Romans vs Romans

Another War and Conquest game last night, it is either famine or feast with this enjoyable game. Simon has wanted to play with Romans for a wee while now and I have always been strangely reluctant because I see the Twelfth as 'my' army and I had not used it many times myself. Now they are veterans however and it is better to encourage others to play or you end up on your own, oh, and they are still 'my' army.

Simon chose three cohorts with heavy armour some skirmishers, a bolt shooter and a unit of cavalry, I had a more balanced army and had one Palatina Legion and two Auxilia Legions nowhere near as heavy as Simon's guys, they were supported by horse archers, cavalry, two bolt shooters, and two large skirmish units. My plan was to hit the enemy cavalry unit with archery then charge them, after this the cavalry would descend on the enemy flank and rear.

Twelfth on the left, Patricians on the right.

Plan A went out the window fairly fast as Simon managed to get a charge in before I could do any damage to his cavalry, this swept away the horse archers and routed the Equites, thankfully the latter rallied off table and would be back, the enemy unit then went on to loot my camp as per his objective. The Aurelian battle line advanced and this time my skirmishers failed to move the enemy and ran for the rear I got one back for a short time but eventually it too dispersed, not a great start, perhaps I was jaded after the weekend.

"Steady lads, steady".

I duly went into shieldwall as the heavily armoured legionaries hit me, I managed to hold all along the line, the Auxilia winning their fights but the Palatina were up against veterans and lost but held. The second round of combat gave the same results, but a third round and a dreadful morale throw caused the Palatina to run, but they did manage to outdistance their pursuers, sadly though this put them in the path of Simon's remaining cavalry and I couldn't stop them getting run down. However this unit had been reduced to a mere four figures and if it lost one more it dispersed, so I wasn't really bothered about it, I had a bolt shooter tracking them.

No, sixes are bad for morale in this game, sigh.

The game ended with my Auxilia defeating their opposite numbers and my cavalry free to do what they wanted. With units lost and reduced to under half strength the game was basically a draw at that point, I think one more turn would have turned the tide, especially if I managed to get the initiative but it was home time. A really good hard slog, because I managed to hold for the first clashes my numbers helped against the armour saves of the heavy infantry, I did seem to have some dreadful luck at the beginning and things were  looking very uncomfortable for a while.

Elsewhere we had a haunted house type game run from an iPad with figures and cards, the usual boardgame with Clive and Dave, Dave gave me a t-shirt which didn't fit him, then there was a 15mm ACW and some Steampunk along with Ryan and Julian testing out the new Runewars. Next week Rob is running a Battlegroup Tobruk game which I have jumped in to.