Supplies,Surprise Brittania 60AD.

Last night 4 of us played an Ancients game based upon an ambush of a Roman supply train,by a bunch of Barbarian warbands.
Richard and I were the Barbarian commanders,and Paul and Brian assumed the roles of Roman commanders.

The scenario was that a supply train (Paul) was approaching a Roman Fort (Brian),that had sent out an escort to see it into the fort,however a combination of German and Gallic tribes were out to capture the supply train,defeat the Roman escort and capture the Fort !!

The first photo shows Brian's command,and his escort on its way to meet up with Paul.

This is my command,a mixed bunch of warbands,cavalry and a couple of chariots,the Roman commanders could not react to our positions until we had cleared the tree lines.

This shows Paul's supply train marching onto the board,being watched by a German tribe (these were actually a decoy,and could not be used aggressively !!)

This is Richard's command,he had firm instructions to capture the fort,and/or distract as many Roman troops away from my main attack on the escort and supply train,he did a damned good job !!

Battle is joined ! My Gauls have launched themselves at the escort troops,at the same time as Richard is attacking the fort,things did not go as planned,due to our rotten "random movement dice" throws,which saw 3 of my units refusing to move,and 2 of Richard's !!

In this shot,Richard has managed to get into the fort,against great odds,however the Romans have support, and fought back,eventually pushing the Germans back out of the fort.
Brian was told he could use my never-used Tetudos,however he decided not to,and so they sat in their box,alone and rejected,just waiting for someone to play with them.(sounds like my Willy!!)

Look at this ! Germans all over the place,it was like watching the "Hokey-Cokey" in,out ,in out,shake it all about !! This was an exciting part of the battle,both Brian and Richard reinforcing the melee,and hoping for a good dice throw.

This is a view from Paul's side of the table,his Auxilliary inf. and cavalry are just managing to hold me in the melees,but Richards pressure is telling,and Brian had to divert his cohorts,thus allowing me to "double-up" on Paul's hard-pressed troops.

Brian's escort troops are being hard pressed in this shot,as Richard piles more and more warbands into the melee,however Brian had "spare " cohorts and he piled them into the fray too,until a massive brawl was taking place just outside the fort.

The Romans,under Brian's capable command,is winning the day,and Richard's Germans are being forced back,their morale broke and they fled !!

This shows Brian trying to cope with adding up all his points in the melee,it's amazing how counting 3 numbers gets quite difficult at times !! -serves him right for not using the Testudos !! Richard looks to be "Gloating"- now that's a bad thing to do,as we all know.

A tremendous game,good fun,and could have gone either way,at the end of the night,the Romans got their supply train into the fort,which was still in Roman hands,however the Gauls were still strong and in a position to attack the fort,so we called it a draw,although if I'm honest a Roman win would have been fairer.

I, as you know, have been working on a French and Indian war project,and I thought it would enhance the planned games if we had a "lake" as a bit of terrain,consequently I bought a piece of MDF (for 50p-no expense spared with me!!) drew an outline of the required lake,making sure that my other terrain pieces,ie. mountains,trees etc. fitted onto the shoreline,and painted the surface blue.

In this photo I have painted the shoreline a mixture of brown and green (poster paint) and must admit I was pleased with the result.Just to be sure I painted another coat of blue,and then another coat of the brown/green mix,placed some terrain pieces onto the finished article,and took the following photo's.

So far so good,everything fits in ok,and I like the look of it.

Indians!!just to get the feel of the period.

Now I'm just showing off my photographic skills !! The overall effect is just what I wanted,and on the back of the Lake ,I'm goint to paint a "bay" so we can have beach landings etc.That, hopefully will be done by Friday.