Ambush on the road to Camulodunum 60AD
Today Kati and I played a modified scenario(because we didn't have the same troops as the scenario) out of Warlords Hail Ceasar supplement Britania. We plan on running this battle as an event at Little Wars this year and figured we had better play it a few times.
The battle itself is an interesting event that is almost washed over by Tacitus in his record of the Boudica rebellion of 60AD. it occurred early in the rebellion after the rebels sieged and sacked Camulodunum.
What he does say is this:
"The victorious enemy met Petilius Cerialis, commander of the ninth legion, as he was coming to the rescue, routed his troops, and destroyed all his infantry. Cerialis escaped with some cavalry into the camp, and was saved by its fortifications."
Not a lot to go on here but that does leave a lot of room to explore different scenarios.
What we can guess is that he didn't have his full legion as they were scattered around in garrisons and they were most likely ambushed on the road to Camulodunum and had no idea that the city had already been sacked.
We set up a pretty simple table with a road running down the middle and forest on both sides.
Kati deployed her warriors "secretly" by placing green squares with the name of the unit on the bottom. Just for fun, we included a couple of dummy squares so that I wouldn't know exactly which were real.
The rules of the scenario were pretty simple. The Romans had to march down the road in column formation unit the Britons army appeared. At the beginning of any Brit turn the army could be revealed and placed on the table, but no initiative move could be used the first turn to represent the men waiting for the command to attack.
The Roman army was divided into two brigades:
the first consisting of 3 veteran roman legions(the first cohort) and 2 regular legions
the second was made up of auxiliaries: 3 medium infantry and 2 medium cavalry units.
The Britons were 3 brigades two of which contained 2 warbands, 2 skirmisher units, and a light chariot unit each. The third contained 2 units of medium cavalry and 2 units of light cavalry.
I decided to lead the way with the auxiliaries on the first turn. As there was no room for my second brigade they waited off table. The road stayed quiet for the first turn.
I continued up the table at a crawl due to a bad command roll on the second turn. The first legion did make it onto the table, though.
The third turn saw almost my entire command on the road....hmmm this looks like a good place for an ambush
The trap is sprung!
the attack is a little more piecemeal than Kati wanted, but her cavalry jumped right in and she got some of her men into short range.
the luck of the dice. her chariots hit one of my auxiliary units and roll a 6 which causes them to make a break test....the only way to break is to roll snake eyes, which I do. The ambush really got to the germans I guess.
One of my cavalry units breaks and runs as well.
battle at the close of turn 3.
I organized my forces to the best of my ability. getting a legion into melee as well as some auxiliaries.
The Britons quickly enveloped my center
My last cavalry unit was probably the heroes of the day. They stayed locked in melee almost the entire game and while being shaken never actually broke.
The last unit of auxiliaries falling. This left the legions to fend off the hordes.
My last line of defense consisted of 4 legions. We pushed back the skirmishers and moved in for an epic last stand.
Or...I could roll snake eyes on a ranged attack break test again
I did manage to fend off one warband before the end.
We called the game as hordes began to envelop my force. While I lost and was probably losing from the turn 3 on this was a fun game and I think it will be a blast for people to play. We are going to try a few tweaks that might help the Romans see the trap. I will update the blog with anything we discover.
