the big red wine  !

Game 5 saw me sitting top table against the multi-time Grandson veteran Panos, and his state of the art Middle Assyrians:

Panos was leading the table by a good margin, after 4 10-0 results - anything less than an 8-2 defeat and he couldn't be caught. He attacked, and threw down lots of H(S), possibly in an attempt to close down the table - and must have been somewhat surprised to find me following this up with even more close terrain (my thinking was that I had a better chance of forcing him into combat on a narrow frontage, where the greater maneuverability of the mounted assyrians would be negated).

As it was a mountain range split the Assyrian deployment area neatly into two, and with the baggage down it was fairly clear the bulk of his forces would be in the valley on my right. A road gave the Assyrians a pass across the mountains down the middle =- would they be brave enough to use it though?

It was clear from the off this was to be a tricky game - the Assyrians had conformed to the letter of the lists by deploying their supporting psiloi "with" their auxilia and blades - but alongside, not behind!  

I had adopted a similar deployment to against the Bactrians, with my smallest, but most spear heavy command screening off the right, and the other two - with most of the knights and Bw(X) pushing down the other channel to cause trouble for the supported blades and chariotry. 

The Assyrians started positively, throwing a column of Ps and Ax across the hill. This fitted in brilliantly with my plan, as it allowed me to swivel the spikey bit of a WWg (X) sideways on its  spacer type base - a key objective of mine at the beginning of the weekend.  

This advance soon faltered as the Assyrians realized they would struggle to get off the hill at the same time as getting their cavalry out of the way of my advancing spearmen and knights.  

The irregular knights had little opposition as they steamed towards the blade line, which danced like a maniacal dancing Greek dance-y thing as it shuffled and shimmied in order to create some sort of clever formation which would be difficult for me to attack. 

Light horse and cavalry were darting back and forth, and the Assyrians must have had their crack Podiatric medical team on full alert as they repeatedly invoked the ancient ritual of "The Sandal of Intervene" to prevent the Italians closing with them.

Meanwhile the Assyrians, in a rare burst of pips also found time to launch a bizarre attack on the war wagons defending the bottom of the hill.

Seen here, the first psiloi has initiated flank contact - the second one then runs down the hill and contacts the wagon on the long side edge - and magically the fist Psiloi now counts both as an overlap and also acts to prevent an overlap on the one initiating contact ! 

However, the WWg (X) had an equally good counter - roll better dice in combat - and the attack was repulsed!

Soon - as seems to be fairly usual, it became a desperate struggle. My two commands were gradually chipping away at the Assyrians, but losing casualties on the way. The Sp (I) became embroiled in a protracted scrap with the Bd (F) on the left - regular spear not quite being as poor as I had though in combat - and the Assyrian cavalry were being pushed back, but never quite killed off by my other commands spears and WWg (X) advancing up the valley on the right, being saved time and time again by intervening psiloi throwing themselves about like Sunday league footballers after a night of heavy rain... 

One lone supported blade (F) stood like a rock in the middle of the Assyrian line, with enemy pushing past all around him, and knights fighting continually to his front, he just refused to die!

The Assyrian cavalry command was also starting to pay the price for being so bold with the central road -  a pair of Bw (X) were shooting up the column of auxilia on the road, who stood there unable to respond as their general was marshalling the mounted force down in the valley below, unaware of their plight.

As the game ground on towards the final bound, all the Assyrian commands had taken some casualties - but hardly enough ? One last desparate bound could have seen me snatch a remarkable win, but it would have severely bent the laws of probability, and all in all was not to be. 5-5, and the Italians come 2nd - their best ever result by quite some way! !!!  

conclusion