Now the challenging SPARTAN army and an excellent player and friendly fellow player George. Both of us were in position to win the contest with Martin in ambush. Both of us would have to score to win.
Many people I know predicted that a spartan army would win such a tournament. From the beginning I did disagree. If there had been more "biblical" and mobile armies, the spartan would always have to run after mobile armies and would rarely score points. But if you look at the armies being played, most armies were infantry battle armies, not mobile Hittites, Mitanni, NKE A spartan army will struggle vs such armies. Now I was wondering how the spartan army did so well and got the explanation : even on green dice he did win initiative and so always played first going quickly forward. Even with 2 outscouting card he regularly outscouted the opponent ( which he did to me to my great disadvantage ). So yes, he was lucky, but would he win the contest ?
There are unfortunately few pictures as we were rather focused on the game.. I went as attacker and he went for mountains. I wanted some rough terrain but it all went wrong as the terrain was not on my side to protect my infantry but on his side and so he got easily out of it.
I would try to slow him down despite his Cretan archers but the proble was that they never did miss a shot ..never . So in the center it quickly went wrong for me ..all my hopes for victory were quickly going away. Wrong terrain, wrong strategy , being tired .. I shrugged it off and decided to go for the best and attacked quickly on the protected flank . The immortals would kill his thracians and the applebearers will continue double moving towards his far away camp ( on the other side of the brownish terrain you see ) and take the Spartan camp .
Meanwhile my mounted do all they can to slow down the spartan infantry
At one point, the yellow cav TUG ' exceptionnal ) will charge the spartan TUG to it's front. I was on green and he was on white ... I broke
It takes time for foot to push cavalry
In the end I had killed 3 of his TUGS one being a full spartan, taken his camp and survived so 10 points . he had killed 4 of my TUGS and surviced so 10 points but it was enough for me to win EMEGC 2023
So from right to left : George the spartan ( 3rd ), Martin the achean trojan war ( 2nd ) and myself .
Back in Athens in November 2023 but meanwhile I have BRULIB to organise in Brussels !