15mm Hail Caesar in Sicily 480BC.

 15mm Hail Caesar in Sicily 480BC. 

With the second edition of the Hail Caesar rules having been out for a few weeks now it was time to try them out. I decided to create a simple encounter scenario based on the conflict between Carthage and the Greek City/settlements in Sicily. In 480BC Carthage looked to expand it's influence and territory in Sicily by invading the island near Panormus. Gelon, the main Tyrant in Sicily at that time quickly gathered his allies and their forces to resist the invasion. The two armies met at Himera a bit further along the coast. 

The real life encounter was full of action, Carthage lost many ships (and the horses and chariots on them) due to a storm and the the Sicilian Greeks did a successful mounted raid on the Carthaginian Camp. The Carthaginian commander, Hamilcar also got burnt during a sacrifice to the god Baal before the battle began. Our game was to be a simpler, encounter battle with the Carthaginian army deploying outside Himera faced by the Sicilian Greeks opposite, aprox 430 points per side. Hamilcar then threw a dice to decide on the outcome of his sacrifice to Baal. On a 1 he falls into the sacrificial fires and his leadership would falter resulting in a Leadership value of 7. A throw of 2-4 results in a leadership of 8 whilst a 5 or 6 means the omens were good and his Leadership is raised to Ld9! 

Note: My Carthaginian army is actually a later Carthaginian army so has elephants instead of the chariots typical of an earlier Carthaginian army. Also, my Greek army will look very 'Spartan' whilst posing as Sicilian Greeks. My 15mm ancient figures are based for 'Impetus' style games so I recently 'split' my elephants onto separate bases to better suit HC whilst still workable for Impetus and other such rules. Most figures are from the 'Forged in Battle' Ancients range

The dice decided that Ian and Phil would command the Carthaginian's leaving the Greeks under my control...or perhaps that should be lack of control as my Command/order throws for the first half of the game were truly awful. Ian threw a dice, scored a '1' and therefore the Omens decided that Hamilcar would only have a leadership of 7! Dividing our forces up into 4 commands/divisions each deployment was as pictured below...with the mighty Carthaginian invasion force on the left and the defending Greeks on the right.  

Ian and Phil soon looked to take advantage of their more numerous cavalry sending flanking forces out on both sides of the battlefield. My Greek light cavalry managed to cause one casualty on Ian's Numidian Light Cavalry before being destroyed. 

The photo below shows Phil's Gallic cavalry turbo charging round my other flank.  

Note the elephants lurking in the background. 

It took a while for the main battle lines in the centre to close upon each other. 

Phil's Gallic Cavalry caused mayhem on the Greek right flank and even managed to charge a phalanx in the rear. 

A photo across the battlefield but it was all happening on the flanks. 

Phalanx against Elephants, how would that go? 

A win for the phalanx and my luck took a slight turn for the better from this point 

(it couldn't have been much worse!). 

Until Ian's Carthaginian Cavalry defeated my Greek cavalry over on my left flank. 

Then the Carthaginian Scutarii got locked into a lengthy melee with a Greek phalanx but the Scutarii won eventually. 

The Greeks also learnt that it is not good to be charged by Gallic Warband, 

especially when Phil hit with nearly every dice!  

Melee's were happening all over the battlefield by now. 

A last desperate attempt by my Veteran Phalanx's to defeat the Carthaginian spearmen almost paid off, especially when I managed to wound Hamilcar as he was routed from the field. Sadly, the other Carthaginian spear held out and with time running out we called it a comfortable Carthaginian victory despite a reasonably good fight back from the Greeks. 

Next week will see the Carthaginian's advancing inland  and the Greeks scrambling to get some sort of force together to try and turn them back. 

Finally, a good find from Ian at the recent York show was this 15mm Macedonian elephant (possibly an old mini-figs model?) for 10p from the bring and buy. I couldn't resist but paint it up ready for future games. 

The Battle of Ormskirk 1644 in 6mm.

 'Victory without Quarter' seem established as our ECW rules of choice but perhaps need a few tweaks to make them work to our satisfaction. This week we re-enacted the battle of Ormskirk from 1644. The Royalists need to win to maintain a presence in the North. Phil and Nigel commanded the Parliamentarian forces entering from the table edge when their cards were drawn through the outskirts of Ormskirk. That left me in charge of the Royalists. Most of my troops were deployed ready to meet the oncoming Parliamentarians whilst my other cavalry were due any time from turn 3 onwards. 

Random events can crop up quite regularly in VWQ and the first one this game saw this whole cavalry regiment switch sides from the Parliament to the Royalist. It was decided that they should make a run for the Royalist lines to receive fresh orders from their new commander, this seemed to take them most of the game. This single event seemed to swing the balance of the game in favour of the Royalists. 

Happily there are lots of random events to be diced for in VWQ so this one should not crop up again for a while. 

The Parliamentarian's light gun advanced rapidly and deployed facing the Royalist's dragoons. Meanwhile, another random event saw a unit of clubmen join the Royalist cause but they did not have time to get involved. The Royalists cavalry reserve arrived promptly and were soon in action. 

We had much more melee happen in this game than previously and Phil's Parliamentarian trotters soon got the better of my Raw Royalists. 

The centre of the battlefield was all action melee's and firefights but with the Parliament troops seeming to gain the upper hand.  

We also discovered in this battle that in VWQ cavalry charging foot caught in the open is not as easy a target as you may think. I lost two such clashes. 

Happily for me, the cavalry that switched sides arrived just in time to boost the Royalist cause and with few troops left on either side we called it a draw. 

All the melee in the game brought up a few problem areas.Cavalry charging just musket armed infantry were certainly not as effective as we thought they should be. Also divisions seem able to lose most of their units yet the few remaining can continue to fight? It seems like a few 'house' rules are called for but we do like the core rules for movement, firing and melee.

Finally, a quick look at two of my ongoing 15mm projects, my Napoleonics and my Hundred Years War English. I recently completed the 95th Rifles and also re-based my other two units so that they more easily fit both 'General De Armee' and General De Brigade' both of which seem likely to be played. 

15mm seems a very popular scale amongst our little group of gamesr just now. Phil already has a large collection of 15mm Medievals and both Ian and I are now painting up armies for this period. The figures below are from the PSC 'Siocast' range which are lovely little figures that paint up really well.  The flags are a mix of hand drawn and painted (the hobilars) and some that were freely available on-line. I printed them to 15mm scale and then painted over them to improve the look as my printer does not print very vivid colours. 

   

The Battle of Nantwich 1644: 6mm ECW

 For our 6mm ECW game this week I adopted a scenario for Nantwich, an ECW battle fought in 1644. I simplified the terrain, mainly as I didn't have enough hedges. We used the 'Victory without Quarter' rules again as we like the rules although at just a dozen pages long there are a few areas where the rules are a little vague and we may end up adding a few house rules. 

At Nantwich the smaller Royalist force dug part of their force into an earthwork ready for the rapidly approaching Parliamentarian forces (led by Ian and Nigel). The Royalist C-in-C, Lord Byron was yet to arrive as he had been delayed by floods so we let him appear from turn 3 onwards on a throw of 4+

An interesting feature of the rules is that your sub-ordinate commanders may be allocated a trait and unfortunately for me the Royalist Col Gibson who was in charge of their Infantry to the left of the Earthwork was 'Stupid'. Every time he took a turn he would follow random orders on a score of 5+ and in  the photo below you can see his infantry following his orders to advance away from their nice safe defensive position with the Roundhead Cavalry approaching!.  Everyone but me found this most amusing!

Funnily enough, Col Gibson gave a random order towards the end of the game that actually helped the Royalist cause. 

Lord Byron and his cavalry (boldly led by Howard) arrived at the start of turn 5 galloping quickly onto the table and then halting for the next few turns instead of providing the vital support our hard pressed Infantry needed. 

With the Royalists on the left you can see Byron's regiment of cavalry marching down the road and Ian's Parliamentarian infantry approaching the central earthwork from the right. 

At this point of the game the Royalists seemed to be in real trouble and the random draw of the cards to move your units was certainly not helping our cause. 

We discovered that the larger Royalist Field guns were quite effective as helped by a unit of infantry they out gunned and fought off Ian's infantry. 

The Royalists sent up a drone to spy out some of the Parliamentarian advance. 

At this point I forgot to take anymore photo's as we were reaching the really vital part of the battle. As Nigel sent his Roundhead cavalry forward in the centre they suffered from poor Morale throws and Lord Byron (Howard) was easily able to gallop through the village and chase them off with the help of Col Gibson who randomly ordered his foot back out from behind the hedges; but this time into a very useful position to give supporting fire to our cavalry. With Ian's foot being repulsed on our right flank the Royalists were able to hold their position as the forces of Parliament withdrew. Both sides were badly battered but a hard fought victory was awarded to the Royalists.  

'Victory without Quarter' is a very enjoyable fast playing set of rules but as mentioned above we do need to expand a few areas such as Morale which is not always fully explained and seems to lack a few factors that could help? The random events that occur are always fun and seem well 'flavoured' to suit the period. Overall we are happy with the rules,  I think we have found our set of rules for the ECW period. 

 

6mm ECW: Victory without Quarter

 Today we tried out a set of ECW rules called 'Victory without Quarter' that are freely available on-line.This is a set of rules that I have fancied trying for some time now as they read like they will have a good 'in-period' feel to them. Although really written with 28mm or perhaps even 15mm figures in mind we used our 6mm figures as that is the only scale we have enough figures ready painted, (my own 15mm collection is only about 9 units strong, and all Parliamentarian whereas we can field about 100 painted units in 6mm between us). 

For a first game we used small, reasonably balanced sides and fairly open terrain so we could concentrate on learning the basics of the rules. Ian and Nigel took charge of the Royalists whilst Howard and I lead the Parliamentarian forces. It was lovely to get Howard back gaming again. 

Our armies are all made up of 6mm Irregular Miniatures, they paint up really well.  

Parliamentarian forces deploy, the infantry were to hold the centre whilst their cavalry would try to outflank the Royalist Infantry.  

Royalists deploy with their cavalry trying to take the village opposite and their infantry hold the centre. We discovered at this point that we had deployed a little too far apart but at least there was plenty of room for manoeuvre. 

Victory without Quarter is a card activated game and my Cavalry were in luck early on and managed to speed across the table. The card activation worked a good degree of uncertainty  into the game. Movement, Shooting and Melee are easy to work out making for quite a fast moving game in which all players are kept involved. 

The Parliamentarian Dragoons took cover in the woods and harassed the advancing Royalist cavalry. Rules for the effects of terrain on moving, shooting etc... are simple, another positive point for us.  

Sensing victory, the Royalist infantry advance. 

My Trotters perform Caracole in front of Ian's Royalist infantry, but the dice were against us and Ian forced my cavalry to Rout with his superior shooting. Things were not going well.  

The Roundhead guns open up on Nigel's Royalist gallopers, but caused little damage.

But Nigel gets to charge and disperse our guns. You can also just make out top left where the Parliamentarian Dragoons are routing from the Royalist Dragoons.

We sadly ran out of time to complete the game but the Royalist forces certainly had the upper hand so victory to Ian and Nigel. 

As for the rules, at about 12 pages long they are brief and a few area's of the rules were a little vague but we managed to work our way through them. There is an interesting section on period specific random events and also a chart to add random abilities to your command figures. We play again next week but will deploy a bit closer. We may also tweak one or two other parts of the rules once we have had a re-read to see where we went astray. 

Overall we enjoyed the rules and they are a keeper!

Finally, last week Ian was disappointed that I did not mention Larry Hagman in his jeep who scouted  ahead of the American forces and managed to destroy the German Nebelwerfer and cause all sorts of problems.