Monday Club Games - Ancients, SYW and FoW

 Battle of Delium 424BC

A rendition of the notable defeat of the Athenians by the Thebans (at that time allied with Sparta). The actual battle witnessed the first recorded episode of ‘friendly fire’ when The Athenians broke through the Theban allied lines in several points only to encounter and fight one another in the Theban rear - at this time there were few visual indicators of which side you were on! 

The battle also saw clever use by the Theban general - Pagondas - of light troops and a deeper phalanx, to break the Athenian left and swing round to defeat the rest of the Athenian army. The Thebans really were quite the innovators of ancient Hellenistic warfare....

In our refight, the Athenians completely failed to make any impact. They did break a block of Theban allied hoplites in the centre, but had their flanks stripped of light troops and their own elite phalanx was hit in the flank by some Boeotian peltasts and routed.

Seven Years War

Great to see the SYW make an appearance at the club with the French squaring off against the Prussians. Some clever conversions on display. Not sure which rules were played, but I'm sure we will see the SYW represented again in the coming weeks.

Flames of War

Some great tank-on-tank action with Achilles and Churchills squaring up against Panthers and Tigers. Wrong date on the establishment of the club though!

Battle of Freeman's Farm, Saratoga Campaign, 1777

One of the games from Monday night was a refight of Freeman's Farm. We set the troops up on the table, marched them forwards, then started chatting about old times......You know - days at the Raleigh Factory in Nottingham in the 1970s; going to university in Wales; a discussion as to why John Lennon and Paul McCartney insisted on bringing their bloody wives to work; and other important issues. Then, without achieving any result on the tabletop, we put the toys back in the boxes and went home!

Four Games in One Evening – WWIII, Crusades and FoW X2

The club hosted four separate games on Monday night. The Team Yankee WWIII engagement saw an East German Tank formation tackle a highly defensively minded US Mechanised formation. The ‘Ossies’ fielded some new T72Bs, a BTR60 company and a large amount of air assets, including SU-17 and Mi-24 helicopters. In the Strategic Withdrawal mission, the Warsaw Pact assault was thwarted by extensive use of pre-deployed minefields and additional minelet fields dropped by M270 MLRS ‘Gypsy Wagons’. This made it very difficult for the Germans to get to grips with the dug-in Americans. The US formation was bristling with TOW2s and Dragon ATGWs. Despite the SU-17s clearing out the American ‘back line’ – including taking out the three M1A1s - the Americans held on stubbornly to eek out the narrowest of victories.

 

Members put on a great looking game based in the Crusades using Lion Rampant (first edition)Rules. The Norman Knights appeared to be a one shot weapon, benefitting form a thunderous charge, but seem to flag after that. Either way, the Arabs were victorious in this encounter. I am informed that the guys have purchased the new edition of Lion Rampant, so hopefully we will see some games using this new set of rules soon.

There were two Flames of War WWII match-ups. Unfortunately, both saw attacking British formations lose to their defending German opponents. Still, it was great to see some Cromwells on the rampage and a pair of King Tigers make an appearance.