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.