Marco (Romans) 7 banners  23 blocks lost
Travis (Armenians) 5 banners  30 blocks lost

After winning 7-4 in game one, I didn't think it would be too hard to get a few banners early and pick my spot for a climactic rush to get the banners I needed for an overall victory.  I was completely mistaken.

Marco outclassed me in this matchup throughout, anticipating my moves and keeping me off balance with various movements on the right and left as well as getting the better of the ranged exchange (despite getting only 1 hit on a well-played DTS card).  After reacting to his moves, I decided to try to bait a trap and perhaps set up a multi-turn advance with my cavalry, but his battle-back rolls were tremendous and left me with several weakened units. In desperation, I advanced two doomed one-block units in the hopes of weakening a unit or two, and drawing out a possible FS card. The sacrificial lambs fell, but ultimately did their job in the process.  

However, when Marco advanced on my cavalry and scored a double helmet on an evade, I feared all was lost.  Fortunately, I was able to garner some amazing rolls in a four-banner turn with a desperation charge, and forced his leader to evade through my HC, which scored a lone hit and secured the victory.

Again, Marco played it perfectly, but I fortunately got the rolls when I needed them most.  An excellent pair of games against an excellent opponent.
 

I’ve corresponded with Daniel, hoping he’d have a change of heart, but unfortunately he’s confirmed he won’t continue. 

I’ll report our match as it was a good one, despite the module issues, and deserves an AAR. 

BrentS (Armenian) 6 banners 

Cap (Roman) 7 banners 

Rome played a perfect early game, making a slow, patient, deadly advance. The Armenians occupied the hill on their right wing with an Auxilia and formed a firing line with their range 3 units on their left, preparing a Darken the Sky……that randomly went into the discard pile due to the technical issues with the card draw. Things went further south for them from there as Rome destroyed the Auxilia occupying the hill with ranged fire and put the squeeze on the light Armenian left flank cavalry, forcing them to evade to their baseline. Some escaped, one died. This left the Armenians with an empty left flank and half their hand now dead Order Left cards…..never a good look. 

It’s an interesting challenge playing an army with one leader against an enemy with two or more. Mobility is key and Tigranes really got his step count up. First to the right flank until it was forced back and went quiet, then back to the centre, then a Double Time to the left flank to bolster it against complete collapse, then back to the right flank to join the cavalry for a desperate move to try to salvage the battle. 

The dramatic culmination of the battle came when Tigranes advanced his main cavalry force on the right. Sometimes this is a feint to divert the enemy from pressing a weakened position and Rome ignored (or couldn’t respond to) the Armenian cavalry and continued their push against the crumbling Armenian left. Usually the correct move but this time it wasn’t a feint. Tigranes went all in with two consecutive Cavalry Charges, a desperate play to get something out of the battle. It was successful, killing several Roman units and Lucullus on a leader check and coming to within one banner of victory. The counter was inevitable and Rome cut off the cavalry retreat paths, wiped them out and put Tigranes to the harrowing test of a leader escape, which he survived. 

With banner count at 6 apiece, Tigranes advanced his infantry for the possibility of a win but his unit was killed on a 4 hit battle back from a Roman heavy, giving the Romans victory in a dramatic and closely fought battle. 

Despite our technical issues I really enjoyed this battle. It’s an interesting challenge trying to manage an army with a single leader. You have to put him in danger and it’s a disaster if he’s killed but thankfully that didn’t happen to Tigranes this time. 

This was probably a very good result for the Armenians but nothing is certain in C&C. It was set up for an interesting second battle.

Brent.

Mark-McG wrote:

I haven't had a chance to use the new module, but if the module is the problem, revert to the previous version.

 

I think we have a solution but I've also offered Daniel this option.

Brent.

I've had feedback from Mark (RiverWanderer) and the issue may have been that there are two end turn buttons, one in the player's card window, and one in the main game toolbar.....the first just ends the turn, the second ends turn and draws a card. I thought I was using the card window toolbar only, but it's possible that sometimes I wasn't (habit from previous modules is that the end turn button is in the main toolbar window).

One to watch out for.......although I wonder, Mark, if it might not be better to simplify and have one end turn button only to avoid these sorts of mistakes. If that's where things went astray I'm sure I won't be the only one.

Brent.

I haven't had a chance to use the new module, but if the module is the problem, revert to the previous version.

 

Gentlemen, Brent,

I am a serious war game commander and do not intend to bother myself with this any more. The module is buggy, and the scenario (Artaxata) is possibly wrongly integrated in the module. If I am to suffer what Brent suffered in our first leg semi final battle, I'd better not lose my time.

I QUIT my participation in CCA OT 2022.
Brent, I wish you good luck at the final!
Mark McG, thank you for making this happen! So far I have had really good time achieving some brilliant victories on the battlefield. 
Thanks to all other participants and hope to see you in the next one!

Daniel (aka Cap)

Marco (Armenian) 4 banners, 29 Blocks Lost

Travis (Roman) 7 banners, 26 Blocks Lost

A long-awaited game one lived up to the hype.  Some dramatic momentum shifts that make this game great happened to both sides, in a very even fight right up until the end with a couple of lead changes.

I would say that the Armenians need to do some damage with their ranged units to have a chance in this one, and Marco's dice were true early on, scoring 7 hits on my outclassed light units and gobbling one up with a cavalry advance on my left to take a quick 1-0 lead.  I had the cards to move everyone forward, and after three line command cards were played between the two of us, I hastily moved some right-flank infantry forward to menace his weaker left flank.  Although initially somewhat of a bluff, this paid benefits later on....

I was forced by his cavalry advance to consolidate exposed units in the center, and he responded with first an infantry assault, and then a cavalry assault on the center, with mixed results. With the score 3-1 in his favor and forced to plug the holes in my line with the heavy infantry, Marco made another well-planned cavalry assault that didn't get the dice results, and I was able to first counterattack and take a 4-3 lead, then luckily drew a Light card that allowed me to eliminate two of his units at the map's edge for a 6-4 lead.  He counterattacked but I was able to eliminate an Aux with a 4-hit battle-back to finish the game.  Eagerly anticipating game two against an excellent opponent.

We'll complete our second match on Friday.

Brent.

Played our first match which I'll leave for Daniel to report but I did want to give some module feedback, Mark, because we had some significant issues.

Maybe three times for me and at least once for Daniel we double drew at turn's end because the Turn End button drew an additional card. We had to randomly discard to be fair (I discarded the Darken the Sky I'd set up which didn't make me a happy Tigranes at all). Frustrating for such an important game and somewhat soured what was an otherwise enjoyable match.

The workaround was to end turn first and then draw if it didn't draw a card, not draw if it did.....but that does take some tracking and I forgot at least once. It seemed to be random and didn't happen with every draw. I thought Daniel was immune but noticed part way through that he had 7 cards in his command 6 hand so both player sides are affected.

Brent..

Thanks guys.

Thanks for the work on it, Mark. Looks really good.

Brent.

Unfortunately a bug in vassal is causing the problem that Brent asked about. Once vassal v3.6.8 is released, the dropdown list preference will default to Numbers for new users and the preference will save properly. Sorry for the inconvenience.

In File - Preferences, there is a Game options tab that allows you to change between the two.
Mine is set to Numeric, but still opens as spots. So I had to set to spots, and then set to numerals to get it to change.

Thanks Mark. Just downloaded it. It has lots of options but seems to come with a default of block count marked on the edge of the unit, rather than numerical, which would be my preference. Does anyone know if there's a way to toggle to having the block count displayed numerically?

Brent.

Current CCA module version is 4.2.4
obj.vassalengine.org/images/9/9f/CCAncientsV4-2-4.vmod