"Dacia v's Rome" Topic

We had a lot of fun with a battle last night. The rules were Warmaster Ancients and they produced a game that was a lot of fun. I'm not sure how historically correct it was, but the main thing is that the players all seemed to enjoy it.

Rick (Our Baldrick) had never put his late Republican Roman army to the test before, so it seemed a good time to see how his boys could fare on the battlefield. Similarly my Dacian army had never seen a battle before, so we took the opportunity to blood both of them.

The points system was used to select the forces. In 15mm even a medium size battle is pretty big so we used a good size tabletop. Rick prefers plenty of command so his options included not only his main general but three junior ones as well. None the less he ended up with 10 Legion units, plus five skirmishing infantry. Of the Legions, two were veteran. His cavalry comprised two Heavy, two light, and two skirmish units. His total points value was only 5 more than the Dacians, so we left it at that. He commanded the troops with the assistance of Dean.

My Dacian force had three wings. The left was made to look weak, but I made sure that Brett knew all his skirmishers and two warrior bands were just for show. In behind them he had three units of Dacians armed with the Romphola. These were the best three infantry units in my army and were backed by an archer unit. He had no cavalry but his swarms of skirmishers ended up being sufficient to keep enemy cavalry at bay.

The centre under the command of Phil, had a range of impressive looking lines of troops, but again were really just warrior bands. He did have a few skirmishers in front of his line, an archer group, and on a hill to his rear, a scorpion battery.

My command was the right flank. This was also made to look unimpressive. Four German allied warrior bands with a few skirmishers in front of them, made up the bulk. There were also some skirmish cavalry and one German Light Cavalry unit. The key, was that behind them were two units of heavy Sarmation cavalry.

The Romans deployed with the Dacian army hidden under a cloth. Rick chose to put all his legions in the centre and to form them up very deep. His left was protected by two units of heavy cavalry, one of light cavalry and one of skirmish cavalry. Their right was fairly lightly protected with just one light cavalry unit, and some skirmish cavalry, supported by a handful of skirmishers.

The Dacian battle plan called for an advance on the left wing and centre, with all units inclining further to their left. This would draw the Romans further to their right and threaten the very weak right flank. (We did not know the right flank was weak when planning). In the meantime on the right I would concentrate on dealing with their cavalry by using skirmish cavalry and my German light cavalry. They were supported only by the threatening horde of German infantry behind them as the Sarmations were well to the rear so as not to make my flank look too strong.

Brett got stuck in hard, occupied a small wood on the Dacian right flank, using his skirmishers. With the help of other skirmishers he kept the rest of the Roman left busy. But he held his crack units back. Dean rode his cavalry forward and engaged, but after some bad luck suffered rather badly from the volume of skirmishers he faced and was driven back. It was obvious that his flank was much too weak, so our side was confident the plan would work. Phil advanced in the centre to counter that more and more Romans were also inclining toward their right flank. Although we knew his centre were too weak to succeed for long, he none the less put up a stout fight.

The gradual incline toward his right caused serious problems for Rick. There was a small and rather insignificant looking wood between his centre and right. This really got in the way of his manoeuvres causing lots of wasted time for his Legions. Just as he was getting around this problem he had to deal with Brett sending his three elite Romphola units into the attack. The leading legion recoiled and the only place for anyone to go was back into the impenetrable ground, with the result of considerable confusion and units piling into each other. It looked like a train wreck! But none the less he gradually brought order and resumed his attack.

On the Roman left, my light troops were doing extremely well against their heavier opponents. He suffered quite a few casualties and had the misfortune to get his leading heavy cavalry unit confused. At that point I threw forward my German Light cavalry expecting it to be a sacrificial gesture to keep him off balance. Instead we had amazing die rolls and destroyed what was left of the leading unit. My light cavalry were assisted by the skirmish cavalry and then the main body of Germans moving forward. This had Rick rather reluctant to tackle what were quite overwhelming numbers, so he chose to hold position. However this meant his centre was well in advance of the left. Its entire flank became exposed.

Phil attacked the exposed flank of the Roman centre and did his best with warrior infantry v's Legions. He was repulsed, but somehow the Romans decided on a follow up and became even more isolated. Meanwhile Brett was costing them a lot of casualties and his assaults kept preventing them gaining elbow room. This section became pretty static with neither side able to make progress, so that the Roman centre was now splitting into two segments. One held back by Brett and the other pushing on into the Dacian position. Superficially it looked as if the Dacian centre was going to be in trouble, however the advance was now bringing them into range of the Dacian scorpion battery and the archer unit with it.

At this point I tried to bring the Sarmations forward to attack the rear of the Roman centre, but failed the command rolls. Then to my horror, die rolls revealed that the battle would end on move 6. It was so frustrating. The Romans were completely wide open to having their left flank crushed. My ranks were somewhat bowed backward in the centre but this had exposed the Roman attack to a repeat of Canae. But with the battle ending this was not to be.

However all that confusion and having to fight on our terms meant the Romans had suffered a lot of casualties. When these were totalled up and compared to Dacian losses it was obvious that the victory was with Dacia by a wide margin. The game was a lot of fun and ran fairly easily despite the number of troops involved.

In two weeks we will be fighting a siege game.

"Sounds like yall had a good time!!!"

Dude!