Thursday, July 15, 2021

Ancients at the Black Hills: Late Romans v. Goths

PeterC's Goths v. Jim's Romans using Peter's ancient 25mm Ancients.
Rules: Camp Cromwell House Rules.

Photos from behind the Romans.
The Goths have made a general advance allowing their cavalry to get ahead of their foot.  The Romans have advanced their cavalry on the left, to take advantage of a small ridge., Their infantry has also advanced in the centre.  On their right they tried to improve their deployment, but bad command dice scuttled the idea & delayed their advance.
On the left the outnumbered Roman horse is holding their own courtesy of better armour, the ridge & ne good dice.  On that cavalry's immediate left Goth cavalry has charged thru a gap in the line left by the delayed advance of the Auxilia.  Half the infantry have engaged in the centre.  On the right, Goth heavy cavalry have charged home on Roman cavalry & Auxillia & Goth medium cavalry have Roman horse archers off the table.
On the left the Cavalry fight is still indecisive.  In the centre part of the Roman line has been broken.  On the right the Roman horse has been defeated leaving just one heavy infantry unit to hold the flank.   The Goth medium cavalry still haven't passed a command test to return to the fray.
In the left the Roman cavalry has finally won, but it's too little too late for Rome.  Their centre is out-fanked on both side & is about to collapse completely.  A decisive Goth victory.

Our house rules have had a bit of revamp over the last few weeks with PeterC providing a great deal of help with his knowledge of Ancient warfare & editing.  Before we took up Hail Caesar ca 2011, our house rules were called Marathon to Mafeking, as that was the time span they covered.  They had evolved over a period of 40 years of the group writing our own rules.  Then for a decade we used Hail Whoever, which was Hail Caesar with house rules to extend it into other periods.  A couple of years back I wrote a new set of house rules I called Camp Cromwell Action.  These started out as rules for small French & Indian Wars actions but evolved into other periods & for bigger battles & have taken over from Hail Whoever  as out main rules set.  I recently dug out a copy of M2M 2009 & realised that though our current house rules are more concise & have some new tricks, they are remarkably similar.  They are clearly more an evolution of M2M than anything else.  So I'm goin back to our old name for our house rules, calling them Marathon to Mafeking 2021

   


3 comments:

fireymonkeyboy said...

Interesting that you had that sort of circular rules development. Seems like you've got a clear idea of what kind of game you want to play.

Gonsalvo said...

There will be much wailing in Rome!

James Fisher said...

Great looking game. Interesting to hear about the back to the future with your rules too. It's funny how our ideas can be circular, isn't it?!
Regards, James