Maharajah 2012...Hail Caesar

Jim's Pontic Army v. Steve's Sassanids

In the Maharajah Trophy Comp the players are allowed to change their armies between rounds.  Jim chose to reduce his infantry to 1 large division and boost his 2 cavalry divisions.  His plan was to keep the Sassanid centre busy while he crushed their wing.  Unfortunately for the plan, Steve discarded his elephant division and put the points into more cavalry giving both sides cavalry wings of similar strength.

The Ponts are on the left in the pics.  Both sides have cavalry on each wing.  The Pontic infantry is one big division, the Sassanids have 2 infantry divisions - 1 of light archers in front of 1 of a mix of heavy & medium infantry on the ridge behind.

Both sides started in a cautious vein.  In the cnetre the Sassanids pushed their light infantry forward while their heavies sat on the ridge.  The Ponts also pushed their skirmishers forward followed up with the Thorakatai.  They discovered the down side of big divisions when the Phalanx kept failing to get orders to go forward.  On the far flank the Sassanid horse archers got the better of the Pontic javelin armed light horse as the heavies advanced slowly.  On the near flank both sides plans were compromised by bad command dice.

On the far flank the Pontic heavy cavalry has charged.  The Sassanid cat's advantage of kontos pretty well negated by the Pontic cavalry having more support.  The Ponts were content when the first round of the fight was a tie all along the line, hoping to do even better on the next round when the kontos no longer gave advantage.  In the centre the Sassanid bows have wrecked the Pontic skirmish line, but the Thorakatai are within striking distance.  On the near flank the Pontic cavalry has refused to charge.

 On the far flank the second round of the cavalry fight was a disaster for the Ponts.  They broke from all 3 combats and having lost a light cav to horse archers earlier, the division was broken.  In the centre the Thorakatai refused to charge the bowmen, perversely preferring to stand and be shot at. On the near flank the Pontic cavalry finally got a good command dice and charged.  They had 3 heavy and 3 light cav v. 2 of each, but alas Mithridates must have trod on a goat this morning.  The horse archer's fire & flee disordered and stopped the right hand heavy cav keeping 1 heavy 2 light cav out of the action and evening up the fight.  The dice did the rest.  One Pontic heavy cav broke the other fell back.

Next turn the Sassanid cavalry exploited their advantage getting a flank attack on the unit stopped by the horse archers.  The turn after they finished off the division.  With 2 of 3 divisions broken the Pontic army was broken.

This result means that all four Maharajah finalists now have 1 win and 1 loss in the round robin.  The next round will be Jim's Ponts v. Mike's Romans and Steve's Sassanids v Mark's Romans.  The two winners will fight off in a grand final.

In response to request: More close ups of some of Steve's Gripping Beast Sassanids.

Edit By Nick

A close up of one of the Sassanids that beat Jim.  Jim will always bear the ignomy of being beaten by an army wearing funny hats.