Romans and Britons and a trip to York.

Shopping list complete and bags packed I'm off to York with the better half and the little one for a stay over ready for the Annual York Wargames convention Vapnartak 2014 on Sunday. This show is my favourite of the year, not far from home, good venue, plenty of trade and usually a very good standard of display games. I have finally sat down and accutually organised my Alexander army into divisions to see exactly I still need to buy. With my dads Indian army taking shape rapidly I will be using this show to get the remainder of my troops, fingers crossed the traders have them in stock.

I have just purchased the Hail Ceaser rule book seen as though Warlord games (arrived within 3days) had 10 quid off the RRP. Seen as though this is what I have been reading my dad and I opted to play a Roman and Briton scenario from the book. My dad took charge of the Romans suprise attack, who were tasked with plundering and raiding the Briton villages and Druids temple to recover lost Leigion standards. The Britons task, simple, sound the alarm and stop them.

The game was a bit of a disaster for me, I couldn't roll a command throw what felt like all night so I could not launch any kind of coordinated attack. Although the Romans were struggling with command rolls early on, I just couldn't take advantage of this, when my dads archers took a pot shot onto one of my war bands and scored one single hit and forced a morale throw I proceeded to roll a double one, the war band turned heels and fled I feared it wasn't going to be! 

When we called it a night although the Romans had not achieved all their objectives the Britons only choice would be to retreat and defend the stockaded village, the Romans were definitely winning the battle, so we called it a minor win to the Romans.

Here's a few snaps of the game.

The Romans enter the table as the herdsman runs to raise the alarm.

A neighbouring tribe enters the table at the start if turn 2 with a successful roll of 4+

A view of the battlefield after all the Romans had entered the battle

The chariots and light cavalry in open order were given he command to advance to shooting range....a blunder later they decided against that and charged head long into the Roman Legionnaires  with not so surprisingly little success.

 

Warbands head from the fortified village to head off the Romans, just not at a very eager pace.

The Druids fanatics get lost in the woods and spend most of their time failing command rolls.

Slowly but surely the Warbands edge towards the Romans.

The Romans had now formed a solid battleline across the field.

The Britons charge doesn't reach so the Romans counter charge destroying two Warbands and pushing the supporting Warbands back and wounding the Briton general. The Britons will now be on the defensive.

A few over Overlord game pictures..

Here is a few pictures of a game of BGO we ran at the weekend. We played a reccee meeting engagement from the scenario list in the Overlord book using Americans and Germans.

I haven't wrote an account of the game turns as.. Well not much happened really. The game was dominated from off table artillery, causing the vast majority of the morale chits taken. in one instance i rolled four 6's on my four dice to score direct hits!!!,so over all the action never really got going. However when  the game ended at the allotted time, i found myself sat on my break point limit of 32. The Germans had lost 29 so they took a tactical win. 

ACW A battle over the rail line

The weekends game saw us fight a ACW game to play a new rule set based around the core rules of Combat and Command Civil War which my Dad has been working on. It has been a number of years since I last fought this period so for this game I opted to use the rebels. The game objective was to fight for control of the rail track and station at the crossroads. Both of us drew maps for deployment with most of my force been deployed to attack the cross roads area, with my cavalry tasked with harassing the union right flank and my left flank was to hold the woods for as long as possible to stop the union left flank from turning onto my centre.  Most of the Union strength was to their left flank with their cavalry facing off against mine.

The battlefield after deployment 

Rebel infantry march towards the woods as the union troops enter the other side of the woods.

Union medical centre and supply wagons and local preacher.

 

The union troops march onto the hill and enter the corn field ready to fire at the on coming Rebel troops.

Confederate artillery peppers the union troops on the hill to good effect with the support of he advancing infantry.

The fire fight in the centre sees the Rebels start to push the union troops back.

After initial success gaining ground in the wood the rebel infantry are out manoeuvred and  flanked by the superior union  numbers. Although they are comfortably beaten in the combat they don't break and only give ground.

The rebel forces continue to get the better of the union centre and break a regiment of infantry and continue to push the union troops back.

With the confederate cavalry managing to get around the union flank they charge and over run a couple of guns, seen this the veteran texans seize the chance to move towards the union infantry to point blank range despite been disordered.

As the confederate cavalry charge the rear of the union troops, the Texans pass their moral and overcome the union fire to charge into combat. Despite the inevitable outcome the Union troops pass their morale and fight for another turn before breaking.

 

The Rebels continue to gain ground in the centre pushing the unions back from the hill and the field

Union troops push the confederate troops from the woods threatening to over run the flank.

The final position, the Rebels have managed to gain significant ground in the centre and are slightly edging the position to their left flank. The Union troops have broken through the woods are starting to turn the rebel left flank over. With time at an end we called it a winning draw to the Rebel forces.

I really liked fighting this period and I felt the rules although very easy to play helped grab a feel for the period. I particularly enjoyed  Not knowing who was going to move there troops first from turn to turn as it really challenged your tactics, you have a token for each division in your army which is placed in a bag, in this game there were 5 Union and 4 Confederate tokens, each player takes it in turns to pick a token from the bag to see who gets to move one of there divisions. In one turn my dad got to move all 5 of his divisions before I could move any of mine which forced me change my intended plans for that turn, as the game progressed it became very important to draw one of your tokens to try and grab the initiative. I'm looking forward to playing an ACW game again and leading the Rebels to all out victory next time....Yeeeehaa