Apocryphal Well endgame

So, to cut a very long story shorter, by the end of move 12 each side was getting the upper hand on their left flanks with the Egyptians winning in the centre. 12 moves being deemed a 'day', at the end of it both sides pulled back and (of course) claimed a great victory.

Clear view of the Assyrians starting to dominate to the right of the oasis - but still a lot of opposition to overcome.

While on the other flank Assyrian resistance is nearly at an end - though the Egyptian general is looking a lot more exposed than his Assyrian counterpart.

With the Assyrians losing 15 elements and the Egyptians losing 14 honours were pretty much even in this area.

So, things I think come out of this:

Too crowded - needed to have smaller forces on each side for this scenario. It didn't work as well as it should have.
Element based meant that unit fragmentation wasn't taken into account - to a certain extent the battle fell between two stools and needed some way of sorting this.
Lack of ranged archery - really, it would have been more satisfying to have distance fire rather than everything down as part of hand-to-hand combat. Perhaps not for smaller battles, certainly for this type I think I'll 're-introduce' distance firing.

I'm certainly going to use distance rules in my next battle... currently sorting out troops for Thymbra. Cyrus the Great versus Croseus, involving all those Persian battle carts, camels with howdahs and scythed chariots I made...

Apocryphal Well moves 4-6

Which covers the first picture in the book and the first contacts in the game. Which means I'm going to have to do some typing...

This is how they should be at Move 5....

Which is not exactly how it has worked out.

Move 6 and lots of contacts. The combat factors used are basically DBA as are the results of combat .

Egyptian right the Assyrian heavies have contacted the Egyptian infantry.

Moving towards the centre the Egyptians spears have contacted the Assyrian Bw but not the Assyrian Ax.

The Egyptians have also hit the Ax and Bw on the Egyptian centre left.

Meanwhile the Egyptian Ax are heading for the Right flank Assyrian LH.

So.... Results... the Assyrian heavy cavalry are doing well.

These archers aren't.

Nor are the Assyrian Ax and Bw on their centre right.

Leaving this situation at the end of Move 6. The Assyrians have lost 6 elements, the Egyptians 4.

Apocryphal Well Moves 1-3.

The first thing that becomes obvious is that changing the well and hills to an oasis makes a big difference. The next thing is that the table isn't wide enough to allow for the various outflanking moves. So, perhaps another attempt at some time using smaller forces.

One thing - a lot easier sorting the photos out. Question, though - does it detract from either the pictures or the story?

 I think I'll just let  the pictures tell their own story.

As it stands, the first pictured move in The Ancient Wargame is Move 5. At that point there has been a lot of manoeuvring  that is simply proving impossible here. So, turning into a completely different battle even at this point. 

Still, see how later moves go.

Something a bit like the Battle of the Apocryphal Well -Set up

A bit like, trying to scale a 9'x7' battle down to 4'x4' table while using a different rule set and terrain...

OK, the Battle of the Apocryphal Well is one of the battles in The Ancient War Game.  Assyrians versus Egyptians, Egyptians won. Being a while since I've done any Ancients, I just felt that I wanted to do something, this won out over Thymbra which (hopefully) is not going to be that far off... As Thymbra will be an all-Garrison affair I decided it would only be right for The Apocryphal Well to be all-Minifigs. Most of the figures are ones acquired from Harry, the Assyrian Ax are an Internet buy and a lot of the Egyptian light archers are ones I bought, stripped and repainted.

One problem I've sometimes had in the past has been working out which moves were which when I tried to sort out the after-battle photos. I'm therefore trying something - labelling every move. This may be a benefit or it may be just too intrusive - soon see.

On scaling, I roughly halved the number of figures in each unit and converted that to the nearest(ish) DBA elements. It was a pretty rough series of estimates. As the Assyrians didn't originally have a general figure (?) I added an Assyrian general in a chariot and also gave the Egyptians an 'extra' chariot for their general - ie, they should have had 4 chariots, gave them 5. I also let the Assyrians have their full complement of Spears rather than half to help counterbalance the shortage of Assyrian element numbers and the fact that the Assyrian Spears are armoured whereas the Egyptians aren't. The final figure worked out at 35 Assyrian elements facing 42 Egyptians.

The initial set up

The Assyrians

The Egyptians

Most of the figures are straight from Harry's collection. The General's chariot is one of my conversions - cataphract horses, Garrison Assyrian chariot wheels, 2 of the crew converted Garrison with a Minifigs 'S' Range officer.

The Egyptian chariots.

Unit sizes aren't compatible with the requirement so the extra element needed has been provided by a slinger element.