The Venutius Revolt, a 10mm Romans v Britons game of Hail Caesar.

 The Venutius Revolt, AD71.

In AD 69 Venutius was replaced as husband of Queen Cartimandua by Vellocatus, his armour bearer. Earlier in her reign, Cartimandua had helped capture Caractacus in AD 46, her actions helping the Brigantes become a valued client Kingdom under Roman rule. In AD 71 ex King Venutius revolted and led a large portion of the Brigantian population who did not like Roman rule in a fight for freedom. New Emperor Vespasian appointed Quintus Petilius Cerialis as Governor of Britain. Cerialis moved quickly, defeating the rebel Brigantians and annexing their territory. This scenario represents one of the battles of the revolt. 

Set the table up similar to the drawing below…

Deployment as per the map, d6 per side throw for Initiative as usual. Forces are as on the leader deployment cards. 

Britons Objectives: The Britons score a minor victory by capturing or destroying the central watchtower. They achieve a major victory by defeating the Roman force. 

Roman Objectives: to defeat the Britons and try to capture or kill Venutius

Also, the Roman sentry units by the watch tower must successfully order a messenger (move of 12”) across to the main roman force to inform Cerialis that the Britons are approaching. Thus, the main Roman force must be deployed over 24” away from the tower sentries. This gives the Britons a chance to advance quickly and overwhelm the tower. 

The dice soon decided that Ian and Charlie would be the Ancient British with Nigel and I controlling the Romans. The Romans moved first and failed to get the messenger moving far enough to activate the Roman army so the Britons took full advantage and Charlie in particular swarmed his forces forward as fast as his order dice wold allow him. 

The messenger ran just the one move and the scouts went with him. 

So the rest of the Romans were unaware of the fast approaching British mob. 

The coloured cards contained the special rules for the varying generals and their troops. 

Charlie moves the Britons forward whilst Roman Nigel, sits back and watches. 

Ian acting as Ventius, opted to hold back a bit. 

Charlie's light horse threw javelins at a Roman cohort of Legionaries who threw miserably on their break test and routed them. 

The left flank was a standoff between the Ian and myself for quite a few turns.

Charlie and Nigel were in full battle mode. Although Charlie eventually won through on this flank, Nigel did very well with his auxiliary troops considering how heavily outnumbered he was. 

When Ian and I finally closed on each other the Romans did very well breaking Venutius' division and wounding the main man in the process.  

However, Charlie then turned his Britons towards my badly damaged Legions and was able to destroy their division winning the game for the Britons. This was quite a hard fought fight but the british fully deserved their win.