Dux Bellorum: Hoplomachia - Hold the pass!

We played another couple of games of Dux Bellorum: Hoplomachia this week, including a run through of the 'Hold the pass' scenario we have been working on. I led an invading force of 5th century Macedonians, while Lee blocked my path with a much smaller force of city-state Greeks.

The Macedonians had overwhelming numbers and a flanking force off-table, with a neat mechanic used to determine when they would make it through the mountain passes to emerge behind the Greek lines. The Greeks had better quality soldiers, but in fewer numbers. They had the advantage of a geographic choke point where there was the potential for quality to successfully rebuff quantity.

The Macedonian approach was to send their Illyrian mercenaries through the rough and wooded lower slopes of the mountain to take the Greek line in the flank. Meanwhile, the Macedonian skirmishers would attempt to disorder the hoplites opposite while the fairly mediocre Macedonian infantry slowly made their way forward. 

Macedonian shooting was incredibly ineffective. The only damage the Macedonian slingers managed to inflict was when they ran into hand-to-hand combat against the Greek slingers. As the Macedonian line advanced, the Greeks spread out to cover the rough ground in the hills as well as the open pass. The Illyrian warriors did manage to break through around the flank, but not without being mauled themselves.

Just at the point that the Macedonian advance was failing, and the Greeks were starting to push back, the Macedonian flanking force emerged from the mountain goat path and steadied the Macedonian resolve. The Greek strategos turned his phalanx around to combat the foes to the rear of the main Greek line, but as he did so, the remaining Greeks lost heart and broke, leaving the pass to the invaders.

This was a great wee scenario which could have gone either way. The weak point in the Greek line was always going to be the rough ground on the flank, while the Macedonians needed to balance the scenario turn limit against the uncertain arrival of the flanking force, i.e. I didn't want to be defeated in detail, but I did need to advance and start the fighting. 

The Macedonian army always struggles to get their tribal levies to advance, so I spent a couple of turns not attacking. In retrospect, that was probably a good thing. If I has suffered the same losses a turn earlier - before the arrival of the flanking force - the Macedonians would have reached their 25% casualty threshold and started to take morale checks. Checks which my levy inevitably fail (needing to roll 6 or below on 2d6).