Macedonians, which is tough. The Greeks, my side, had more skirmishers, but I did not employ them well. In future games, both of us agreed to work more on effectively deploying skirmishers.
This game would go to Al playing the Philip II, the Macedonians. His forces were closer to my retreat edge, and had less cohesion hits overall due to my super crappy dice rolling. With his better troop quality, attrition would rout the Greeks first. And since his forces were closer to my edge of the map, his forces had a longer retreat route.