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.

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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.