Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Hail Caesar Successor Battle

Steve's Seleucids
v.
Jim & Mike's Ponts

Both armies 500 points in 3 divisions. The fist pic is taken from the Pontic left after both side's first move.

The Ponts deployed infantry in the centre, cavalry on the far flank and cavalry behind the left of the infantry.

The Seleucids deployed their cavalry on their right and two infantry divisions centre and left.

Because the Seleucid line overlapped the Ponts both sides made revolving door moves, except the Seleucids began moving their cavalry to their left.

The Pontic cavalry on their left moved left and the Seleucid's responded by turning their cavalry around and moving it to the right.





In the centre the two rows of phalanxes smashed into each other.










On the far flank the Pontic cavalry outflanked the Seleucid infantry.  The cataphracts pinned their front and the light horse hit their flank.

The cavalry rolled up the end of the Seleucid line as the phalanx pinned it's front and the left flank Seleucid infantry division broke.





Things were looking bad for the Seleucids now.  They had split their cavalry with their cavalry commander taking the cataphracts left to help out the infantry.   As a result the rest of the cavalry had command difficulties and was tied down by skirmishing light cavalry while the rest of the division could support the infantry (if only it could get some command dice).





But the Seleucids weren't going down without a fight.  Their centre infantry division got a breakthrough and then flank attack in the Pontic phalanx line.  But the big Pontic infantry division could take that and it became a matter of the Ponts finding a way to finish off the Seleucid infantry.  They had many opportunities, but Steve's famous Panzer Lehr dice kept on passing Break tests.




The cataphracts finally got into action against each other and the better supported Ponts were getting the upper hand when the Seleucids finally ran out of luck when their last phalanx broke under the bow fire of the Pontic skirmishers.


That was 2 of 3 divisions broken and the battle won.  The decisive event was the Ponts outflanking the Seleucid left.   The phalanx v. phalanx fight was pretty even - the Pontic plastics won one end of the phalanx fight with the help of cavalry, the Seleucid metals on the other end had their wins, but had too much to do.  The notoriously skittish Pontic cataphracts did nothing spectacular, but at least they didn't disgrace themselves this week.







2 comments:

John Lambshead said...

You remind me that I have a half finished Successor army for Hail caeser. Sigh. So many toys, so little time.

Anonymous said...

big blocks of 4 deep phalanxs are superb and photograph well