The Battle of Teutoberg Wald

I came across some old photos from last year on my computer of a game I took part in with the Bournemouth Warmaster Ancient's from "Rick's Warmaster". This was one of their periodic huge battles where we re-fight a historical battle with as many troops as can be mustered.

These games are great fun, and well organised by Jim and Gareth. You can read a narrative report of the game here

I've put the best photos below, but I can't remember exactly what was happening now!!

Forces deployed, the board is 14'x4'! Romans on the left bank of the river, Germans on the right. I commanded the 6 brigades from the river to the marsh in the centre.

Peace loving Germans survey the Roman column

The Romans attempt to reform out of column and secure the far bank. The Germans race forwards on the right, but stall a bit on the left.

Fearing the German advance the Roman Commander in Chief collapsed in his left flank around the village to secure his position, but effectively abandoned the commander on the extreme left

Roman Left Flank collapse into a defence position...

..but Jake's forces, including the lion's share of the Roman cavalry are boxed in on two sides by the Germans and are in danger of being cut off to their right.

German's press forwards in the centre. Note the Roman left flank has collapsed further

The Roman cavalry regroup towards the fort on their left flank, but with Germans now lapping around 3 sides and cut off from the next commander by over 4' now their fate is sealed

The view from the German right confirms the Roman's here are few and far between and there are waves and waves of Germans waiting to attack the hill the Romans collapsed their line onto (top left of photo)

The Germans attempt to force a crossing

Crucially at this point, although the head of the Roman column is lost the centre is holding the banks of the river, with a strong counter attack to the right of photo above pushing the Germans back and following them up. The tail of the column is in trouble, as they look potentially outflanked by bowmen, but as yet is holding.

We are not all aware of the victory conditions at this point (often they are not revealed until the end of the game by whoever is GM'ing the scenario), but the Germans will only categorically win if they can break the line and gain the far bank. This will cut the column in two and ensure the historical massacre will be repeated.

Another turn and the Roman line still holds the far bank and has beaten back the first wave of Germans comprehensively

The final turn and the base of the Roman column repels the German attacks and holds!

I was fortunate to still have a fair chunk of warband still left in the centre and so threw them all forwards to try and force a crossing at the last

The warbands throw themselves into the river again, all the commanders joining fighting units to add crucial attack dice.

In a wonderfully cinematic moment the centre combat was won by the Germans by a single wound! The German commander makes all the difference!

As I'm sure anyone familiar with WMA will know, once a warband is winning they are hard to stop! The Germans won the initial combat by just one wound, but following up they lapped around the Romans and butchered them to a man. The column was broken and the general cut off from retreat. The GM informed us that the commander of the base of the column (the only part not cut off) galloped home for Rome abandoning his troops and his report painted a very unflattering picture of the Roman C-in-C!

A great battle at Jim's place, really good fun and fantastic that such a massive battle essentially came down to a single combat in the last turn! I recommend reading Jim's report as well.

Roman Artillery

Continuing the Roman theme, these guys are my scorpion unit for my Imperial Roman army

Again they are Pendraken figures. I've not put them together right as I thought the little box was an ammo box so I mounted the bows on a piece of balsa wood, when in fact I've since found out the little box is supposed to be the weapon mount! These paint up quite nicely as the crew have nice definition in their scale armour so a wash and a quick pass with a drybrush really brings up the armour.

In the game they are pretty rubbish! The ability to ignore armour saves is useful against 5+ save units, but there aren't a lot of them around. Typically as well people will only line up their troops two deep, so the best their ability to penetrate ranks gives you is 4 shots (2 on the front rank and 2 penetrating through to the rear rank). They could be good against heavy cav which generally are 5+ save, but they can't stand and shoot so tend to get the worst of that. I haven't been able to find a decent use for them and generally don't take them, they are not as good as a unit of archers in my opinion.

Of all the rules in warmaster I think light artillery is the one which doesn't work. I know the Bournemouth guys who play a lot of the WMA and maintain Rick's site now have their eyes on updated pike phalanx rules and house rule it at the moment, but I think these need looking at.

Possibilities could be to increase them to 3 stands to give them an extra shot (for a modest pts increase), or giving them a rule in the roman army to reflect their combined arms usage in the legions. Some way of negating their penalty of being unable to retreat (and thus being wiped out if anyone basically contacts them)?

Let me know your thoughts on light artillery

Salute Preview - Battle report of Magnesia with Warmaster Ancients

It was my good fortune to take part in a huge game of Warmaster Ancients at the weekend, based on the Battle of Magnesia. This was a practice run for a demonstration game at Salute which will be run by The Purbeck Brotherhood of Ancients in a few weeks and I strongly recommend you check it out if you are at the show.

The real battle took place in 190BC between a force of Republican Romans under Publius Cornelius Scipio ("Scipio Africanus") and his brother arrayed against a larger force of Seleucid Successor under Antiochus III (the great) along with exiled Carthaginian general and all round Roman botherer Hannibal Barca. The Romans reportedly had ~35,000 men against some 65-70,000 Seleucids.

Historically the powerful Seleucid cavalry on the right chased off the Roman flank and then went off to loot the baggage train, meanwhile the Roman right broke the Seleucid left. In the centre it was a fairly even fight between the legions and the Seleucid pikes, until the pike phalanxes were outflanked and destroyed.

In the Warmaster Battle the host, Jim Brown and a few helpers set out the battlefield and deployed the troops in a reasonably historical set-up the night before. All told there was just shy of 4000pts per side on a ~12x4' table!

View from the Roman Right, with the River Phrygius in the background

I was on the Seleucid side commanding the right-hand side of the Phalanxes and a brigade of archers, which probably put me in the shoes of "Philip, master of the Elephants" according to wikipedia.

Any attempt to have a detailed account of the battle would be largely futile, as I rarely had any idea what was happening on the Seleucid left, or in the centre! Therefore I'm just going to post up some super-sized pictures I took during the battle. As always click on them to enlarge to full-size.

After a couple of movement turns the lines were getting close to clashing

Jim used a sensible rules change for the first turn, which was that each overall commander threw a D4 and the result was the number of brigades that couldn't move during the turn - all other brigades move up to full pace with no orders. With another D4 thrown to see how many brigades could double move. This got the lines closer much quicker without dice rolls or too many tactical decisions.

The Seleucid Left saw the first hostilities as cavalry clashed

The middle part of the battle was very hard to keep track of, essentially the two flanks of cavalry pretty much cancelled each other out, with neither able to break through and get into the flanks of the enemy infantry. In the centre the Seleucid pikes on the right-hand side and the gallic warband traded blows with the Romans with no real decisive blow. However on the Seleucid right and centre firstly the Legions and Triarii managed some flank charges and significantly disrupted the Phalanxes here, the counter-punch when it came though was devastating. Frontal charges against the Legion by the pikes ripped them apart and the tide firmly turned towards the Seleucids.

View from the Seleucid Right Flank. Decimation across the board, but there are a few more pike blocks still standing than Legions

There was outrageous luck on both sides, both good and bad. On the Seleucid right the dice totally abandoned the Romans at the crucial moment and although all the business was being conducted in the centre, the chance to even things up and swing down the Seleucid lines was lost.

Not sure about the Roman losses, but there were 36 stands of pikes in this part of the battlefield at the start of the game! I think there might 5 left!

Just some of the Glorious Dead. Seleucids in the front-right, Romans towards the rear (behind the pikes)

In the end the Romans were fairly comfortably broken (break point 23!!). Although they had lost quite a few more units than the Seleucids, the crucial factor in breaking the Romans was the loss of all the Triarii units (which count as 2 units towards the break point).

So the course of history was changed! Scipio Africanus was sent packing and the Seleucid Empire went onto dominate the Eastern Mediterranean....maybe.

Hope you enjoyed this massive battle report, and once again get along to Salute and check out the demo game with all fancy terrain and everything on April 16th.

Battle Report - Sarmatians vs Dacians

This the second of the two games I played at the Stalbridge Warmaster Ancients day last month. It was a Dark Ages battle between two sets of Eastern Barbarians (at least that's how the Romans and Byzantines would have probably seen them).

I had first pick of the Dark Ages armies and went for the Sarmatians as a totally different type of force to ones I had previously fought with, being made up almost exclusively of cavalry, with warband shock cavalry at the heart.

Sarmatians
General
Leader
2 Subordinates
6 Shock Cavalry
2 Light Cavalry
3 Skirmishing Cavalry
2 Levy Archers
4 Levy Infantry

Break point - 7

Dacians
General
Leader
2 Subordinates
10 Warriors
2 Falxmen
4 Archers
2 Mounted Skirmishers
3 Sarmation Cavalry

Break point - 10

All the maps in this report have been produced using the FREE program - Battle Chronicler.

Deployment

In order to get the game moving quickly we just set up our own forces simultaneously without worrying what the other player was up to.

Deployment

 I set up with all of the warband cavalry on my right flank, in two brigades of 3 units to take advantage of their warband rule*, screened by the light cavalry. The mounted skimishers deployed on the far left opposite the wood, and the levy troops made up a very squishy and unreliable centre.
Ben deployed all of the warriors in one long line, two units deep, with the dangerous falxmen in the centre. He had archers on both flanks and all of the cavalry held in reserve.

His broad plan I think was to advance en masse and try and overwhelm me with numbers, I was trying to engage quickly with the cavalry and pick off isolated brigades.

* - warband gives you +1 to command rolls when brigades are 3 or 4 units strong.

Turn 1 & 2

The Dacians took the first turn and by their second turn had advanced in fairly good order to nearly the centre point of the battlefield. The only troops left behind were two units of archers that Ben had already decided to abandon as a lost cause. They were in difficult terrain (so immune to cavalry charges) and I had no infantry that could either get there, or do much if they did, so this made sense.

Ben ponders his next move

 His archers on my right flank were close enough for some pot shots at my levy archers and hit twice with the 4 stands that could see. With no armour and only 2 hits per stand (almost all units in the game have at least 3 hits) they lost a stand and were pushed back, being confused into the bargain.

This really bought home to me just how bad these Levy troops were, and how in serious combat they would quickly be decimated. I resolved to keep them out of harm's way for the rest of the battle. In my second turn I got my mounted skirmishers moving with a double move to cover the flank and clumped all my non-confused Levy troops into one big block. Then disaster struck as I rolled a blunder (12 on 2D6) to move my light cavalry screen, forcing them to move away from the nearest enemy. I managed to minimise the damage by moving them out to the extreme right flank, rather than through and behind the shock cavalry.

Sarmatian Turn 2

Turn 3

The lines were now only about 40cm apart, which is a double move (two consecutive successfully issued orders) for both infantry and cavalry, so there was a chance for Ben to charge my shock cavalry, or Levy troops. Unfortunately he was unlucky with his orders and in the end elected to move the left-hand archers into the wood and move the brigade of falxmen and warriors round opposite the levy. His positioning here was clever as they were a distance from my cavalry and anything charging this block would have the archers to their flank.

The archers again took plot shots, missing the levy, but scoring 3 hits on the mounted skirmishers pushing them back substantially and knocking off a stand. The Sarmatian left began to look decidedly dodgy (or it might have been it was dodgy all along and it was contact with the enemy that was bringing the fact home to me!)

Dacian Turn 3

In my turn I was determined to get stuck in. I intended on charging two units of shock cavalry into the falxmen. The way the narrow frontage of the shock cavalry works on the charge meant I could get all 6 bases of cavalry fighting against the frontage of just one falxmen unit. Although they would hit me with 12 attacks, these would be split between the two units and hopefully I would lose only 1 stand at worse, in reply I would hit with 24 attacks, needing only 9 rolls of 4+ to wipe out the unit.

I rolled for my chieftain on the left-hand brigade -12! Another blunder and they stayed put.

All is not lost I thought - I'll use my general to command the right-hand brigade. I easily passed the first command roll with Ld8, but made a very bad mistake in the movement - I split the brigade of 3 into the 2 units I wanted to charge and the one being left behind. This meant the brigade was no longer big enough for the warband rule to apply (+1 to command rolls). It meant my general now needed to roll 7 or less, instead of 8 or less to charge. - yes you've guessed it; I rolled an 8 and the attack stalled. And I had no more commands and a mess of a battle line.

Sarmatian Turn 3

Oops.

 Turn 4

The Dacians wasted no time in capitalising on the mistakes of the previous turn, they reordered into a more solid central battleline, bringing up the flagging brigades. Ben then sucessfully charged one unit of shock cavalry over the hill on the right and into the flank of the dithering Sarmatian warband cavalry. In the shooting phase more hits and drive-backs were scored on the right and left flanks, but no confusion or lost stands resulted.

Dacian Turn 4

The combat was predictably bloody, over two rounds the Dacian cavalry managed to knock two stands off the cavalry unit they were fighting, pushing them back quite a way, before falling back out of the fight rather than stay with their flank exposed to the waiting Sarmatian battleline.

The Dacian cavalry maul the central Sarmatians

With time running out it was clear that the Sarmatian turn would be the last of the game, so I was determined to make it into combat this time. Firstly the 2 right-most shock cavalry units in the big brigade used initiative to charge the Dacian cavalry that had just pulled back. I then wanted to charge the falxmen brigade that escaped last turn but the two units that had taken a mauling from the Dacian cavalry (SH5 and SH6) were not upto the job on their own, but were blocking line-of-sight for the two units behind. I therefore used initiative to evade with the unit down to one stand and get it out of harm's way, I then used initiative to declare a charge on the light cavalry in the centre with SH5. If he stood and fought they would be wiped out, if they evaded, as they choose to, unit SH5 could fall back and would have broken up the formation of the cavalry brigade. The way was now clear for the remaining two units (SH1 & 2) to charge into the falxmen together. Finally I used initiative to charge the right-hand light cavalry into the mounted skirmishers on the extreme right.

Sarmatian Turn 4 - charges

Against the falxmen the shock cavalry duly wiped out the front unit and the unit behind over two rounds before withdrawing unscathed. On the right I got very lucky. I decided to fight the light cavalry first, hoping to wipe them out and get a break-through charge into the warriors on the hill. The mounted skirmishers were wiped out over two rounds, but Ben then pointed out very sportingly that actually with a 360o field of vision the closest charge target for the break-through charge was the already engaged shock cavalry. The lights hit them in the rear, and despite minor hits being inflicted, and the Sarmatian shock cavalry losing a stand, the Dacians lost the fight and were destroyed as they had no path of retreat with enemies to front and rear.

Turn 4 - follow up charges

With that the battle ended on a turn which had decisively swung things the way of the Sarmatians.

Final Positions

End Game

End of game positions

VP's
Dacians - 60pts
Sarmatians - 235pts

Break Point
Dacians - 3/10
Sarmatians - 0/7

As with my other Stalbridge battle report, there wasn't quite enough time to get to a decent conclusion of the game, although personally I feel this one was swinging firmly the way of the Sarmatians. Shock Cavalry unit SH5 is almost certainly doomed. However I'm not sure there are many other exposed juicy targets. Likely the Dacians would use their upcoming turn to reform a battle line, and possible move their brigades more toward the hill for a defended position. The complete lack of cavalry, skirmishers, or missile troops on the right flank though means it would be very tough to prevent the Sarmatians from harrying this flank and getting shock cavalry engaged here.

Another really enjoyable game, Ben is a great opponent but I didn't deserve to come out on top in honesty after the decision to split the warband brigade when trying to charge, and for not being aware of the possible rear break-through charge that was pointed out to me and was instrumental in finishing off the Dacian shock cavalry (+110 VPs).

Hopefully coming soon is a brief battle report of a huge practise game I took part in for a Salute demo game.

If you enjoyed the report, or you've got any other feedback, please leave a comment.

Stalbridge Warmaster Ancients Day

I was lucky enough to make it down to Stalbridge in Dorset at the weekend and meet up with some guys I knew from the Devizes warmaster campaign last year as well as some new faces. The day was organised by Gareth Harding, who helped to write some of the updated armies lists on Rick Preistley's website and who owns a huge collection of painted warmaster armies.

He provided sets of paired armies for the games with full army lists and hints on how to deploy and use them and we played two over the day, one ancients and one dark ages. Although the turn out was disappointing (possibly something to do with the nice weather) it was a great success with old hands getting some games in and a few people being introduced to the game for the first time.

I played my ancients game as Alexander's Macedonians against Late Achaeminid Persians commanded by a new player called Jerry. Then in the afternoon I played as Sarmatians against Dacians, with Ben, an opponent from Attack! last summer.

It was great fun to get playing Ancients again and I'm going to post a couple of battle reports using Battle Chronicler as separate posts, the first hopefully tonight or tomorrow and the other later in the week.