Camulodunum 60AD

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.

More auxiliaries breaking under pressure.

The last unit of auxiliaries falling.  This left the legions to fend off the hordes.

They weren't really motivated to stick around either.

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.

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.