The delayed St George's Day game, played on May Day instead. A warm up for what will probably be the game that the Furness Wargamers will put on at Phalanx.
All figures and terrain (excluding the horrid underlying bedsheets) by Matt who refereed the game. Rules are Warhammer Ancient Battles, original version and not the newly released WAB2, but with house rules such as tweaking skirmishers.
Colin, Tony and Martin as the Perfidious Celts, Dave S and Tel as the Heroic Romans.
 |
| From May Day 2010 |
Hill fort defending an off-table river crossing that leads to the main village where a large army of painted ones are hanging out (some of them quite literally as the Nekkid Northerners were making a return appearance). Two Roman Cavalry detachments are off-table scouting the flanks. The main Roman force is lining up an assault upon the fort.
So to kick things off the Romans started shooting the big machines, in the hope of quickly demolishing the walls\gate. This included unleashing the monster three talent war machine, talent referring to the weight of shot it could fling, and not it's inept crew. Despite there being only a 1 in 6 chance of a mis-fire, we ended up with four machines down by the end of the third round of firing, there was at least six mis-fires out of about twelve shots; fortunately the damage, in most cases, was repairable. Despite the repairs we still only ended up with three machines back in action.
A big surprise happened when the native slingers poured over the walls of the fort and started peppering the oncoming troops. A warband joined in and managed to spark a bad cascade of failed morale rolls, forcing a number of units to fall back, and forcing the Romans to delay the assault. This actually had some benefit for the Romans given what was to happen next.
The Roman scouts on the flanks must of been sleeping\massacred as we ended up flanked by a horde of Light Cavalry and Chariots. We were saved by the poor terrain that made life difficult for the road warriors, and by the fatc that our foces were not sucked into the attack on the fort and could react quickly, by retreating we ended up facing the right direction to counter the threat. A charge by a unit of cavalry took out one set of chariots, and the other set was hemmed in by infantry and also forced off.
A bigger surprise occurred a couple of turns later when a group of war-bands, including the elite Nekkid Northerners, arrived in the rear. They were slowed by the bottle necking woods but would eventually reach the Romans who were forming a line behind their war-machines.
The Legionnaires, the majority of which had been kept away from the main assault on the fort, turned to face the rear attacking force, as finally the Auxillia started making inroads into the fort, mainly due to the fact that war machines were finally landing some large rocks onto the defenders thanks to some luck deviations.
The blood thirsty defenders then made a big mistake as they opened the main gate and charged out to try and attack the Roman forces queuing up to scale the wall. The Legionnaires who were slowly man-handling the ram towards the gate couldn't believe their luck and ditched the ram to form up and charge the gate, eventually forcing their way in.
On the last turn that was played the Chariot supported warbands finally collided with the legionnaires and, in a bit of an anticlimax, the elite Romans dominated the elite natives.
Alan made a late show after dropping back into town for the holiday. He's now working in Edinburgh after escaping from the South of England.
Graeme also turned up and dropped the bombshell, that at the previous nights game session in Ulverston, Phil had announced that Jabberwocky Games was shutting down.
Despite Matt being over critical of the look of his scratch built Hill fort, the game was an impressive sight, and will be even more so with some decent flocked terrain sheets.
¶
No comments:
Post a Comment