Wintercon 2012 Game 1

So for those of you paying attention, you will know I was furiously working to get some Early Imperial Romans finished in time for Wintercon. As usual, they didn't actually get finished, just sort of 'finished enough that I wont be too ashamed to put them on the table' Frankly I now have too many armies like this to be entirely happy.

Anyway. Day 1, pick up stray wargamer, breakfast at McDonalds, and wear my Scotland Rugby jumper to see if I can play some early psychological warfare vs the Aussies without Scottish heritage..

Game 1. I drew Dave Quilty, who is a tenacious competitor and has been something of a 'bete noire' for me. As anticipated, an EIR Civil War.

I have a massive numbers advantage on the left, the right is iffy though.

My right, not a too happy place, especially as two of those cavalry on the left hand side form part of an 'Exaggerating Army Size' stratagem, and are about to be removed.

My left, I was feeling very happy, I even had my supporting archers run round behind his cavalry while my Auxiliaries attacked in front.

Long story short, my attack on the left failed miserably. Even with rear attacks I couldn't get rid of his cavalry. On my right, on the other hand the first contact saw a 6-1 that killed one of my cavalry, and the Auxilia thrown in to fill the gap died miserably with a series of ones. This left Dave free to start bringing his cavalry round in behind my main lines.

At this stage, I threw my legions into the front of his, but a series of 5-1, 6-1 and 6-2 results aand  a succession of miserable dice rolls for PIPS left me unable to exploit any advantages I had - (typically 1,2,4 or 1,1,6) whereas Dave threw successively three sets of PIPS averaging 14 on three dice.

My red command was trashed, and with the blues broken, it was game over. a thumping 22-3 to Dave.

After deployment I was reasonably happy. I had extended past his flank on the left, and could expect success there, and with my Exaggerating army size stratagem plus Auxilia reserves, I was hopeful he wouldn't be confident to attack my apparently stronger right and would be forced to push in the middle.

The key was we both attacked a weakness, and he was able to successfully prosecute his attack, I wasn't.

Dave was his usual gracious self, and was kind enough to admit during the game that I was getting much the shorter straw in terms of dice.