Amidst the plethora of happy wargaming anecdotes, glorious charges, stunning come from behind victories, brilliant flank marches that carried the day, etc., we all carry with us the memories of those not so great games. Those "damned dice" situations where we not only lost, but got our butts-kicked royally. These games are our learning experiences. Sure, we all know about the guy who bought and painted his new pet army and brags that he has never lost a game, nor even had a unit rout!

Well, just once, maybe. Have you played him? Have I? Chances are both of us haven't so his brag is as good to you as it is to me, unless we're all in the same club, and it's always someone in another club that this ugly rumor's always about isn't it?

The Best?

I remember so many times going into a convention or tournament situation scoping out the opposition and hearing " ... he's the best, can't be beat," and "best army here ... " until I might as well have showed up with an army of D class shieldless archers with a permanent die roll of -4! Psyched out! It works that way in wargaming, just like in real life.

There is one game that quickly comes to mind in illustration of this. I was commanding Saxons, my opponent had Vikings. We were refighting the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Both of us were regular opponents but we had a couple of newcomers to the hobby over on that particular afternoon who wanted to learn the rules and play a game. So we went through the basics, the terrain, the situation and so forth.

My friend's partner asked "'Who won originally?" I answered, "The Saxons." and the game might as well have never started. His defeatism (well, we lost anyway, right?) infected my usually active opponent into sitting in place and being slaughtered piecemeal with no offensive maneuvers whatsoever! Harald Hardrada would have been ashamed, at least he put up a stiff defense. Psychology works both ways, though.

Overconfidence is as bad as lack of same. My Imperial Romans were in a campaign of the conquest of Gaul. The umpire had laid out a simple enough scenario for relief of some border fortresses. Well, we all know that Romans can't be be beaten by barbarian Gauls, so I marched North along the most direct road and came to the first bridge at the first river and was neatly ambushed. I kept muttering to myself "Romans can't lose to Gauls..." as first one cohort was shattered by Gaesati and then another was routed by warbands coming on board onto their flank.

Somehow I eventually extricated myself from this mess, but only because the Gallic commander had over a third of his army marching back and forth through a woods and couldn't figure out against whom to deploy them!

Many of us read extensively about a campaign or an action before a game. Sometimes this gives us an important perspective on the battle or some insights into the tactics of the time which may help us ... or vice versa. Unfortunately, we sometimes get caught up in the spirit of the wrong century. One battle that forever soured me on Ancient Greeks occurred on the weekend after I'd been reading about Antietam.

ACW Greeks

For some reason, I thought that ACW tactics might just work well for Ancients, so I gave it a try. I set up my army in three long lines of troops, one behind the other. In the first line I placed all the light troops. In the second, all of the, LMI and the HI and HC made up the third. It looked pretty good, my adversary was impressed as well until he saw that my evading lights not only immobilized my second rank but blocked line-of-sight from the third as well. The rest of the game he spent gleefully slaughtering my totally unsupported ranks, one by one. Another learning experience.

There's always the "let's find the loopholes in the rules..." phase, where you figure ways to squirm out of stupid situations you've put yourself into. My sides still hurt when I remember the poor guy at Origins ('79 or '80) who counter-charged an Indian army elephant unit with Byzantine SHI and argued with the umpire that elephants charging did not constitute a mounted charge! What was left of his exquisitely painted Byzantine army wasn't worth packing up to take home after the shattering blow to his ego and irrational rules interpretation.

But who am I to talk? Just a few days ago at Simcon XII at the U of R, I charged with a unit of 12 EHK irregular B Crusader knights into a unit of HI 'B' legionnaires, routing them. In my infinite wisdom, I'd supported the charge with an English LMI LB/2HCW unit which was to engage a flanking HI legionnaire unit. (Sure!)

But the stupidest move of all was for me to expect my 'D' class LC bow unit to frontally assault the third Roman HI unit! So...the Roman unit on the flank of my EHK unit charged them, my LMI unit attack on them was cancelled by his third unit declaring a charge on them and my LC charge, which would have brought down his house of cards destroyed mine instead by refusing to move! The EHK reacting to being charged went impetuous, couldn't turn a figure to face and were, of course, routed, as were the LMI Longbowmen. The LC? After seeing this, they too took off. Brilliant tactics? No. A learning experience? Yes.

Some gamers never learn not to trust the dice to win the game for them. Just throw a unit of 'D' class irregular LMI Prussians into a unit of pikemen and watch the fun. Can your opponent roll a -4? For how many turns? As for luck, some of us have to have those random die rolls to blame for when we lose the game. How many shattered egos have been salved by the phrase "...too bad your die rolls were so abysmal, it would have been a different game otherwise..."

Another trick we've all learned has been the judicious placement of terrain. Unfortunately, there is no prohibition (other than a die roll) against your opponent placing a monstrous bog in the center of your deployment area! This really wreaks havoc on a SHK army. Try setting up around an 18" by 12" mess like that.

All in all, though, WRG 6th edition have been a good learning tool, as well as a lot of fun. After you've sort of mastered them after three or four hundred games, then, voila, it's time to learn again. The 7th edition. I can soon learn a lot of new ways to lose an Ancients wargame!