Freezing! Armies before 0AD at Avignon 2019
Sargonid Assyrian vs Galatian
Game 1 Sargonid Assyrian vs Galatian
Game 2 Sargonid Assyrian vs Carthaginian
Game 3 Sargonid Assyrian vs Ugaritic
Game 4 Sargonid Assyrian vs Kushan
Game 5 Sargonid Assyrian vs Alexander The Great
Travelling the continent to play toy soldiers and eat great meals with your mates is all well and good, but occasionally - and sadly - sometimes it proves necessary to actually do some work to underwrite the costs of all of this malarkey... and that had been the case for much of the back half of 2019 in Madaxeman Towers. No ADLG events since the 1/72nd scale whupping at The BIG Abona Festival back in June... and it was now November!
In a packed schedule tonight, even a thorough browsing of the UK calendar had failed to cough up any events which coincided with a free weekend, either at home or in CLWC's adopted second competitive home of the tapas-friendly Spain. In such times a curious mind turns to other opportunities, and with a quick browsing of the French part of the ADLG forum and the realisation that Mrs Madaxeman would be away on one specific weekend in November a last-minute plan suddenly fell into place... Avignon!
Sur le pont d'Avignon
Air Miles subsidized the international logistics, Avis loyalty points chipped in with a gallic roller-skate-sized ground transport option and a bit of list-bashing from a baseline used in Greece earlier this year very quickly tossed a very small but freshly painted Assyrian army into the world's smallest tin in order to achieve a hand-luggage-only travel plan involving the smallest rucksack in my collection.
And, as if by magic, on a cold November Friday afternoon there I was, heading yet again to LHR T5 to jump onto a flight to Marseilles as the gateway to historic Avignon (well, the posh suburb up the hill) for a date with dice, destiny and ADLG!
Crossing the Pont d'Avignon just as the golden evening light started to fade I arrived in the growing gloom to a historic hostelry in the small hilltop historic village hosting the event somewhat disorientated from the jarring change of pace, architecture and linguistics.
But all were good - and with an al fresco beer or two and some southern French tapas to accompany the Belgian-strength tipple also consumed I prepared myself for the next morning.
Del Boy Speaks French!
The theme of the event was "Sub Zero" - armies valid prior to 0AD - giving a wide and eclectic mix of entries all of which were presumably battle tested and evolved from within the French meta, something which I had rarely dived into before now. The event was also held in a historic olive oil pressing plant next to a farmhouse/hotel with it's own swimming pool, again not features that you will find in many Travelodge or Premier Inns in the UK it's fair to say,
However, despite the unusual aspects of the venue at least my first opponent looked to be rather more predictable - a Galatian army. Having used the list myself earlier this year with some success I was of the opinion that there was pretty much only one way to cook up a list, and as the enemy dropped their troops onto the table it appeared that my opponent pretty much agreed.
Galatians: The army has a CV of only 2, and with Impetuous Heavy Foot as its mainstay that pushes you pretty much to a Brilliant/Ordinary/Ordinary mix of generals with the Brilliant CinC commanding almost all of the Heavy Infantry in a big block
The cavalry are decent in that they can almost all be Elite, which is necessary as you only get a handful of Heavies in an otherwise all Medium set of probably half a dozen or so in your second command led by an Ordinary general
For the 3rd command the lack of variety (and rough terrain troops) in the main list makes the apparently toothless Paonian Javelinmen ally more worthwhile, which also brings you a couple of LH to gain an extra scouting point.
The lists for the Sargonid Assyrian and Galatian from this game, as well as all the other lists from the games at Avignon can be seen here in the L'Art de la Guerre Wiki.
I had tried to minimise the terrain to give the Assyrian chariots a clean run at the enemy infantry (or cavalry, or anything really - frankly they had cool wallpaper on their cab sides and they simply didn't care).
Although a plantation in the middle of the enemy line suggested strongly that the block of HF would be in the centre with perhaps Cavalry refusing the enemy left, in the real world my opponent knew the terrain rules better than I did and had stretched his foot from the left flank through the terrain, then extending with the Cavalry and finally the Paonians
L'Art de la Guerre hint - Its really bad for HF to get caught and be fighting in Rough or Difficult terrain, but they can move through Rough terrain at an unimpeded speed. This has the benefit that dropping terrain into the enemy deployment zone isn't quite as bad as in some other rulesets as its still entirely possible to get your troops out of it before the enemy close on you.
