Friday 29 September 2017

The village was burned

Belated spoiler alert, but the Romans won, although only just. It looked at first as if it was going to be all too easy for them - despite one of their three commands repeatedly refusing to cross the river - but one of the Britons' warbands got on a bit of a roll and coupled with the late arrival into action of the chariots made a bit of a game of it.


The scenario worked well enough. I was rather pleased with the mechanism for burning the village, which seemed to hit the required Golidlocks spot and was neither too easy nor too difficult. Once again we came to the conclusion that the Army Lists are too kind to the Romans; I shall definitely change that next time. And perhaps it would be better if next time was reasonably soon, as there was a very large amount of rules rustiness. The other grid based game that we play most often is C&C and there was lots of confusion between the two: can you fire at an adjacent unit? does terrain affect the hex or the boundary? etc. Perhaps we should be grateful that no one tried to perform a diekplous. I'm always reluctant to criticise the tabletop tactics of others - it would seem to imply a claim to some toy soldier acumen on my part when all the evidence tends to suggest the opposite - but I have to say that I might have sent the chariots across the open terrain rather than through the woods and over the river.


Anyway, for my reference rather than yours, these are the changes I will consider next time:
  • Celtic commanders can be detached
  • Warbands and chariots to be a point or two cheaper
  • Warbands to be allowed a (once per game?) charge of two squares, perhaps with a penalty if they don't succeed.

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