Another Game of Dux Bellorum

So last night we convened once more to play Dux Bellorum after last week's jolly reminder of the rules.
This time we went for the full 32 points of goodness. I took my Saxons

• Warrior Companions
• 1 Noble Riders
• 1 Nobles
• 4 Ordinary Warriors
• 1 skirmishers (bows)
• 2 extra LP

On the Welsh side of the table there were

• Mounted Companions
• 2 Noble Riders
• 1 Nobles
• 4 Ordinary Warriors
• 2 skirmishers (bows)

Again we played the basic Annals battle. I set up with a solid wall of warriors across the centre of the board, with my cavalry and skirmishers on the left flank. The Welsh had riders and skirmishers on each flank, and a slightly smaller line of bodies in the centre.

 Dawn breaks and the enemy appears

 My right flank. Securely held.

 Welshies. Thousands of 'em

 They shall not pass

 The field of battle

The first rounds saw a cautious advance in the centre by my warriors whilst the Welsh held fast but pushed their cavalry on the flanks. I advanced my skirmishers, not being quite sure what else to do with them.My cavalry, outnumbered on my right, pulled back to the centre.

 The Welsh core

 Welsh Companions

On about turn three it all kicked off.
The skirmishers charged one another and the far left of my line broke ranks to charge into some Welsh bowmen. I span my Companions around and slammed them into some Noble riders who had appeared behind my lines, but the warriors on the right of my line failed to charge the Welsh Companions lurking in the woods.

 Carnage. The Welsh skirmishers die, but so do the Saxon warriors

 Saxon Companions get stuck in

Cavalry to the rescue

The Welsh slammed two cavalry units into the exposed right of my line and I threw the nobles in to even up the fight. Meanwhile my Noble riders rushed to support the companions who were struggling to defeat the Welsh riders as the rest of my line raced forward to take on the Welsh infantry.

 The Saxon right is enveloped

 A scrum develops in the centre

 On the Saxon left the Welsh horse hold out

 Even the skirmishers get stuck in

My battle line was well and truly fractured now, and I was a bit worried!

 Finally the Welsh horse are eliminated

 The centre grinds on

 My right flank hangs on deperately

The game turned into something of a grind with each of us taking a unit or so off every turn.

 The Saxon right is rent apart

Saxon Companions to the rescue

After dispatching (finally) the Welsh horse on my left my Companions threw themselves in support of the centre (where I was on a knife edge) whilst the riders charged in support of my left flank.

By this point the welsh had begun to hemorrhage LPs and the advantage I had by starting with eight began to tell as i was able to shore up some crumbling units while my opponent just had to watch as his were ground down.

The shattered Welsh remains

 

Finally we both reached 50% break point in the same turn. This also meant the Welsh were out of LPs for future turns. We began to roll morale checks for our units and although my Saxons held firm the death of the Welsh companions had clearly been enough for the rest of the force with two more routing, taking them above 75% and granting me the victory!

So how did it play?
Truth to tell, not as well as the last game. It all seemed to bog down a bit, and we struggled a bit working out charges. Some of that will speed up as we play more games, but the middle part of the game seemed to be more about who could best place their LPs than any sort of tactics at the tabletop level.
I think some of that is due to lack of familiarity and skill - if I'd been the Welsh I might have tried to use my cavalry more flexibly. Disengaging and then picking my fights. As it was I always had more LPs as the Saxons and was able to use that to keep me in fights I'd otherwise have lost.
I enjoyed it, and it took about two hours to play (which will probably speed up) it's nice and fluid and seems quite Dark Agey, but I did find myself thinking on the drive home - why don't we just play Age of Arthur WAB...?

Dux Bellorum Campaign (2)

A little fiddling with an England and Wales map in paint and hey presto, a map.
Now all I have to do is annotate it to match the card numbers I dealt out in the earlier post.
Oh, and move York up a row.

I could have spent more time and effort to get the nodes to map more accurately to post Roman settlements and the like but I decided the workload to results ratio was out of whack and also that I'd start to break the inherent simplicity of the campaign as originally presented, so this'll do for now.

Warhammer Triumph and Treachery

Gruzzkup stroked his enormous chopper idly and gazed out across the plains. To his left, the clamour, smoke and smells told him that Spiggy's Night Goblin army had arrived. To his right the rank stench of decay and unwashed armour told him that the foul minions of Chaos were abroad. Good. Plenty of stuff to duff up!

On Wednesday Stevo and I journeyed to The Ilkeston Gaming Hut for the first time in ages, for a get together of the Sherwood, Hucknall and Ilkeston Team and a game of Triumph and Treachery. Before we even began the first act of deceit was wrought as Stephen turned up with filthy Chaos Warriors meaning we weren't going to get the Orc and Goblin dirty hardcore threesome action (I'm working on my SEO to drive visitors) Matt and I were expecting. Lame excuses poured forth about how he'd been painting them up and really wanted to use them, but we weren't deceived by his filthy Chaos lies.

We set up as we found ourselves, with me in the centre of one long table edge and Matt in the left hand corner and Steve in the right as I looked at it. Steve warned us before starting not to "fight a war on two fronts", but I got the first turn and did anyway.

 Matt unveils his Army Scroll(tm) 

 Matt's impressive Temple of Skulls - must finish mine off...

 Gruzzkup managed to squeeze his impressive horde into a small slot

 Foul, flatulent and pox-ridden. But he's quite good at painting.

Pesky Night Goblinzes

 Loobinz hides the ladz from sight

 Gruzzkup's Waaagh picks up steam

 Initial infighting means da little 'uns don't get to move much

 Dirty Chaos men

 More filth

 Rashly the spiders decide to charge. It doesn't end well.

 In a display of overconfidence the Hoppers charge the Knights. And win!

At around this juncture the greenskins declared an alliance. From now on the Chaos horde would be the sole object of our warmongering.

Curiously at around this time a high-pitched noise began to emanate from the end of the table. A sort of whiny, pleady, bleaty, woeful sound. Like good greenskins we ignored it and put the boot in.

 Doom Diver's eye View

 This appears to be the same picture...

 Walls. Not ideal for Fanatics

 The combined greenskins surge toward the Chaos lines

Nubinz leads da way

Around this time Stephen excused himself. Some time later Matt's daughter appeared and asked why there was a ginger haired man-child sobbing in the toilet. We carried on attacking him

A slight miscalculation leads to disaster

Night Goblins overestimating their capabilities

Gruzzkup prepares to spring the trap!

Matt's still taking his time...

In your face 100pts of Chaos Hounds

Yeah!

Time was ticking on, the shadows were beginning to lengthen, we'd drunk all Matt's beer, and Stephen's little bottom lip was wobbling. So I decided to attack Matt. It seemed Orcy.

In go da Boar ladz

At this point my phone ran out of charge. This is probably for the best as Steve, taking full advantage of my attack on my erstwhile ally proceeded to launch his warriors at my army whilst scattering Triumph and Treachery cards like confetti and duly wiped out my entire force. Oh.

With that the game drew to a close. Matt's army was largely intact, but a long way from the action, I had no models left and the Chaos Warriors ruled the field.

This was splendid fun. The T&T rules have a few idiosyncrasies, but mostly work very well for multi-player games. The trash talk and picking enemies adds to the fun, and we had three very nice, fully painted armies on the table. Hobby win. 

Foul Chaos lies about the whole event are over on Stevo's blog

Dux Bellorum Campaign

Inspired by my game of Dux Bellorum earlier in the week and an excellent article about a Fall of Rome campaign in the current Miniature Wargames (issue 377, a stand alone follow up to a biblical campaign system in MW 368) I'm going to attempt a Dux Bellorum campaign.

Here's my map of England, circa 500AD.

I followed the rules in the article (Diamonds Romans, Clubs Saxons, Hearts Irish), but in my version spades are Welsh. The picture cards are the (Roman) settlements of London, Gloucester, York and Carlisle (York looks a bit low to me).

I may try and transpose it onto a more aesthetically pleasing England/Wales shaped map/grid.

I have three options:

1. To play the campaign elements solo, probably as an invading Saxon and use various of my regular gaming buddies as my opponents.
2. Play the campaign as written in the article with me as a Late Roman and my regular Welsh opponent as a subordinate/rival commanding Welsh allies from Gloucester as we try and reunite the countries under a Christian banner
3. Play as the Saxons against the Welsh as we each try to conquer the kingdom.

I'm inclined to option one, as then all anyone else has to do is turn up with an army (or I could even try solo games...) and I can manage all the campaign elements myself.

Dux Bellorum - getting reacquainted with the rules

After a lovely couple of weeks in a WiFi and 3G free part of beautiful West Wales its back to the wargaming grind.
Tonight I popped round to my regular SAGA opponent's for a game of Dux Bellorum.I've been wanting to have another go at these rules for a while as I remembered them as simple and straightforward, but with enough period flavour to satisfy. And also quicker and easier than a game of WAB. I don't think we'd ever had a game before and I've not played since Salute last year, so it was a proper fumble through the rules.
We used 24 point armies and reduced the LPs to 4 (rather than 32pt armies and 6LP). Sophistication was not the order of the day and we hurled our battle lines at one another without much real thought. However about half way through my opponent declared "I like these much better than Dux Brit" and I agreed. Simple, effective and easy to understand. And also all over in about an hour an a half (even with plentiful rulebook flicking) which for me is a good thing on a "school night".

Some pictures follow (apologies for the poor quality - the camera is broken, so the iPhone is being used)

In the end I lost, but my opponent had but a single unit left by the time we'd finished failing morale checks. We both (I think) enjoyed the game - its easy enough for our limited attention spans and curmudgeonly refusal to grapple with complex rules  whilst being sufficiently Dark Agey. I know Martin and Scrivs have played recently and not enjoyed it as much, but I think I'm going to persist (at least until my wargame muse takes me elsewhere...)

So we've agreed to play again - next time with 32 point armies. There are some "Fall of Rome" campaign rules in the current edition of Miniature Wargames, which might inspire us to some linked up gaming too. However the fly in the ointment is the fact that we're both off to Partizan in a couple of weeks and Crescent and Cross is calling, so we may well be sucked back into SAGA...