After playing yet more Combat Commander for a week or two I decided on a change. I dug out my 15mm Ancients toys and have been playing the rules in Neil Thomas' "Introduction To Wargaming".
Today I had a Punic Wars encounter.
My bases are all 40mm square so the units are officially too deep but who cares?.
Having said that if I rebase the infantry to 40x20 I will have twice as many bases and should be able to avoid using stand in units such as Marian Romans in my Camillan army as in this game.
Rome on the left and Carthage on the right.
The lines begin to clash.
I have tweaked the rules a bit to account for Pila and to make the Warband troop type more effective if they charge home.
I also let morale tests cascade by taking a test rolling 1d6 per base lost, if it fails to achieve the required score another base is lost, another test is made and so on...
I don't know if this is how the author intended it but I like the possibility for units to collapse dramatically.
The Carthaginian skirmishers break exposing the elephant to the Roman Princeps infantry.
Numidians and Velites battle on the ridge.
The Roman cavalry are getting the better of their Gallic counterparts.
The elephant wipes the floor with the Roman Princeps.
Twice!.
Elephants are very powerful in these rules, I may reduce their combat dice in future.
These Numidians are harassing the Roman Triarii with hit and run javelin throwing.
As the green tunic Velites do the same to the Spanish Scutarii.
Despite being flanked by the Numidians the Roman cavalry see off the Gauls.
Roman Hastati break.
And the Roman cavalry are in a spot of bother but grimly hang on.
In desperation the green Velites take on the Spanish.
The Triarii are up against it too being charged by both Libyans to their front and Numidians to their rear!.
Somehow the Romans rout the Libyan spearmen and in the background the Velites rout the Spanish too!.
The Numidians withdraw from a fight they cannot win.
But then the elephant gets among the Roman cavalry and the Romans lose the battle by the narrowest of margins.
What an enjoyable game, it took just over an hour to play. I have sent for Neil Thomas' "Ancient and Medieval Wargaming" as I reckon I can get a lot of good games out of this system.
The rules are easy to adjust for my own tastes and although I have played them some years back they have really grabbed my attention this time.
A good looking game and the elephants won the day for Carthage. You can never have enough elephants!
ReplyDeleteThanks Peter, actually I am thinking of adapting your terrain set up rules for my little 4x3 table.
DeleteHi PAUL,
ReplyDeleteVery interesting report of your 15mm Ancients Battle- great photos- well done. The Elephant seems a bit too powerful- are there Home Rules for the Elephant to be made a casualty? Or is it immune? Cheers. KEV.
The elephant rolls eight dice against all non elephant units, I will experiment with reducing this to six or even four against light infantry. I have already made light infantry more effective against elephants.
DeleteWe will see how it goes.