Macedonian invasion of Egypt - a fresh OGAM foe

A good gaming pal, terrain builder extraordinaire and all round enjoyable foe has recently had a bit of a health scare (a 'shot across the bows' as he puts it) and is off work for a little while. Helping to fill his day, as well as get myself away from the home office, I gave him a visit this week, and got in a quick game of Of Gods and Mortals while I was there.

We opted for a 1000 point game - 100 points larger than the recommended game size. Both of us packed out our forces with mortal units, each using only two legends and our gods. This really changed the dynamic of the game a bit making it more of a 'conventional' game if you like, placing more emphasis on units and less on rampaging rogue heroes.

I had a vaguely modeled notion to field Macedonians, patronised by Athena (with her daddy's lightning, but without the aegis). As legends I had Herakles and a harpy, supported by 8x Macedonian hypaspists, 6x undead hoplites, 4x Satyr archers, 4x Centaur archers and 4x Dryads.

Against me were ranged the Egyptian forces of Set. A chariot mounted pharaoh and a Great Mummy, backed up by 8x Sherden guardsmen, 8x axemen, 8x light infantrymen and 5x slaves.

Here you see the starting line up. And it was much more of a line up than usual for an OGAM game. My Macedonians are spread in a line along the left of the center line, Satyrs sitting in the rough terrain and the Dryads skulking invoking at the back.

In the opening turn, the Egyptian pharoah raored something in his barbarous tongue and pointed menacingly at the Satyrs. He rolled two dice to activate and failed both. Athena reacted by advancing forward and then, seizing the initiative, used her lightning to good effect. The pharoah exploded in a bolt of dazzling blue light leaving only a pair of smoking sandals in his chariot.

With that cracking start, the Macedonian forces started to advance. So did the Egyptians, but Athena's boys (and girls) had the advantage of speed, and far more firepower, slowly peppering the Egyptians, trying to reduce their ability to invoke Set to great deeds. Unfortunately, Set was able to bring down a plague on my hypaspists, greatly reducing their ability to activate and fight. Not cool Set. Not cool.

As the battle lines closed, Herakles ran to plug an emerging hole in the line between the Satyrs and the hypaspists (Athena had left it to help the heroic undead warriors destroy the Sherdan guardsmen). Seeing an opportunity to take revenge for the fallen pharaoh, Set dashed in.

Here you see a wider view of the table as the opposed lines come closer. In the unfocused middle distance, Set and Herakles duel. Set won the first bout, knocking Herakles to the ground but not killing him. As the contest continued, Set tried to finish the fallen hero, only to receive a hammering blow to the ankle and being forced to retire. Unfortunately, the Macedonian luck was not to last and in the next round Set hopped back into the melee and finished Herakles before he could fully recover.

Away off to the Macedonian right, my centaurs had been slowly picking off the large unit of Egyptian light infantry until the Egyptians eventually had enough and charged forward. The fighting was fairly inconclusive with multiple tied melees, but as mortal units loose a figure each time their is a tied melee, the small Centaur unit suffered much more than the large unit of Egyptians.

Back in the centre, Athena and Set went head-to-head, each supported by mortal adherents. Here though, Chance was against me, the dice failed, and Athena was banished. She was brought back, only to be defeated again by Set and his minions.

By this stage, the two armies had fought each other ragged. The Macedonians had suffered the worst of the melees and were reduced to only two units capable of summoning Athena back to the table - the hypaspists and the Dryads. However, neither unit were effective combat troops at this stage - the hypaspists because of the plague, the Dryads because... Dryads.

The (very enjoyable) day was drawing to a close, I had to go and perform daddy duties, and it was clear that Set's Egyptians were in a better position than my Macedonians with three units capable of summoning/invoking, the Great Average Mummy and Set all still in play. The Egyptian axemen were still combat effective, while the light infantry and slaves were still effective on account of their numbers. The Macedonians conceded the day and Athena went off to examine her war record (two losses out of two battles) and have a long hard think about what shed'd done.