Ancients - "One Hour Wargames" an excuse for some 15mm Family Fun

It came to pass that in the land of ancient Greece, a city state whose name has now been long lost in the annals of antiquity, fell into dispute with its local neighbour over access rights to a local temple and gathered together a force of hoplites, skirmishers and a band of mercenary archers to do battle (see below, three infantry, two skirmishers and a troop of archers): 

Within sight of the sacred grounds of the ruined temple a battle was to be fought to settle the dispute once and for all (see below, the "Corfu airport travel shop" surrendered this little beauty for me, a perfect 15mm DBA camp if ever I saw one, I thought to myself and with "last few Euros" of holiday money well spent, it began its trip to England - note the two temple attendants are from Essex [Miniatures] and are probably my oldest "ancients" miniatures - holding up well but I might be tempted to add a layer of modern "wash" over them):   

The invaders obviously came from Thessaly, bringing two powerful contingents of horse, plus three heavy infantry and a band of skirmishers (see below, the armies are yet ti form into their distinctive hoplite lines of battle as they deploy from their respective camps):  

That soon changes as the battle lines of bronzed hoplites masses in the middle of the battlefield and a relentless heavy push of bronze begins. The system is not grid based (like Lost Battles for instance) so although the movement comes in pleasant "big chunks" combat overlaps can easily occur. However only one unit can fight each other frontally (like Impetus if I remember correctly) so I did not force "lining up" to avoid DBA/DBM movement geometry to spoil the ebb and flow and lt units scrum together naturally (see below, I was using Neil Thomas' "One Hour Wargames" rules to blood my teenage son into the hobby. as he has familiarised himself with the complex mechanics of 5th edition D&D, this should be a breeze - but I wanted a "fluid" game noses out of the rulebook if at all possible - Note dice are damage points accrued, get to fifteen and the unit goes "bang", which I liked): 

The unarmoured horse suffer badly (as they should) as they try and push their way through a solid hoplite block (see below. there is a nice mechanic in the rules that armour halves damage which seems to work very well representing ancients) 

The horse unit "cracks" (if I had thought on I could have had them scattering away fro the picture) leaving a whole in the line that the victorious hoplites wish to exploit (see below, the attrition caused by the combat system slowly builds to a "busting point" which again I quite like, creating moments of dreaded tension): 

The horse was the first unit to fall, but the unit of archers is lost making an equally unsightly whole in the line, however the hoplites that vanquished the horse are the quicker to turn and bear down on the flanks of their hoplite cousins. The challengers are about to lose their heavy infantry at teh end of this turn (see below, another feature of the rules is the relative ineffectiveness of skirmishers against heavily armoured troops - they can bother but they do not kill, see far left as despite being on a flank a unit of skirmishers is merely tickling the hoplites locked in combat with another hoplite unit):    

That said, as it was often the way with hoplite battles the "rights" of both sides 'win' and a swirling/wheeling motion occurs. The last unit of exhausted heavy infantry do indeed fall to the outrageous slings and arrows of the skirmishers (so much for my ""nothing to worry about" write-up in the last picture):   

What remains of both armies turn for the final face-off. Two relatively untouched skirmishers, but the heavy infantry looks more menacing than the battered horse (see below, I suppose at this point "morale" should click in with a reality check - with all the heavy infantry gone .. would the horse and skirmishers really slug it out? On the other hand they have come all this way and there is really no way back):    

After a brief "pivot" dance the bloody end-game battle commences (see below, no one fancies the chances of the skirmishers against the armoured hoplites, but the battered horse versus the "still fresh" skirmishers is harder to call) : 

In the end the horse perish, they were obviously too tired from their previous exhortations to pull this one out of the fire (see below, the temple attendants can now safely return to their duties as nothing has changed - apart from a field full of dead and dying Greeks, which means plenty pf work for the temple):   

All in all a very good game. A simple set of rules. yet circumstances arose which were not covered and were met with more "mutual agreement" that "rules lawyering". A competition set of rules it is not (and thank gawd for that") but a nice set you can modify from sound beginning and add flavour to suit, yes. Already after one game it have made a good "Return on Investment" (ROI). It already had bloodied my son's interest, brought some toys out of the loft and started my grey cells turning. The other set of rules I have been reading was Piquet which stands on the opposite extreme compared to these. I cannot wait to try out more scenarios and play with other periods.