Romans, Romans and more Romans 1

Mate Michael Jordan turned up Saturday afternoon for a weekend of War and Conquest, I met Mike at the Bristol WAC weekend and he was keen to get some games in so we arranged this bash. It was also an opportunity for me to get all my Ancient armies out over three games, one on Saturday and two on the Sunday, Mike has an Early Imperial Roman army and is a big Roman fan so he was happy to fight two Roman armies during our conflicts.

For the first game I was fielding Patrician Romans, I took a core of Roman troops along with a force of Gothic Foederati under their own leader, the cavalry arm consisted of horse archers, my general's Bucellarii bodyguard and some Roman Equites. My missile troops consisted of a couple of skirmish units and two ballista, now I know a bit of Mike's modus operandi and he likes bolt shooters and cataphracts so I thought my own bolt shooters would whittle down his armoured tanks. The right flank was closed down a touch by a steep hill and marsh so I put my Romans in the right centre with the Foederati and cavalry on my left, the idea being to roll up Mike's right flank.

We used the WAC objectives system for the games as that is what Mike is used to and I play them at away games, so I had to kill two of Mike's most expensive units which were his three legionary cohorts, he had to raid my camp. More of this system anon.

Patricians on the left, EIR on the right.

Mike came on quite aggresively while I held my Romans and pushed the Goths forward for their attack on his right, sadly I had miscalculated and one of the units took forever to skirt the small wood and never really got into the action. The Gothic Nobles on the other hand did get into combat and swept away the first enemy cohort, but the others along with the cataphracts had smashed into my line of legions, things looked a little dodgy, I wasn't really getting anywhere on my left as Mike kept his annoying Numidian cavalry and others out of my way and it was taking far too long to cover the ground.

Mike advances.

My left attacks.

First contact as my Goths crash into a cohort.

Looking over the field of glory I was quite elated, I had held the cataphracts and was whittling them down, I had routed a legionary cohort and an auxiliary cohort, my Bucellarii was in the act of destroying a warband, what could go wrong? Well, one of my legions, Quinta Macedonica, simply refused to go into shieldwall as one of Mike's cohorts bore down on them, five times they failed this, then ran away when a nearby legion routed, I was not pleased and the unit is up for decimation. My Equites also let me down, they charged and failed to rout the Numidians, I thought this one was a gift, but no, the Africans chased them away!

Battle is joined.

Melee.

Looking good (for a while).

My right is victorious.

Despite this as the game was coming to an end I had destroyed quite a few of Mike's units but not the ones I needed to, however there was a bright light on the horizon, as we entered the last rally phase the enemy had three units fleeing, if these did not rally this would give me the two expensive units I needed. My hopes were dashed as the lucky/dastardly Mike rallied them all. We used the old Weekend tally to mark up the points and it was a slight win for the Patricians, but this did not reflect the true situation on the table and Mike gave me the win, a gent.

I am not a fan of the objective system, I can see that it has its uses in competitions where there has to be a time limit but when you play without a time limit with large armies it doesn't allow you to fight a 'battle' but a game. When my son and I play we simply use Pitched Battle with no time limit, at some point one of us offers his sword.

The game, very disappointed in the Macedonica and the Equites, the former probably would not have stood up to the legionaries but refusing to go into shieldwall and then running let the side down. Mike frustrated me by handling his Numidians and skirmishers very well, I had to rout some of his units several times as they outpaced their pursuers only to rally, my boys were very slow on the feet. The ballista's on both sides were ineffectual and the cataphracts were not as big a threat as I had originally thought. An excellent game to kick off the weekend.