Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Hail Caesar meets FOW dust up

Jim & Mike's Carthaginians
v.
Two Steves' Romans

The scenario was a variation  of FOW Dust UP Mission.  The table was divided into 4 quarters.  Two camps were placed in diagonally opposite quarters in place of FOW objectives.  Each side could deploy up to half their divisions in their own quarter.  They could also detach 1 unit from any division as a camp guard.  A camp guard no longer counts as part of the division, but can't leave the camp. The remaining divisions are diced for from turn 3, 1 dice on turn 3, 2 on turn 4, etc.  On a roll of 5+, one division can come 6" onto the table within 40cm of the corner on their left.  Victory is gained either by army morale, or taking the enemy camp.
 
The pics are all taken from behind the Carthaginian camp.  At the start the Punes have their spearmen & elephants in front of their camp. Numidian infantry, medium cavalry & heavy cavalry divisions are off table.  One Numidian infantry is camp guard.

The Romans have 2 legions, each 2 velites, 5 hastasi/principes, 2 triari (all small) deployed around the camp on the hill.  Off table they have an auxilia infantry division & a cavalry division.

The Romans were content to sit on their hill & let the Punes do the running. 

The Punes sent their elephants to the right to meet the Roman reinforcements while the spearmen stayed in place in front of the camp.   When their cavalry arrived, they sent the medium division forward to harrass the Romans while they sent their heavy division diagonally across the table to support the elephants - which by then were enagaged with the auxilia spearmen & Roman cavalry.

The elephants defeated the spearmen and took out 1 cavalry unit before breaking.  The surviving cavalry was pursued around the back of the Cartho camp by the Punic heavy cav before being caught and destroyed. 

On the other flank,  the Punic cavalry had a lucky win in destroying a triari which blundered forward.  The  Numidians came on, then blundered off again, but eventually took over from the cavalry in the front line.  With the Numidian slingers harrassing SteveP's flank and the heavy cavalry returning from the chase, the Punes were finally ready to attack.  The spearmen charged the left hand side of the end of the Roman ridge.  

After 2 hours of careful manoeuvre and fussing about at the edges, the battle suddenly changed.  The dice gods clearly favoured the brave as the converging Punic attack caused chaos in SteveP's legion.  Now nothing went right for the Romans, one unit even routed from cavalry skirmishers as the spearmen rolled up the line along the ridge.   SteveJ's counterattack on the other flank was held off and SteveP's legion broke.  That was 3 divisions out of 4 gone and the Roman army broke.

This was a longer than usual battle due to the Romans being so defensive and the Carthaginians taking a systematic approach to destroying all the legions' supports before taking them on, but the end came suddenly once the Carthaginians went for it.  A good time was had by all as again a FOW Mission provided an interesting scenario.   

1 comment:

Chicago Terrain Factory said...

Great mission idea. We played a version of this the other night & had a grand time.