Hail Caesar-Seleucids and Indians.

I had a game of Hail Caesar today using my 15mm chappies with 28mm unit footprint and measurements.

 The Seleucids, on the right, planned to pin the Indians with their infantry division while the cavalry smash the Indian right wing.

 The Indian left stand off and shoot at the phalanx with little effect.

 The Seleucid sub-general puts his Cretan archers in the rough ground.

 Antiochus and his Companions and Agema.

 Crunch!, the Indian Heavy Chariots charge the Cataphracts.

 The Indian horse are broken.

 Antiochus attacks the infantry, throwing himself into the melee with decisive effect.

 The chariots are now disordered and giving ground.

 Indian infantry flee the field.

  And the chariots break.

Victory to the Seleucids.

Rule sets for ancient war games.

Recently I have been trying out various rules  for ancient period war games. 

I tried out the old standby, WRG Ancients 5th edition, with my 15mm collection but found it pretty dull.

I had a couple of games of Hail Caesar and found it to give a much more exciting game. I have decided to make Hail Caesar my game of choice when using my venerable 15mm soldiers.

This entails rebasing the toys of course and another dilemma or two, because like most wargamers I want to use them for other rules too, which brings me to DBA.

Earlier this year I bought the new shiny 3rd edition of DBA and while I found the rules mainly good I did not care for the look of the game with its small number of models. 

I looked at using large bases but I did also find the speed of the game too fast, it seems to take longer to set up the terrain than to fight the battle.
So I went back to using 24 standard sized elements as I did for years when DBA first came out. This was better but I struggled with the fiddly positioning of the stands, especially on terrain features. 

I've put DBA onto a back burner for now.

For the Waterloo 200th anniversary I dug out Commands and Colors Napoleonics and missed the day because I hurt my back at work, but I eventually got it played and several other scenarios which I thoroughly enjoyed. 

This led to the Ancients version coming out of the cupboard and I haven't stopped since!.

 I found this expansion at a very good price from IGUK and it made a fine fathers day present. I have played Roman Civil War, Rome against Gaul and Spartacus too. I love it!.

 Here are some of my Greeks.

 And Persians.

 A gentleman on Board Game Geek made some excellent downloadable special leader and Spartan army stickers.

And I painted some spare blocks white to make a small Spartan army. I do like to make something for nothing.

This got me thinking about DBA again and I now plan to put all of my 15mm collection onto 40mm square bases with the exception of some generals for Hail Caesar. 

One base would be a small unit and two to four a standard unit using Hail Caesar, so it would work well for that. 

For DBA well...
I'm thinking about making a square gridded board with 40mm squares and square hills and terrain features too, ( this is the influence of Commands and Colors ).
This would dispense with the fiddly positioning of elements and suit the base width unit of measure.

Hail Caesar - AD 69

 Here are a few shots from last nights Hail Caesar game, it's not a full report because I still need to concentrate on the rules.

 Mucianus from Gripping Beast.

 Irregular Miniatures Equites.

 Vespasians troops have red tunics whist Vitellius' wear white.It's all the same army actually but I split the tunic colours half red and half white to differentiate them during civil war encounters..

 Armenian ? Cataphracts fighting for Vespasian.

A good battle with much, many incidents. I did have a game the previous evening but messed it up by mixing up the rules in my head with Warmaster which spoiled the game. So I decided to replay the game with the same forces on a different terrain.

Hail Caesar - first try out.

Time for a 6mm game of Hail Caesar.
 Gauls to the left and Romans on the right.

 The Roman camp.

 The Gallic battleline.

 Irregular Miniatures 6mm Romans.

 Heroics & Ros and Irregular Miniatures Gauls.

 The Roman battleline.

 The armies get stuck in.

 The Gallic right wing cavalry are defeated and fall back in disorder. Green dice with a !.

 The Roman right wing in fierce combat with the Gallic warbands.

 The Roman right wins.

 The Roman left wing has seen off all of the warbands.

 The Romans are still strong.

The Gallic Chieftain accepts defeat.
A good game, these rules seem to be very good.