Thursday Game of To the Strongest

After a week’s well-earned R&R our indefatigable reporter packed his bags and headed back in time to the mid-4th century BC, and the Eastern borders of the late Achaemenid Persian Empire. This certainly isn’t the era of Cyrus, Darius the Great or Xerxes, and a succession of royal nonentities have witnessed a spate of rebellions all over the Empire. In our fictional scenario the Satrap of Margiana has rebelled and has allied himself with the Scythians from across his Northern borders. A Royal Persian army led by Chris was about to face Tony’s literally shiny new Scythians. The Persians don’t have a good track record in battle. Would Chris beat the trend. Eileen came in place of Greg to “influence” the chit pulling and also mock her husbands’s tactics.

With so much light cavalry Tony won the scouting and chose his table edge. Chris deployed with a light cavalry right wing, infantry centre and mixed left.

Tony left his light infantry in the camps, with heavy cavalry left and centre, and light cavalry on his right. So far so good for the Persians.

As both sides “moved to contact” the Persians actually met with success, killing several Scythian light cavalry units and opening a gap on the Scythian right wing. The Persian right also seemed to be holding their opponents in a light cavalry missile battle. The centre-left however was a different story as the lance and bow armed Scythian heavy cavalry charged their opponents. Disruptions were inflicted and the Persian line stalled. It was noted that Tony’s commands seemed to have a certain “flexibility” in their organisation, but we gave him the benefit of the doubt. At that point the reporter left to make the second brew of the day. He returned to see a huge hole in the Persian line where troops had been destroyed and their colleagues swept away in the rout. The Persian General vainly looked for friendly units to join.

There was a moment of amusement and mild consternation when it was observed that one of the clips holding the mat down on the table had somehow attached itself to Tony’s jeans near his groin. How this happened is even now a mystery and the clip is now in therapy. This period also witnessed the only bad language of the contest when Tony pointed out that some Persian archers couldn’t fire and then attempted to do exactly the same in a similar tactical situation. Raised Anglo-Saxon expletives were heard from the umpire at this point.

It didn’t matter though. The Persian right and centre continued to collapse as the Scythians poured missile fire into it. That said the Persian right gamely fought on even capturing a Scythian camp,

but couldn’t quite manoeuvre into position to take a second camp and put an unlikely victory within reach. The Scythians swarmed on taking a Persian camp and finally putting Chris out of his misery. Mrs Banks was less-than-sympathetic.

I think Chris and Tony enjoyed the game. Although the Scythians won a major victory in terms of units killed luck was with them in both missile fire and their defensive chit pulling. They are certainly a mighty army. That said, I did make them “too mighty”. All their troops are double-armed with even the lights having javelin and bow. I mistakenly gave them 5 ammunition i.e. 2 javelin and 3 arrows. Re-reading Even Stronger they should only have had 3 ranged weapons. However what Mr Miller has written has led to more questions which I need to send him! I would also point out that neither Tony nor Chris noticed my error.

Our reporter is taking a few weeks off during March so hopefully someone else will take over his duties.

Simon