Romans vs Macedonians again

A close-up of Martin's phalanx.

It's actually been eleven months since we played a game of our Dux-Bellorum-Impetus mash-up, so since Martin got a few more bases of pikes painted, we decided we would haul some metal this week.

The scenario was a pretty straight-forward one, with a relatively flat battlefield broken only by three hills. Both sides deployed with the heavy infantry to the far end of the table, leaving the skirmishers and cavalry to contest the other flank.

As the infantry plodded towards each other for the clash, a fierce battle would rage in the low ground between the two hills.

As the battle reached its climax, casualty markers and dice littered the field... In the end both sides were out of Leadership Points, and were close to morale check point, and there was still no clear winner. We decided that honour had been satisfied, and retired discussing further projects.

Romans vs Macedonians

So wahj wanted to take his Romans out for a spin, and Martin obliged, and I was able to field my new West Wind War & Empire figures.

The scenario is once again from Miniatures Wargames magazine, and features both armies arriving onto the battlefield piecemeal.

Half a legion holds the hill facing the bridge, while the other one-and-a-half legions race to reinforce them.

The Macedonians mass at three crossing points.

“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods,

“To every man upon this earth

  Death cometh soon or late.

And how can man die better

  Than facing fearful odds

For the ashes of his fathers

  And the temples of his gods,

Martin chose to secure the bridgeheads by deploying his skirmishers in the woods, while wahj threw his cavalry in to buy time.

The cavalry sacrificed themselves to allow the legions to form up, which allowed them to break the Macedonian morale.

I played the rules wrong in the first half of the game, which made shooting less effective and disadvantaged the Macedonians, but the scenario was fun nonetheless as it was a change from facing the death-dealing machine that is the deployed Roman legion. I am convinced Martin needs to at least double the number of his phalanx to stand a chance against the legion.

You can see more pictures at wahj's post.

West Wind War & Empire figures and Tajima1 diorama tufts

I didn't really need more figures for my Attalid Pergamene force, but when the West Wind War & Empire figures were released for general purchase, I thought I would get a couple of packs to see what they look like since I still had space for two units in the tin I keep the Pergamenes in.

The unit bears the snake motif, which is associated with Asklepios, whose shrine at Pergamon was famous in the classical world.

The first unit is a unit of Successor Agema armoured cavalry. I based eight of them on an Impetus-size base in a wedge.

The motif on the flag came from a Pergamene coin. I am not sure what it represents but I painted it in plant colours.

The other unit is a unit of Successor Thorakitai, which I manged to squeeze 14 figures of onto an Impetus sized based in two ranks.

The details on the figures are in my opinion average, and their size is smaller than that of Xyston figures, which make up the rest of my force. As usual, if they are in a unit of their own, the difference is not that noticeable.

L: West Wind War & Empire, R: Xyston 

L: West Wind War & Empire, R: Xyston 

I also took the opportunity to use something I have purchased recently: diorama tufts from Tajima1 Miniature.

Tufts are by now commonplace, but Tajima1 goes one step further and offers mini diorama tufts which incorporate not only grass, but also small shrubbery and cork rocks.

The one I used for the cavalry unit above is from the "Floral Diorama" set:

(picture from Tajima1 Miniatures)

I also bought their "Desert Diorama" set, because I am working on some terrain for my desert mat and thought they might come in useful:

(picture from Tajima1 Miniatures)

They may not be cheap (8 pounds for 16 tufts per pack), but they do produce a very nice result quickly. Do get a pack and try them out if you work with large bases.

Macedonian War Test Game 4

We were able to get another game of our Dux Bellorum-Impetus mash-up rules today.

As usual we had a two Roman legions up against all the Macedonians we can muster, along with my Pergamenes as Greek allies and wahj's Gauls as Galatians.

Martin and I took the Macedonians and played to use our cavalry superiority to defeat the Roman cavalry on the wings and then take the legions in the flanks.

wahj and fg deployed with their legions offset from the centre.

An off-focus shot, but it shows the initial deployment of the two armies.

While we were able to successfully destroy the Roman cavalry, the Romans were able to redeploy their legions to face the flanks and see off our cavalry.

In the centre, the phalanx failed to move into contact on schedule.

The Gauls make their first appearance on our table, but attacking uphill, their impetus bonus was not sufficient for them to carry the position.

Eventually, the Romans managed to rout the thureophoroi guarding the flanks of the phalanxes, which sealed their fates.

The phalanxes surrounded.

More Dux Bellorum - Macedonian War Edition

Martin and I played a game of our Dux Bellorum-Impetus mash-up rules this afternoon. Without wahj's armies of Romans and Carthaginians, we had to make do with Martin's Macedonians and my Pergamenes, supplemented by my Hittite allies. We got about 50 points on each side, which equates to around 200 points in Impetus.

With no heavy infantry to speak of, I set my some area terrain in each quarter of the table, placed my only unit of cavalry to face Martin's cavalry, hoping to tie him up on a face-off while my more numerous skirmishers and medium infantry outflanked his slow phalanxes.

After some stand-off on the Macedonian left flank, his cavalry drew my cavalry into a charge, feinted flight, then turned around and destroyed it. As my only cavalry unit was also my command unit (yes, I am painting another cavalry unit right now), this left me without Leadership Points for the rest of the game. His command unit wasn't unscathed either - it took 2 hits and had 1 left.

Meanwhile, on the Macedonian right flank, my medium infantry had driven off his skirmishers guarding his flank and was poised to charge into the flank of his phalax. Unfortunately, I failed my activation roll at this critical juncture. Martin rushed his cavalry back to his threatened flank in Alexandrian fashion, while he used his LPs to soak up the hits I inflicted on his phalanxes. When the cavalry arrived, I knew the game was up and we called the game and watched Going Medieval, which had just come on on TV.

The Macedonian Companion cavalry rout the Pergamene lancers. The light cavalry rush across the rear of the Macedonian line to reinforce the threatened flank.

Two units of Thureophoroi are unable to rout the phalanx. The cavalry arrive to tilt the balance. The little squares with tiny pebbles on them are casualty markers - I have yet to add shields on them.

Being a smaller game than our previous one, manoeuvre had a more important role in the game and there wasn't a slug fest of heavy infantry. The game moved pretty fast and was finished in less than two hours, which is a good thing because our campaign games are likely to be three times as large as this one.

Replica Roman coins used as Leadership Point tokens; they have a nice feel to them - throwing them behind a unit feels like throwing down chips in a game of poker.

Finally, we end with a couple of shots of Martin's beautifully-painted figures.

Macedonian pikes

Companion cavalry

Punic Action

We played another game of Dux Bellorum using our house-rules for the Macedonian and Punic Wars this afternoon. I still haven't got all the rules down, but we've got a pretty good grasp of the basic mechanics and turn sequence.

The two lines close.

Legionaries face down elephants.

Assorted Asiatics

As we explore further expansion of our Macedonian and Punic War campaign, we realised that we already own small "clusters" of figures which can be recruited: fg has several bases of Numidian horse and foot painted, and Martin has figures from his Sassanids which can be used. On my part I found that some of the figures from my Hittite Empire army can be used as African or Asiatic troops.

I guess that's the beauty of ancients gaming.

Dux Bellorum - Macedonian War Edition

After seeing Craig's post about using Dux Bellorum for the Punic Wars, I decided to try to do the same thing. I worked out a formula to convert Impetus stats into DB stats, and we gave the conversion a spin this afternoon.

The Romans in formation, with their Pergamene allies to their right.

The Carthaginian-Macedonian alliance.

In general the rules worked OK - the cavalry battles on the flanks came to a conclusion early, but the infantry fights were a grind, since I gave Deep Units (an import from Impetus) +1 support for its rear ranks, and we allowed up to 3 Leadership Points to be used to cancel hit - we are planning to use the optional rule to reduce this to 2 next time.

The forces used were around 300 points in Impetus terms, and to me it didn't feel like a epic ancients battle yet. We will probably have to work towards a 500 points fight eventually.

Added: You can see some photos of the game at wahj's blog here.

15mm Attalid Pergamene completed

Painted, based and flocked.

These four Impetus units represent my contribution to our planned Macedonian War campaign; they can also double as the Attalid Pergamene under DBA, being 1 x Kn, 1 x Cv, 1 x LH, 7 x Ax, and 2 x Ps. I never play DBA these days, but somehow the vestigial Barkerist inside me compelled me to make sure my little contingent would be DBAble.

With these figures done, my painting commitment is much reduced - but more on that in my next post, I think...

15mm Attalid Pergamene WIP 2

Almost done.

I'm missing two elements worth of figures.

They are frankly not very well-painted as I wanted to turn them out during my leave this week, and because I knew much of the painting would be obscured by the large shields anyway; when I look at the unit from the front all I get is an impression of large white shields, bronze helmets with red crests, and thin wire spear-shafts, so perhaps it's not so unrealistic after all.

15mm Attalid Pergamene WIP 1

I finally got the 15mm Xyston figures primed yesterday, and made good progress on them today.

On the left are two of the three bases of cavalry I need, on a movement tray I made myself.

In the centre are the command bases of the two units of thureophoroi I am planning to paint, again on a movement tray. The iconography on the two flags and the letters on them are taken from Pergamene coins, representing Athena's bow and Asklepios' snake respectively. On the right is the single unit of skirmisher.

That's about one third of the force done in an afternoon. I hope to complete the whole DBA-sized force this week.

Some more impetus

The Impetus project is picking up momentum and Martin just sent out an order for almost 50 packs of Xyston figures.

I know I pledged not to start a new period, but my contribution to this project is limited to an allied Greek contingent of DBA size, so it's not really a breach...

Anyway, we all plan to base our figures on DBX basing and use some sort of movement trays instead of going for the full Impetus mini-diorama, tempting though that may be. I made a test tray out of my remaining plasticard, and when I opened my cupboard to get a few bases of my Hittites to test the fit, found this:

A model of a Greek temple wahj left at my place, I believe. It's probably a bit small in scale ("The centre has to be at least... three times bigger than this"), but it should do fine as a decoration if not an actual terrain piece to fight over.

Meanwhile, Martin found a piece of classical ruins terrain that I gave him a long time ago... Things are just falling into pieces, aren't they?