Blood in the Sand : Ambush on the Coast

It has been too long since we had a ‘Blood in the Sand’ campaign battle. For those unfamiliar with the campaign it is an ‘imagination’ campaign very loosely set between 700-100BC in the ancient world. City states and fledgling country’s fight each other for numerous reasons, territory, wealth slaves etc… in our last battle Consul Martinus of the fledgling Roman state had forced a landing in Lakonia where he had defeated (just) the Spartan forces, having spent several months raiding the interior and loaded down with booty and the routes inland across the mountains too difficult, he has decided to make his way along the west coast where he hopes to meet up with his ships to take him home at Pylus. Unfortunately for him the Spartans normally at war with the Massenians have warned them of the army moving along the coast, the ruler of Massenia whose name has been lost to history has decided to ambush the raiders before they can reach his capital city.

To create the ambush the’Roman’ forces were sent a map of the road they would be on and forced to deploy in line of March. The Massenian forces were then set up on the table.

The ambush has been launched close to a lighthouse, the Massinian force is made of three parts

Under the kings Uncle a substantial amount of the Massenian cavalry has been sent on a wide flanking March and they will arrive from the spit of land beyond the lighthouse, any units with a purple dice have a delayed entry into the battle, which created a very effective delay two units actually managed only to arrive on turn seven !

The Roman line of March…many many heavily armoured infantry

The kings own element of his army, mainly lightly armed missile troops, camels and the Royal elephant corps

Mercenary hill tribes from the interior, again lightly armed but fast moving

The king has also located skirmish troops in the dry river bed to launch the attack, as soon as they get a whiff of the assault the Romans turn off the road and begin to clear out the skirmishers

With trumpets sounding the king orders an advance

Urgh the hill tribes are badly delayed arriving presumably through small winding mountain paths ? but their cavalry gallops forward

The Massenian cavalry harasses the Roman heavy infantry darting in and then retreating, oh do they hate this type of hit and run fighting

The Romans also have mercenary Numidians and have somehow captured some elephants !

Look at all that armour, but the Romans are tricked into throwing their pilum at the skirmishers 

Eeek the cavalry waivers with no where to run

The flanking force manages to get one of the recalcitrant elephants to get moving and it flattens the first infantry units it meets

Camels and more camel archers move to take the river bed and clear out the Roman skirmishers who have now taken control of it

A cavalry battle by the lighthouse wears out both sides

The grand advance, isolated Roman heavy infantry charge forward to stop it while their reserves are brought up

The romans cut through the light infantry like butter …..but are there are too many, no space to release the elephants at this stage

The Massenians have now taken control of the Roman left 

But the enemy elephants are pushing along the river bed behind their infantry

This has everything, an elephant charges down the light camel archers whilst naked Galatian mercenaries watch on 😂

Eventually as the infantry is forced to flee on both sides the battlefield opens up and the elephants from both sides are sent forward

The Royal Massenian elephant handlers loose control and their elephant panics backwards…very luckily it misses its own troops and the king !

The king on his chariot now joins the fray 

In the distance the hill tribes have been pretty much wiped out but the Numidians are too far away to contribute to the centre

The battlefield is now scattered with isolated regiments and units fighting their own battles

Some of the Romans are still valiantly holding out on the road

Finally some African mercenaries arrive on the battle.

At this point we called the battle, a very marginal victory for the Massenian King, at least less Romans will be making it back to their ships. However it has cost him both in terms of men, cavalry, camels and elephants and his army will be weaker for some time and he will be vulnerable to attack from his Spartan neighbours. Fun to play, we covered the table in troops and a lot of blood was spilt in the sand.

Finally I picked up a copy of WI which has the free warlord epic ECW sprue. I particularly want to get my hands on these as it is a project I fancy in the future and this would be a very cost effective way of creating the size and scale of armies I am thinking of. I plan when I get a chance to paint this up as a test unit to see how they look. Interested to know what others think ?

One full infantry regiment, pikemen and gunners on both flanks, let’s see what they look like ? They are definitely 15mm 

Thanks as always 

Matt😀