Reprinted from the Wargamers Newsletter December 1978 with kind permission of the Editor. Every wargamer must have the memory of one particular battle, one game in which his plans worked perfectly, his dice luck was superb and his opponent fell into every trap laid for him! It may be that the troops used were some that had been very laboriously made, painted with loving care and, going into action for the very first time, they fought like tigers. Could it be that the terrain was really something out of the ordinary, the hills even more climbable than usual, the rivers and their bridges realistic and very crossable? Or was it the last battle of a long and arduous campaign which just had to be won in order to emerge triumphant from the whole shindig? My best remembered battle, after some thought, was not even fought with my own troops - in fact it emerges as an odd fact that most of my memorable battles were fought in other people's houses, using their own troops! Amongst them I list a three-cornered affair at Peter Young's house, when with his Marlburian 20mm troops I took on Ian Bale and David Nash - it raged from 11:00 in the morning until 7:30 at night when I had to capitulate, but the interest was sustained throughout and we never stopped rowing about the rules, did we Peter? Then there was an affair with Warwick Hale's Napoleonic flats that took place at Chatham - in which I manipulated their rules so that I formed up in a stronger formation than the famed British square and then demanded an increase in the liberty that their rules gave to squares - but it was a good battle and we all enjoyed it Warwick, Peter Pringle and I. But the battle I have in mind took place at Tony Bath's place a few weeks ago, using his Ancient flats. There were two parallel ranges of unclimbable hills running across the width of the table. We both formed up our heavy infantry in strong three-deep formations with each flank anchored on those hills. On our flanks we laid our cavalry, light troops, chariots and elephants. Tony moved first and indicated that he intended to hold in the center and attack on one or the other of his flanks. I then moved and gave the impression that I intended advancing on my left flank, whilst my center held and my right flank advanced and then held. Tony moved again, and his flank troops moved further away from his center. I then reared my right flank troops back to a holding position and then pivoted my heavy infantry on their right end so as to leave a gap through which I flung my elephants, chariots and heavy cavalry against Tony's line of heavy infantry. I was able to do this because my left flank forces of elephants' chariots and cavalry had only made token moves towards their flank and had actually only arrived in a suitable position to be flung through the gap. One doesn't often pull off a tactical surprise against Bath and I was highly delighted afterwards when he admitted that my move had completely surprised him. It did not make quite as much headway as I had hoped because I had been forced to fling in my attack rather early (I would rather have left it another move so that his flanking forces were even further away from their center) and Tony was able to get most of them back eventually to help his hard-pressed center, many of the units forming the center having given way under the weight of the attack. An interesting sidelight on this attack lay in the fact that its composition of elephants, chariots and cavalry with heavy infantry in support formed a composite group of such a type that the rules could not cover their activities in the melee! EVERY ONE OF US HAS A WARGAME THAT STANDS OUT IN HIS MEMORY. SHARE THAT HAPPY EVENT WITH THE REST OF US AND RELATE JUST WHAT HAPPENED, THE CIRCUMSTANCES, THE TROOPS INVOLVED AND WHETHER OR NOT YOUR OPPONENT ACTUALLY DID USE THAT OPEN-RAZOR OR BOTTLE OF POISON! Back to MWAN #53 Table of Contents © Copyright 1991 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com