Hail Cid! - Hail Caesar in the Reconquista

On Thursday night John, Scrivs, James and myself assembled at the White Hart for a small El Cid era skirmish using the Hail Caesar rules.

We managed to persuade James to leave lots of his soldiers in their boxes or at home and got it down to a mere five commands each side. Each command was four units or so with plentiful skirmishers in tow. Due to a low turn-out at the club we were able to set up a rather splendid looking 12x6 table and worked on the principle of getting as many of our toys out as we could.

Myself and James with the assistance of Cameron would be playing the Almoravid invaders, whilst John and Matt would be yoked under the leadership of El Scrivs himself with a Christian and Andalusian alliance.

It was all a little hastily thrown together and we were very rusty on the rules, but it looked magnificent with all the soldiers on the board. And we had a splendid time playing.

I'm not going to attempt a full commentary or explanation, but I do have a lot of eye candy...

Dawn breaks over the peaceful Valle del Ciervo Blanco

El Scrivs' contingent

Loadsa Berbers

Early Spanish version of Butlins

The lines close

Christian and Andalusian Cavalry surge forward

All Hail Allah's Camels!

In go the Spanish knights, with fatal consequences for their opponents

The Almoravid left wing

The knights meet their match!

The Berber centre crashes home

Whilst the Christian right (presumably espousing creationism as they go) tackle the Berber cavalry

Fightin' and a stabbin' and a diein'

The victorious camels spy new opponents

The Black Guard press home their advantage

Cameron's dice come good!

The Christians make good progress toward the Berber tents

Camels to the rescue!

We called a halt after a few hours of bloody slaughter.

The Berber spear had made good progress in the centre whereas it was all going well for the Christians and Andalusians on their right flank. On the other side, some astonishing fighting by the camel riders had at least stalled the Christian advance, but their were plenty of fresh knight units lurking around.

It was a splendid game with a great bunch of blokes. We'd forgotten lots of the rules, and made some up no doubt, but it didn't matter - we'd got several hundred soldiers out on a big table and rolled lots of dice and shouted foolish orders for a few hours and that's what really matters I reckon.

There's some more pictures and better detail of who had what over on Scrivs Blog - go and read it.

Meanwhile at the club there was a small game of BP Napoleonics going on and I took a couple of pictures:

Still resisiting...