On Bloody Ground: Macedonians v Seleucid's.

 It has been a couple of years since I played a game v George at his house. In that time he has had some building work done to create a wonderful wargaming room that will be the envy of most gamers. George was keen to try WIP's 'On Bloody Ground Ancient rules 'and I was just as keen to get a game in with my newly painted Macedonian army. We had both read through the rules and selected our 2,500 point armies. I had played the rules a couple of times when they first came out but as that was a couple of years ago I still felt like a novice.

We went through the terrain layout and then deployed the troops. 

Here we are ready for battle. 

The main centre of George's Seleucid's. 

Most of my Late Macedonian's. 

Another view of my Macedonian's... 

...and another.

George had an elephant, why did I deploy my cavalry facing it? 

Turn 1 done and the armies close in on each other. 

George's Seleucid cavalry routed one of my companion cavalry units then turned onto the flank of the other. Over on the far right flank George had a unit of horse archers and some slingers who soon destroyed my light cavalry and peltasts over there. but I forgot to take photos of that action.  

Here comes the elephant which was forcing Leadership tests on my cavalry being within 12" of them. It was starting to look like my Macedonians were going to suffer the fate of all newly painted armies. 

Just before George's elephant and cavalry charged my remaining companions. 

It was no surprise that my cavalry got defeated in that melee, hit by the elephant to the front and the opposing cavalry in their flank. 

We also had some hoplite v hoplite action over on the left flank. We struggled a bit with the rles here, a bit confused over how many ranks should be fighting for each side. Despite that George unit won that melee too. 

In the centre our two forces were just getting ready for charging each other but sadly we ran out of time (too much chatting). Overall the four turns we got through tested the rules out as we had tried a variety of shooting and combat actions. We were a little puzzled over a few aspects of the rules but felt that we played things right in the end. George had got himself into a very strong position with both flanks collapsing on me so we called it a Seleucid victory. 

That was a fun day, a great game played in a nice friendly fashion.