Recently i have started a 2nd Century Roman project with a friend. We will be focusing on using the War and Conquest Rules as we have a few gamers who want to start playing them.
As im not really a big table gamer i thought i would see what Anceint rules the guys in my club play with and it seems that Hail Caeser is what they focus on. As i want to start ancients i thought i would play my first game of HC in the club and i quite enjoyed it. My idea is to focus on HC within the club and W&C with the others guys.
I enjoyed HC but it seems to focus on you having alot of figures on the table. The game i played was considered a small game for HC but it still had loads of minis on the table.
Our game was Romans v Dacians with myself playing as the Romans. My first idea was to get my two divisions moving and form Testudo to to take little causalities from the Dacian skirmishers. Now this started off really well with my left division moving fine and carrying out the orders i wanted and laughing at the Dacians as their arrows pinged off my human tortoise. Now to get my second divison to do the same and this would be the perfect start for me but nooooooo they roll and double 6 and they have to move back and are almost all off the table. I lost one Unit of Auxiliaries and would have to roll to get them back on the table.
Now to move my Testudo forward, reform and unlesh hell. This all worked apart from me not being able to get the first hit into the Elite Dacian Unit. They were the first to batter into my Romans and this particular battle would go on for sometime as my Roman Veterans would hold up against no less than 4 charges from the Dacians. It didn't matter how many causalities the Falx caused my boys they would continue to take the battering and continue to move back but not retire from the field.
As this battle was getting personal my others units started to gradually pick off the units surrounding it that were giving support. The Dacians at this part of the field would end up all running from the field and leaving the Elite unit all alone and time for the Romans to get their pay back. The Elite was now surrounded and for the first time my Veterans would take the battle to the Dacians and win a round forcing the Elite Dacians to move back but the only problem for them was that they had to move back with another unit of Legionaries on their arse forcing them to flee from the field.
On the right of the battle my division that almost retired in their first orders was now getting forward and into the battle and they started a little better than Veterans . They had support on the wings from archers and various skirmishers. A double six from one of the Dacian units caused them to move disrupted into the middle of the battle field with no supports and would make them easy picking.
On the wings Auxiliary cavalry put up a good fight against bigger numbers causing a Unit of mounted archers to flee in the first charge and then making light work of a unit of Dacian Cav.
On the Right wing my Elite unit of Cavalry took a beating off some heavy Dacian Cataphracts but they took it with retiring and they were saved when the Dacians would all retire from the field due to too many casualties and a win for the Romans.
Overall i lost two Units from the field and took heavy causalities in my Units but due to some good dice on the moral they would stand their ground and in the end forcing the Dacians to flee.
First HC game and first win and a good enjoyable game. All figures provided by
Balkan Dave.
I have almost finished my first Unit of 16 Aventine Auxiliaries which i hope to make bigger now after playing a game.
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