The Hunwickian: I blame the dice, it's all the dice's fault...

Macedonians v Indians 4th century BC

As you can probably tell from the posts title it was yet another bad day at the office as my recent failure to roll anything other than "s**t" dice rolls continued as I was given a sound thrashing (again) by my dads Indian army. This time we ran a smaller game of 650 points as it was a evening game so we would have time to gain a result. From the opening move I managed to blunder with the light Peltasts division and they went storming ahead of the Macedonian battle line, from this turn they never moved again in the game as I failed every command to move them, even when my army started the grand retreat and the threat of heavy Charrriots to their flank they still failed. Although my Phalanxs managed to get into action fairly quickly they failed miserably in melee and were repulsed by the Indian infantry, although it must be said they were fighting up hill against supported infantry, probably not one of my better moves but I was just eager to get stuck in. The bad luck didn't let up as I lost a Elite (questionable) greek Hoplite it which broke with a double 1 roll due to a single casualtie caused by the Indian archers first shot on them, the same outcome also saw a pike Phalanxs unit rout due to a second double 1 roll for a shooting hit morale check in the game. Through this outcome I also lost the division commander! Next up My medium and light cavalry took a chance when I approached the Indian heavy chariots to get into Javlin range. I fancied that out of 11 dice I would get a few 6's to force a morale test on at least a couple of the chariots...wrong no 6's and now the heavy chariots were in initiative range and the outcome was predictable as the Macedonian cavarly division was broken as the chariots charged home. And to compound my misery after speeding up the Indian right flank my Companion cavalry had a perfect opportunity to flank the line of Indian archers unopposed as my dad had struggled to with his command rolling to during the game. However with the companion cavalry perfectly poised they failed time and time again to charge home allowing my dad a chance to redress and bolster his flank when he finally got a order through. I did manage to get a couple of units to charge the infantry and amazingly PASS a morale test and comfortably destroy the infantry unit but I was unable to follow this up now with futher flank attacks as by now as the cavalry had suffered to bow fire and combat casualties, The remainder of the companion cavalry were still refusing to move. With my right flank turned the Heavy chariots made short work of the Peltasts as they hammered into the flanks and once this division was broken I called it a day as my army was in a rather sticky predicament and sounded the general retreat.

This Macedonian army is becoming some what of a Bad luck army for me at the moment as I really struggle to get the best out of it, il have to do some more research on tactics on how to utilise my troops better or failing that I'll definitely buy myself some new dice as that will sort all my wargaming problems out, good commanders always blame others for their failures :-)

Macedonian pikes advance behind the skirmishes.