Field of Glory Wargaming at Britcon 2009 - Sunny Manchester 2009

As the second day dawned, I found my teeney tiny Roman army facing yet more Romans - this time it was a Foederate Roman army. The list is available here 

Pictures of Romans from my Ancients Photo Directory

The astonishing Foederate Roman army was even bigger than mine, with loads of small blocks of cavalry, bizarrely a lot of it unarmored. Protected auxilia and cataphracts massed in the middle, and a line of skirmishing light horse on my right completed the set. With a largely bald table, I struggled to spread m army across the board. Yet again a Civil War looked set to start.

The game started as my Roman LH swiftly moved to get in some early shooting on the unprotected mass of allied (yes, allied) bow/sword cavalry.

On my right both sides were trying to avoid combat, with first the Foederate Roman cavalry moving across to the left, swiftly followed by my legions, leaving some auxilia and legionaries to contest the field from enemy LH. My auxilia were off and running to try and bottle the enemy up before they could even get into the Rough Going of a ploughed field in the middle. 

After a few rounds of ineffective shooting my light horse fell back to be replaced by fast moving but somewhat brittle auxilia. Medium foot, but armoured - how would they stand against the enemy cavalry? And would my unprotected, but superior bowmen prove to be a liability or an asset?  

Elsewhere, on an adjacent table, I took a photo of some nice Picts advancing through the snow. 

The Foederate horse were doing their damnedest to drive off the Dominate light horse, but were starting to come in for some heavy shelling,. Caesar himself, sensing a decisive moment approaching, had moved across to lend his arrowproof umbrella to his auxilia.  

As the gap between the two lines approached, the auxilia stepped forward beyond their supporting  archers - so far that the enemy would not be able to step forward into contact with the vulnerable bowmen.

Elsewhere, my other auxilia had made it into the field in the middle of the park, but our slow moving infantry were still slowly pushing back the Foederate light horse. 

As the Dominate auxilia moved forward under the steely gaze of Caesar on the left, the Allied cavalry charged in - and immediately caused grave and serious injuries to one of the auxiliary units, who had foolishly contracted into a column in order to allow the light horse to escape.... 

Almost immediately the auxilia broke and fled to be pursued by one of the allied cavalry units and leaving just one unit standing as a bastion against the enemy horsemen. But, led by Caesar, their morale held and the bulk of the allied Roman cavalry had to fall back ready to charge in again.

And as this was happening, the cavalry charged in yet again - risking life and limb the Roman archers moved swiftly and silently behind their auxilia, targeting the soft underbelly of the pursuing unit with devastating fire and providing rear support to their colleagues. If the auxilia unit stood firm, it might be good - but if they faltered it would be catastrophic!

With an almighty clash the two sets of warriors rejoined battle - and this time, an auxilia died. the unit was now teetering on the brink of evaporation! 

But they teetered, but their shield wall held as Caesar himself again urged them on! As the enemy cavalry again fell back to regroup in increasing states of disarray and disruption, the archers breathed a sign of relief... 

As this great drama was happening another wave of attacks was being triggered in the middle of the park. But this time the opponents for the Foederate cavalry and auxilia were far more resolute Dominate Legions, and in many cases the Foederate generals were trying to hold their men back rather than urge them on.

  

Elsewhere, the Dominates had started to get the better of herding FoG, sorry, Fog, and had the Foederate horse archers on the run. 

 

As the situation started to improve across the board, in the middle the armoured auxilia decided that they too needed to join in if the game was not to come to a halt before they had gotten involved - and before Caesars legions could kill enough of the huge Foederate army to win the game. They advanced in the face of greater numbers....  

And soon discovered that a 50% advantage in numbers was a lot better than armour. 

But elsewhere things had gotten much better. A determined charge and a lot of shooting had suddenly caused a dramatic collapse in the morale of the 3 units of cavalry over on the Foederate right, and the battered unit of auxilia had taken almost total control of the field!! 

The same could be said of the prolonged slog in the middle, as the Dominate legions refused to buckle under the blows of the many units of lancer cavalry and cataphracts charging into them.

Soon the Foederates were being thrown back across the middle of the field, and the increasingly confident Dominate legions, all led by generals, were able to follow up their advantage. 

The grim spot was in the field, where Dominate auxilia were taking a pasting. They clung on desperately ...

..and at the death one of them was still hanging on for their lives as the rest of the Foederate army slumped to defeat as both their flanks started to cave in ! The Romans won 23-2 !

Other games packing up

Trade stands 

Post Match Summary

As Caesar, I'm announcing that here's a turnup for the books - yet another win eh? 

This time at least we beat a Roman army from the tail end of the Empire, so they lost a lot of the land that my boys had held for so long with their sweat and blood - and it showed. 

I suspect the Foederate Romans were optimized for facing off a much smaller, or much more Light-horse heavy opponent than us, with our wall-to-wall armoured infantry, and so they did find it difficult to punch a way through our wall of steel. 

We did experience a rather iffy moment near the beginning of the game when our auxilia had to tough it out against the enemy cavalry, but thankfully the combination of our armour, and personal intervention from me, the main man, helped my chaps hang on in there against what was always a rather under-generalled allied contingent and once they had started to falter in their resolution it was suddenly very difficult for the Alans to regroup before we shot them up and ran them down. 

In the middle it was a different story, as the steadfast legionaries were more than capable of dealing with the repeated charges from a variety of cavalry types, and fortunately the game occurred in several discrete phases so myself and my sub-generals were able to move with the action and fight in the right places. 

Hoorah!

Hannibal's Post Match Analysis

8 out of 9 eh? What do you want me to say? Congratulations for taking a massive risk with a couple of undergunned infantry units against a massive wall of cavalry where only risking your own life managed to turn a staggering defeat into a grafted victory? More like, why didn't you put a legionary unit over there - they would have been able to hold off the whole army for most of the day on their own - but no, you are stuck in a totally predictable deployment rut that forces you to take ridiculous chances with your auxilia almost every game. 

And the legionaries - well, there were hundreds of them facing off against almost nothing for a lot of the game - you had overkill in the wrong areas, and you actually ran the pace of the game totally wrong, committing early where it was 50/50, but struggling to bring the enemy to battle with your best troops until much later.

Lets see how the next game goes then ? 

 

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