The Battle of Caer Caradoc 50AD

The Battle of Caer Caradoc 50AD

Thanks to me needing my wisdom teeth removed we have had a whole week of doing almost nothing which lucky for me means TWO GAMES IN ONE WEEK!!!!!!

So today we played a scenario out of Warlord's Britannia book: The Battle of Caer Caradoc.

This battle excited me for one big reason, we have a primary source of the action thanks to Tacitus.

So because I can, here is a little history of the event.

The Roman invasion of Britain began in 43AD and was pretty successful. Within the first year, they had soundly, or some would say even embarrassingly defeated the Britons under Togodumnus and Caratacus twice. First, at the Medway river then on the Thames using almost the same tactics.   

11 Chiefs surrendered at this point and Vespasian took a force west and in a series of small engagements conquered the southern coast of Britain.  Togodumus is said to have died between the Medway and Thames events but Caratacus escaped and headed inland to become the champion of the Britons fighting guerilla-style combat for years.  

A couple of Roman governors and 7 years later Caratacus ended up with the Ordovices, a tribe in modern Wales.  At this point (50AD) either because his people wanted a decisive battle or because he had grown cocky Caratacus decided to risk a pitched battle with the forces of the Roman governor Scapula.

Now Tacitus tells us why he may have picked the spot he did..because I think anyone would have done the same.  He erected a stone wall on a ridge directly behind a river, (probably the Severn) So they were in a fortified position, UP HILL, and behind a river....it was a good spot.  Scapula believed it was a good spot as well as he surveyed the ground. So good that he didn't want to risk attacking but his men complained that they were ready to end this and finally convinced him to attack.

The Romans seem to have advanced twice. The first time being replied with thrown weapons and stones.  The second time they advanced in testudo formation (shields over their heads like a shell) and started to tear down the wall under fire.  They eventually broke through and stormed in and the battle quickly became a route for the Britons. 

Caratacus escaped only to be turned in by the people he took shelter with making the battle of Caer Caradoc the end of an era in a way.

Now on to our refight!

Using the map from the book (though ignoring the addition of an extra whole in the ridge) we lined our troops up for the battle.  We placed a long series of ridges with a fortified "dip" in it with a river right in front.  

Britons were lined along the ridges divided into two divisions.  They were allowed to move down from the ridges but the Romans could not go up them.

The Romans were lined along the river with the legionaries in the center as the hammer for what was going to be a literal uphill battle.  The ford could be crossed as regular ground but at any other point, the river took a full move to ford.

The Romans first turn saw a few units cross the river on left and the two lead legions head straight into the gap. 

Into the breach lads!(or some latin equivalent)

My scorpion gets the reward for the most useless unit in a game as during the whole battle it would be shooting bolts into rocks, walls, trees and anything else that didn't move....

The first round of combat saw us tied up with two hits sticking on both forces.

The Britons spent their turn throwing stones and spears down the hill and moving a unit of light cavalry down the ridge. 

The legions had enough and took every hit in the second round of combat making both the assaulting unit and the support break and run.

For my second attempt, I took one from Scapula's playbook and formed testudo and advanced (We don't have a testudo model yet so they are marked with an orange token.)

Somehow we still managed to take a couple of hits on the way up.

 An epic battle ensued!

And another legion broke and ran.  The supporting legion fell back while watching Scapula die in the ensuing panick.... 

I tried again to organize an attack but thanks to a blunder and botched roll it looked pretty piecemeal.

 My last attempt saw a legion break in the first round and I and my men were done we decided to fall back.  Hmm, that was a good position. 

The final view of the table.

Seeing my legions breaking and running was a sad site. The events of the day proved that either the men who fought the real battle we awesome soldiers (which is very likely), we made the rules for the wall to good, or I needed to organize my attacks better.  We decided it was a combination of the three.  We let the warband on the wall have full dice and 3 support units which combined with an attached leader and an uphill advantage lead to a hefty dice pull. We also counted the wall as a building for moral so they had a +2 moral...one though nut to crack.  But at the end of the day, we had fun and enjoyed a little rewriting of history.

Hail Caesar first game Romans vs Britons

Hail Caesar: First Game  Romans vs Britons

It has been awhile since Kati and I have posted on the blog and I can blame Hail Caesar.  We first decided that we wanted to dive into ancients almost 8 months ago and have slowly been assembling, researching, and painting our new armies.  I went with the classic early Imperial Romans and Kati wanted to do Celtic Britain with both of us eyeing up the Boudicca rebellion of 60AD as a great idea for convention play.

Warlord Games Hail Ceasar has been around awhile so I don't feel the need to go to in depth in the rules except to say that they are what I have been looking for in Black Powder.  A while back I heard someone on a forum call them "Black Powder v2" and while I do not completely agree with this statement I do think they have improved in some areas and made melee more interesting (which is important for the period).

Reducing the base movement to 6" is huge, I honestly prefer to do it in all my BP games when I can because nothing is crazier than how armies sometimes shoot across the table before anyone can react. Another other big change is in the melee support system.  Nothing annoyed me more than watching someone stack units around a combat so that it adds up and helps win the combat.  Now, I am not saying it is a bad system, I just enjoy the idea that now supporting units are adding (their short range attack) to the melee itself.

The break test is much more detailed and I think adds a lot to the game and my least favorite rule in the game has been cornered...the disorder rule.

Let me start by saying the disorder rule is an important rule in BP and should be there,  My biggest problem with is is how often it occurs.  The rule is that whenever a unit rolls a 6 when shooting the unit taking the fire becomes disordered and basically can't move for a turn among other things.  This happens so often that attacking/advancing is BP is annoying hard.  And to top it off even if you make all your moral saves you still get stuck being disordered.  In HC disorder is still there and is built into the break test system right where I like it!

Anyway, enough of me ranting about disorder lets get into the game.

We played on an open table as we are really at this point just testing rules and getting mechanics down.  This is probably the third time we have had the troops on the table but the first time we played a game in full.

We used the point system in the armies book and play with about 350pts each in 3 divisions.

Kati's Britons had; two divisions made up of 3 warbands, a unit of chariots, and a unit of slingers and the third division was 1 unit of medium cavalry and 3 units of light cavalry.

Opposing here were my Romans with a division of  2 units of medium cavalry, 2 auxiliaries, and a scorpion.  The center division was 4 units of legionaries with one being veterans (the praetorian guard) and the final division, which was opposite Kati's cavalry, consisted of 2 legions and 2 auxiliary units. 

The game started off with the Briton's right division moving up the field quickly while the rest of the army hung back and watched.  

My center moved up slowly.

The British light chariots took to loose order to harass my cav.

The warbands got within inches of my men..but fell short.

The chariots evaded my cav. but I was able to get a flank attack on a warband with the other unit.

The center is about to become a slugging match.  

The first melee was a lot more pitiful than I had hoped for.

My auxiliaries broke immediately.

. 

In the center, another terrible bit of luck saw my veterans collapse in the first round of combat as well....things were not going my way.

My right flank did repel the cavalry so I at least had that going for me.

Nice view of the battle at this point. 

My cav charged and then broke attacking a warband...COME ON GUYS!

In the center, the legions went to work pushing back the warbands.

Total collapse of my left.  

Followed by the collapse of the Briton's center.

The battle at this point.

The battle now became a race aginst time for both of us.  I was winning on the right and cornering her cavalry and Kati's right flank was backing the remains of my center into a corner.  We both knew what had to happen.

I chased off one unit of light horse and Kati's Chariots started to harass my center.

My men closing in on the cavalry.

Kati attacked with the Chariots and pushed back a legion.

As luck would have it the legion broke in the same melee turn as the cavalry.  We both lost at the same time and called the game a draw.

This was a great game we had a blast and were really happy that it came down to the wire.  So far Hail Caesar is winning us over with its fast and furious style.