I decided to skip the massive battle of Platea, to go to the next Mycale. It is anyway the biggest battle for now.
It is a battle of Persia between Athens and Spartan reinforcements. Persian have the number advantage.
Round 1 : Athens decide to not rush forward and wait the Spartan. Persia takes the defensive position, for a drm in defence, at the price of not being able to move or attack. Both light infantry go around and try to see if they can outflank opponent.
Round 2 : Nothing much happens, first skirmish between the light infantry of both sides
Round 3 : Skirmish between light infantry becomes bloodier but stays balanced. Spartans are almost in position.
Round 4 : Greek light infantry wins the skirmish. Persian medium infantry notice they could have done something since a long time and leave their shield wall position on the right side, hoping to get the initiative on round 5. Spartan are in formation. The game will start.
Round 5 1st part : Persian medium infantry get first activation, and momentum. The whole Greek infantry is in retreat.
Round 5 : The Greeks are ready and seeing their flank disappear go with the charge. It works as expected and they manage to punch a hole in Persian defenses.
Round 6. The Persian infantry on the left holds against the odds and manage to kill the Athenian leader and Overall commander, for a 15 points hit to the morale. Another holds a Spartan Hoplite. The rest is liquefied, but some manage to rally. On the flank where the light infantry skirmish happened, the Persian take advantage of their victory there and threaten the Greek flanks.
Round 7 : Now the Persian defense are shattered on their left. Persian are above their flight points and should lose at the end of the turn. But the archers save the day and rout the victorious Hoplites. The Greek light infantry tries to rally but completely fails and almost all light infantry are added to the flight points.
End result : 64 flight points on the Greek side (board say 62 but I count 64 now). 47 on the Persian side.
It is a weird end. Greek would have won if they didn’t try to rally on last turn, which is very “gamy” and makes no sense. Could have been very frustrating in opposed game. Also the 15 points for an unlucky leader death hurt them a lot.
But at the same time they have a lot of routed army on the map and if the game continued it is not clear if they could have gather enough momentum to “finish the job”.
Lessons learned from the game :
- Be careful when you try to rally, it could cost the game
- The rules to go through an own unit is less punishing than I thought, and Persian took advantage of it at the end when they read the rulebook
- I completely forgot the hoplite drift to the right, I don’t know if it would have been relevant
- The flanking maneuver from the Greek where stupid and would have been punished hard if the Persian side understood it sooner.
The first game of Hoplite where some maneuver happens. But I don’t know how it would go if Athens decided to charge on turn 1. Also some choices of what to do with Sparta. They could be sent through the hill, it is slow but I don’t think the Greeks can be punished for waiting. I would like to play it opposed to see what strategies the Greek side can come with but it is the most open scenario of the box for now. Also the first one where terrain matters.
On the rules side, still some mistakes. I don’t remember all of them. At the beginning I treated the Stream as Minor River, which had some impact for both sides, I had to adapt to correct it halfway through in a way that makes sense. But I can play a few impulses without checking the Rulebook.
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