Ancients Game,Paul vs Brian 31.1.13.

Last night saw us in the middle of Brittania,around 60AD.where Astorix has been persuading the local tribes to rebel against Roman rule.
The Roman response was to send a Legion,and Auxilliaries to "deal" with the uprising.
Paul took charge of the Romans and Brian commanded the Tribes,whilst I "officiated".
The scenario called for the Romans to defeat the Tribes,burn the "city" and capture Astorix.

Here Brian has elected to advance on all fronts,and in considerable numbers,Paul had a small force over the river,and this was Brian's first objective in his plan,he would smash them first then cross the river taking the Romans in the flank.

CONTACT!! Brian's line has hit Pauls first line of cohorts,who were put under considerable pressure,even though his Pila did alot of damage,and Brian was fighting at minus one from his dice,for the first round of melee.The only success Brian had in this round was that one of Paul's cohorts "gave way", which left an ugly hole in his line,however,luckily,for him,the rest of his cohorts won their melee,and the Tribes were forced back.

This is a shot of the other side of the table,ie Brian's right flank,where both sides had their cavalry placed,Paul reached the hill first,mainly due to Brian having to throw "random movement" dice,which slowed him down,with yells of "come on chaps move faster than that!" or words to that effect!!!!!
This tussle went on for most of the game,Brian reinforcing his first line with a good second line support,while Paul elected to reinforce his line of cavalry,which weren't as good as Brian's,with a cohort of Aux. infantry.This proved very effective and Brian was driven back.

Brian's assault on Paul's right flank is shown here,his "primus" cohort is being beaten and pushed back,however his morale was superb, and he managed to hang on,and with the support of his other cohort swung the melee in his favour.Then a big mistake ........Paul,obviously forgetting Brian's reputation as "Reggie the commander killer" put his command figure into the melee,and guess what ? Yes,he died at the hands of that well-known,super-duper dice thrower,"Reggie" The result was that everthing on that side of the board had to take morale,and the Romans failed,flank lost!!.

Whilst the Romans on their right flank were mourning the passing of their commander,in the centre things were not going too badly,as you can see from this photo,the Tribes are retiring along the whole front,and on the left flank of the Romans,batle has been joined.Brian was determined to win this flank,and sent warband after warband into the fray,however Paul was also determined to win this flank,and he kept sending a mixture of cohorts from the Legion as well as Auxilliary infantry forward to stem the tide of Brian's warbands.

This is the final move,although Brian has won the far flank,his centre is shattered,and his right flank cavalry are beaten,so Paul was declared the winner,and no doubt the victorious Romans would have burned the town and captured the unfortunate Astorix!!

This was a very interesting game,and we used it to try out some new methods,mainly to eliminate "book-keeping" by putting markers with the fighting points of the units,behind the various units,however this proved to be too cumbersome,and messy.Overall the game was enjoyable,and that is what counts!!

We won't be playing on Sunday,because we're going to York (Vapnartak) to spend all of our hard earned cash on figures,paint and paint brushes and buildings,and anything else that takes our fancy.

I will do a full report when we get back.