Hail Caesar! Romans Vs Britons 500 points Battle 7

Hello everyone.

It's been awhile since I posted, and that is mostly because I have been busy and none of us in our group have had time for a game, but fortunately on March 18 we were all able to meet up and have a big old 500 point game.   We met up with Tim H, not to be confused with Tim S, who has joined our little Hail Caesar group. He will be playing with Greek and Hellenistic forces in the future so I look forward to pitting my Republicans against some Greeks!

Anyways, this game used 75% of Grahams models and Tim S brought in his own army.  The game was 500 points and there were four of us - so each side had two players and each player had 250 points.  One General a side.  However, we ignored the rule for over 50% of the army being broken (if more than half of your divisions are broken then you have lost the game!)  as we considered each person controlling an army to have their own "army" instead of one large one.

Tim S had one big division of Romans with his 250 points, and thus the single army General..
The General's name.. well.. there are some that call him... Tim?

Tim H had two divisions of Romans and they were commanded by Fattius Manassas and Gaius Veriambitious .

Graham had two divisions of Brtions , and in one division had a large warband. Yikes! His commanders were Chief Duncrapin and Commander Messianus

And I two divisions of Britons. My Commanders were Dudeica and Cartotacos.

My dog Scrappy Doo also graced us with his presence, and was considerably more behaved than last time, though he did often jump up to check out the snacks we were eating. He ended up sleeping for a bit of it though while we were playing, haha.

He needs to learn how to control his appetite and how to roll dice so he can play properly.. yeah!

In these bigger point games it is much harder for me to observe what is going on with all the players, so most of this game is focused on Cartotacos and Dudeica fighting against Fattius Manassas and Gaius Veriambitious.  Moves and stages of the game are happening all at once, so Graham would be moving his troopers while I was moving mine! 

So let's get right into it, and follow, from my perspective, the adventures of Dudeica and Cartotacos.

Dudeica waves his massive sword around, inspiring the warbands under his control! 

There was a road going through the map, as well as an impassible Celtic village in the middle. On the east side some forests, and on the west some hills with a druid's stone.    The west side was quite bright due to sunrise happening over Britannia...and not a window we decided to open in the game room to help us see better while we played.

TURN 1 

The Briton's go first and move forth.  Chief Duncrapin inspired his lads with great skill - they made it to the road on the first go!  The rest of the celts had a move or two here and there.  All of our off-table units  made it on to the table!   You can see that we Britons brought a lot of Cavalry and Chariots to this game!  

The Romans advance on all sides.  On the far east I was up against some Auxiliar cavalry, two legions, and just east of the village some auxiliary and another two legions were advancing forth with scorpions and light archers in support.

TURN 2

Movement for the Celts was nothing spectacular, but they slowly moved closer towards the Roman invaders. 

 Romans advanced to the road and shots from Scorpions and archers were fired, but the Britons took very little damage.  The brave general that some call Tim ordered his cavalry to Charge the first unit they saw behind the hill.. which happened to be Graham's large warband! 

The sheer mass of Celtic warriors was too much for such a daring charge and the celts drove the horsemen back.  They moved too far back to properly pursue and Graham decided not to follow, thus ending the first round of combat in the game.  

 Turn 3 

The only order that both Graham and I had in mind all across the field was CHARGE!!!! And so we did!  As you can see, most of the Celts committed and were successful!  Veriambitious had his Cavalry counter charge the oncoming Britons.  

At this point I lost a lot of what was going on with Graham's side of the game - but I did want to take one picture of these romans.. Tim rolled his die to defend against nine warband attacks. and saved them all!!!!! 

Well, if you cannot see what happened in this turn from the pictures, I'll put it simply - The Britons rolled down some Romans!  The left Warband with medium cavalry support beat back the Auxiliary Cavalry charge and followed, though they could not reach them. And the Right warband with skirmishers and other warband support slashed right through the first unit of legionnaires, did a sweeping charge into the ones that were supporting them, and just destroyed them all!   The division was broken right away as it only had three units, and half of them were now gone!

Even though this was Tim S first game with us, I sure wasn't going easy on him!

Things were happening on Graham and Tim H side of the field.. but I am not entirely sure on the details.  Well, when in doubt - attack. And that is what we both were doing.  All I know for sure was that that village was being trampled on beneath the dying of men, 

 I re-positioned my Celts, being victorious .

Somewhere here the Romans got their turn on Tim. As I said, I have no idea what was going on.. so enjoy the pictures and have fun guessing because I do not know!

Veriambitious quit the field with his broken cavalrymen, leaving Fattius Manassas to try to positions his troops into a defensive formation. 

 It's beautiful to see all these models lined up and fighting and I enjoy having 2 vs 2 player games because most of the time I had no idea what Graham was doing or how he was faring.  Seeing these pictures now, it must have been a bloody good time! 

TURN 4

Cartotacos ordered his weakened warband forth to assault the first legionnaires they came across.  Unfortunately the rest of his division did not understand any of the orders and Dudeica's division did not understand their commanders gestures and thought his sword waving was an order to stay put.. so that's what most of my units did this turn! 

Despite their vicious attack, my lone unit of Celtic warriors that had previously wiped out two other units of legionnaires did not have the strength left in them, and they lost this fight. They held their ground, however! 

Fattius charged his legions forth on the Roman turn.  His legionnaires took on Dudeica's left warband , while his auxiliary with a scorpion in support took on the right.  The Light archer unit in open order that had been screening the auxiliary charged the Celtic bowmen that were hanging out in the Celtic village.

The Roman archers easily killed all the Celtic bowmen.  

But the rest of the fighting did not fare well.  The Auxiliary were butchered by the warband and the legionnaires were driven back. The Chariots behind both warbands proved to be very supportive as supports should be!

On the left, the Roman legionnaires were able to beat the wounded celtic warband once again and pushed them back again! 

TURN 5 

Having no idea what Chief Duncrapin and Messianus were up to, Dudeica kept on the attack.  He charged his warband and chairots up and obliterated the scorpion and crew.  

A shot from Graham and Tim S side of the field... lots of carnage.. and by the looks of it, his Romans were doing a good number on Messianus and Duncrapin! 

Cartotacos had his men move closer, but their buddies fighting the Romans were done for. Although this warband broke and was slain,  the surviving Romans facing off against Dudeica's men would get cut down this turn, and the division would break.

TURN 6 

All that was left of Fattius division was a lone legionnaire unit and his light archers, both whom were ordered to leave the field as quickly as possible.   Dudeica and Cartotacos ignored these units and started to turn to the other side of the field, knowing that Chief Duncrapin and Messianus may need assistance.

You'll notice that Dudeica falls over a lot in these photos, and likes to sleep on the job. 

Here you can see what's left of the right side of the battle and my forces slowly creeping in on the left - lots of wounded, many shaken.. the large warband was still in play and it took a ton of hits this game!  Quite the impressive lot. 

By this time I lost track of turns in these photos, really. So a lot of it is just the final movements. Here Tim's Auxiliary (one he upgraded to elite!) turn to face my forces that were coming down on his flank.

Thanks to good rallying and positioning , Tim was able to at least get his Cavalry back into the field and fight off the Large Warband with some support. However, both units would become shaken, and most of the rest of the game was Tim trying to rally his men and keep them in line to face my flank attack.  

Fattius light archers taking their sweet time escaping the battle, and kept getting in the Briton's way!  Good use of a broken division i'd say!   The auxiliary seemed to fair the best among all the fighting units this game.. so much for the elite shock troop legionnaires!  

The battle must have been raging on so long that the clouds in the sky separated and shed more light on the battlefield. My celts edge in closer. 

Dudeica's celts charge in to fight these auxiliary!

While Duncrapin's large warband is destroyed, thus causing the cavalry men behind them to be broken. 

The fight in the end went to the Auxiliary, who managed to break the Celtic warriors, but the chariots behind them in support did not break and they came back by firing missiles and javelins, sending the auxiliary packing.  The Veteran Auxiliary turn to face more Celts!

Dudeica sent in more celts to fight the Veteran Auxiliary, but ultimately it didn't help. Their experience and upgraded armor saved them and they ended up breaking both of the Celtic units!

The General that some call Tim was doing a good job of rallying and getting his men back into order. One screw up and all of his units would be shaken, and he'd be forced to surrender.  

In the end, I decided to take Graham's advice - surround the surviving Romans and just pelt javelins into them and stop engaging.. and that is what ended up happening. 

Somehow Tim's scorpion survived and was up there in support, firing shots at the Britons! 

But despite a heavy resistance to Celtic flanking, eventually all the javelins being thrown about ended the auxiliary units.  The scorpion too was caught up in javelin throws and was also broken.  .  . so an epic battle that lasted over 6 turns ended up being anticlimactic for the Romans as tons of point sticks were tossed into their Auxiliary men.

The General that some call Tim and the surviving Romans were broken, and they fled for the hills!

And thus, a Briton victory with both of my divisions in tact!


This was  very fun game, but the board was VERY crowded.  The last game at 300 had plenty of room for light cavalry and skirmish maneuverability and there was a lot Nasal tactics going on.. but my table that's only 6 x 5 feet or so isn't big enough to allow for many tactics other than charging in larger games!   So I'd argue that this fight heavily favored the Celtic forces, as that's what they're best at - getting that clash on the Charge!   I was also extremely lucky with wild fighter and the warband enhanced clash when fighting in the first round. That many hits with a successful sweeping charge after doesn't usually happen for me so it was quite surprising to see the Celts roll up two Roman divisions so quickly.

Also, if we had been playing as the army being one entity, the game would have ended after I wiped out Tim H forces, as over 50% of the army divisions (2/3 in this case) were destroyed.  But, as stated in the beginning, we treated each player's forces as their own individual army.  I think this will be ideal for any game where we do a 2 vs 2 or more scenario, as then one person losing their forces earlier doesn't necessarily mean game over!

Also , on top of having a crowded table, my room with 4 people and a dog also ends up getting really crowded, so there wasn't a lot of space for us to move around.  Tim H has offered to play at his place for a future game, and though his table is a foot smaller in width he has lots of movement area around it, so Ideally we'll be playing some 250-400 point games there.

All in all, a great game. I'd say the biggest issue I have in playing with tactics for myself is that I tend to like to force my men through rough terrain and waste movement and turns. This usually happens at some point of the game, and at the end there I could have had many more units committed to cleaning up the Romans.  Also, all I want to do is CHARRRRGE as barbarian hordes, but Graham pointed out many times that I should just Javelin pummel the foe to death when I meet a wall of resistance from a unit or two that are left standing.. as that's the safer route!

Not sure when the next game will be, but looking forward to it! I am done working full time this Saturday, and only have a few more clean up days at my job, then I'll be self employed.  My wife and I have set up a schedule to each day, and since I want to paint so much and love wargaming I'm getting at least 2 hours, sometimes 4 hours a day to paint! That will definitely allow me to get my Republicans done up and fielded faster than I ever imagined! 

Thanks for reading!  Let me know if you have any questions or leave some comments! Thanks!