Two weeks ago we fought Rome v. Pyrrhus using straight
Hail Caesar. This week we used basically the same armies but
Hail Hannibal for rules - that is our ancient subset of
Hail Whoever, our house ruled extension of
Hail Caesar up to 1990AD.
In comparing the troops stats for the two rules sets I realised that I had made a mistake & Pyrrhus was outnumbered in points by about 30% in both systems. Even so, last time Pyrrhus managed a Pryrrhic victory.
This time, Mark commands the Pyrrhic left opposite Chris. Mike commands the Pyrrhic right v. Jim.
Pyrrhus holds his heavy infantry centre back while advancing his cavalry
& elephants. The Romans make a steady advance with their legions,
echeloning cavalry & triari back to protect their flanks.
On the near flank the Roman cavalry is being smashed by the larger Pyrrhic cavalry units & the elephants are giving the LH legion a very hard time. On the far flank Pyrrhus' cavalrys attempt to go around the Roman flank is being hampered by bad command dice.
The Roman cavalry on this flank has been broken. The LH end of the nearest legion has some success, but the elephants & Galacians broke thru their other flank & the legion is about to break. Things are looking grim for Rome, but they havn't given up - the centre legion has moved their Principes forward & deployed their Hastasi & Triari to their left.
While the LH legion has been broken, they inflicted a lot of casualties & the counterattack from the centre legion has got the mixed division of Galacians & elephants verging on breaking. On the far flank Pyrrhus' other cavalry division is taking a long time manoeuvering around the Triari. In the centre, the centre legion's Principes have smashed thru the enemy's centre.
The last of the Galcians & elephants are broken & about to be removed. Triari are coming up to try & hold off the cavalry on this flank. On the far flank, the Triari are finally outflanked, but it's their turn & they a chance to reface. In the centre the Pyrrhus' remaining infantry is looking vulnerable against the line of Principes.
The Triari on both flanks are still holding on as Pyrrhus's remaining infantry desperately hold on against the tide of legionaries.
Pyrhus' foot is hanging on, but giving ground & relying on hot break test dice to hang on. The Triari are still holding on desperately on both flanks.
The cavalry have finally broken thru the Triari, but it's too late, Pyrrhus has lost all 3 infnatry divisions & thus fails his army break test.
The battle looked like a Pyrrhic walkover after the Roman left flank was destroyed by cavalry & elephants, but the Romans kept their nerve & eventually their points told & the tide turned.
The pair of
Hail Caesar &
Hail Hannibal battles had very different results, but that difference was due to better tactics & maybe a bit of better luck by the winners in each case. The tactical play of the game was little different, which is hardly surprising as the basic systems are the same. But the
Hail Hannibal version took 1 3/4 hours, the
Hail Cesar version took 2 3/4 hours. The difference coming from Hail Hannibal not having saving throws (less dice to hit instead) & having rules making it harder for shaken troops to hang on if kept under pressure.
1 comment:
Playing the same scenario with different rules can give surprising results. For us in Mutford Suffolk (Engkand) we played Trafalgar using Man o'War and then again using what we termed 'Hail Jim' which included some local modifications (in the spirit, so to speak). We were surprised to get the same results: the French and Spanish lost 20 ships and the Brits :none. Almost exactly as history told it. It took us about 2 months for this which (from memory) Jim Found a tad anal :)
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