Οι γυμνοί και οι νεκροί (the naked and the dead): Mortal Gods AAR

I just finished painting 9 naked Athenian hoplites from Wargames Foundry's excellent World of the Greeks range. With them still smelling of dullcote, I lead them to ignominious defeat in a four-player game we had on the 7th. My only satisfaction for the defeat was in dying to a man—no retreat, no surrender! Like Leonidas and the 300, my lochos is legend.

Mike Lombardy and Eric Donaldson played one side, Wes Rogers and I were the other. We played the Field of Glory scenario using deployment map 7. Each player had about 300 points.

The troops I have painted so far are relatively light. As one might assume from naked hoplites, they weren't well protected. I ran a lochos consisting of one one phalanx (3 bases) of experienced medium hoplites (peripoloi), 2 bases of archers (toxatai),  1 base of peltasts (peltastai), 1 base of slingers (sphendonetai), plus a heavy lochagos. Wes had a similar force: one phalanx (3 bases) of medium hoplites, 2 bases of slingers, 1 base of peltasts, 1 base of javelinmen (akontistai), and a heavy lochagos.

Eric and Wes square off

Eric went with a very light lochos of a phalanx (3 bases) of light hoplites, 2 bases of peltasts, 1 base of slingers, and a heavy lochagos. Mike went with the heavy stuff: a phalanx (3 bases) of experienced heavy hoplites, 2 bases of experienced medium hoplites, 1 base of archers, and a heavy lochagos.

My doomed lochos faces Mike

I started out being aggressive with my slingers and got a shot off against one of Mike's experienced peripoloi—to no effect, a theme I revisited again and again in my attacks. Mike came back punching. His peripoloi charges my sphendonetai and inflicted 5 wounds, i.e., reducing my 3-figure base to a single wounded figure. Because his total wounds inflicted was more than double than my base resistance (actually, nearly triple my base resistance), he took a free action and smacked into one of my archer bases, inflicting 3 wounds on it, which removed a figure.

Moving against my archers

My whinging could be heard next door. Throughout the game, Mike continued to roll amazing hits scores against me. I, on the other hand, consistently threw less than average. I think I never inflicted more than 2 wounds at any time. In an attack against one of my archer bases, Mike scored 7 wounds—enough to kill the whole base and then some.

My peripoloi advance foolheartedly towards Mike's men of bronze

I thought I might get some benefit from being the first to strike when our phalanxes clashed. My experienced peripoloi hit as hard as Mike's hoplites, but lack the armor. My attack was anemic. I'm not sure he'd noticed I'd struck.

Mike's dealers of death, impervious to harm

Wes' and Eric's fight was going a bit more evenhandedly, with—initially—fairly equal losses on both sides. Eventually, Wes' heavier (barely) peripoloi got the edge as Eric's losses started to exceed Wes'.

Wes' peripoloi, backed by slingers, javelins, and peltasts

After my initial whiff at striking Mike's phalanx, Mike sent in his lochagos, which Mike tends to do. Lochagoi are heavy-hitters, although losing one is a game changer.

Mike's lochagos begins to bedevil me

The battle in the center see-sawed a bit. Employing my peltasts in his rear, I manage to cause one (1) figure loss to Mike's phalanx, which broke it up. It became something of a wild scrum after that. My pathetic peltasts were first shot up by Mike's archers and then disappeared in a red mist after getting struck by Mike's heavy hoplites.

General mayhem

Mike and I each managed to inflict five wounds on each other's lochagos, with each of us surviving wounded. He eventually managed to re-kill my lochagos, which left me leaderless, but not out of the game since Wes' lochagos was still in play.

Eric, too, lost his lochagos to Wes, but since Mike's lochagos was still living, we all played on.

Wes killing Eric's lochagos

Lochagoi are glass hammers. They hit hard and they can take a lot of damage, and possibly survive their own death. However, in a 1:1 game, losing your lochagos means losing the game. My own inclination is to keep my lochagos back issuing commands and generally looking imposing. Mike tends to send his into the fray early and often, tempting fate but benefiting from the strength—like the way some chess players use their queens.

Eventually, I was entirely on the defensive. I kept getting hit so many times by Mike that I used all my actions for my anemic attempts at defense, leaving me few opportunities for hitting back. When I did hit back, I managed to inflict no hurt on Mike whatsoever.

In an act of desperation, my lone surviving slinger—really just a naked guy with a rock—ran up and attempted to bean Mike's lochagos. He managed just one wound, not enough to kill him (a second time) and I had to hang on in hope that I'd have a next turn to try again.

We will, we will rock you!

It wasn't to be. On turn 4, Mike went into blitzkrieg mode, killing every remaining figure I had on the board (and probably several I haven't even painted yet) and then started to redeploy against Wes. I lost all 22 of my figures to Mike's loss of 4 out of the 19 he started with.

My end is nigh

Post mortem and further thoughts

Despite my pitiful and frustrating experience this game, I like Mortal Gods. I like the period and think that the game does a good job bringing out the feel of the period without requiring the play to be nothing but a slog between heavily armed phalanxes. Phalanxes tend to be a short-lived formation. After the initial advance and first clash, phalanxes tend to break up and the fighting becomes more piecemeal.

Heavier lochoi tend to do better, I think. Mike had a much heavier force than I did. Even though the number of hit points was the same (56), heavier types defend better. Most of my troops were psiloi, Mike had only one unit of archers, the rest were experienced heavy hoplites or experienced peripoloi (medium). Wes' lochos was similar to mine. Eric's lochos was all light. He benefited a bit from his light peripoloi taking 3 wounds before being out of action, but he never put them into phalanx formation and so lost the advantage of using their defense value—and deprived himself of their nifty javelin toss. Nevertheless, Eric still had two full bases of troops at the end of the game and Wes was pretty beaten up.

I like that the game is expanding to other aspects of war in the classical world. I've ordered the Persian card set and have started working on my Wargames Foundry Thracians in anticipation of a card set being released for them later this month. I'm also working on a few Greek horsemen in anticipation of cards for them being released soon. After that, Andy Hobday has indicated a shift to the early Roman world with Etruscans and Tullian era Romans due for card sets at some point down the road.