"Hail Caesar : Seleucids v Romans - Devon Wargames Group" Topic

Hi all

As one of three games played at the Devon Wargames Group last month, I have posted a report on an Hail Caesar Game in 15mm that a couple of the guys ran.

If you would like to find out how our mighty clash of arms turned out then just follow the link to the club blog.

devonwargames.blogspot.co.uk

I should mention that the Devon Wargames Group is one of the longest established clubs in the South West of England, meeting once a month in Exeter and regularly hosting historical games from many eras and themes. We strive to be very welcoming of potential new members and any visitors to Exeter who would enjoy a days wargaming. So if you are interested in knowing more, take some time to look at the games we run and feel free to get in contact.

Jonathan

Really enjoyed that report. Must give HC a go one of these days…

Cheers,
Aaron

I've always wondered how HC would look/play in 15mm. Thanks.

I always like to see the Romans loose except when I command them!

Good report Jonathan, thanks.

Romans in small units we find are very powerful, especially when stacked side by side against say a standard pike unit. Agree with you about cataphracts – not worth the money under HC. Give me HC with kontos or lance instead.

Garry

For 15mm I wanted a set of rules that allowed me to field large volume,be unit based ,have some command and control and all to be playable within a reasonable time limit. Although HC is seen as mainly a 28mm set (15mm gets one page ) it does give me all of the above for my 15mm collection . Oddly for 28mm I still play WAB ( without superheroes) as I find figure removal more enjoyable in that scale.HC like all rules of course does have some things I don't like however you always have the option of playing with house rules to solve your particular qualms or not.
Take Cataphracts for example, we tried improving the armour save to +3 and costing accordingly, but this seemed a bit too good when we tried it out, next we may instead make them Stubborn which gives an extra saving roll attempt , however in the game above we played as per the rules with only the extra protection from archery .
Romans with a second line supporting are very dangerous as they can move through each other without penalty ( Drilled)and they get Pilum in every first combat round.Thank goodness they dont have any decent cavalry.

Looks great. I had my first HC game last week. We used 6mm Seleukids vs Romans. Very enjoyable. Very bloody.

Jonathan,

Thanks for posting the link and for providing an enjoyable read. Like others I'm sure, I share your habit of having played HC for a number of times and still manage to forget and/or misunderstand a rule or two. As a solo wargamer, fortunately, there are no hard feelings, just worries about an early descent into senility.

Field and figures looked very nice! I take it that the game was played RAW (rules as written). Have you or your group developed any house rules? When I belonged to the Yahoo HC Forum, I know there were quite a few of these floating about.

I'm currently engaged with a reconstruction of Trebia. Later this year, I hope to rerun a Roman beach landing in Britain. (I tried this out when I first purchased HC and had some success with it.)

Thanks again for posting.

Regards,

Chris

Hi guys, thanks for the comments, glad you liked the report.

I should point out that I was only the facilitator for this AAR and photo taker, as I tend to do most of the report postings for the club, and that it is Mr Steve who set up the game, wrote the AAR and knows far more about HC and spear chuckers than me.

Regards all
Jonathan

Chris
This game was played RAW although we have tried out various tweaks as they occur like the Cataphract amendment mentioned above .
There are no set of house rules at the moment .
One thing that did concern us in the beginning was how easily a unit could be taken off with minimal "casualties" (eg.losing its first fight by just 1) by then throwing terrible morale dice . We don't have a workable change for this yet but it is the same for both sides , it just seems to affect me more than anyone else.

I appreciate this a lot!

Until 15mm and indeed 10mm get addressed properly, the rules won't get as much traction here in North America as there is a huge base in these smaller scales. Glad to see that things work in smaller scales as I suspected.

I do wonder why Cataphracts aren't effective or is this a point value vs. Heavy Cavalry comparison?

Cataphracts have the same H2H save and attack values as Heavy Cavalry , they quite rightly move more slowly and anyone shooting at them have a -1 on their roll to hit.
Most people therefore prefer to spend their points on HvCy instead. The tricky problem is how to change them without making them super tanks which they weren't. I think we will try the Stubborn addition next time and see what happens.
In the Game we fought it was irrelevant as they never got involved due to the Romans disgracefully dying so quickly and they were unable to keep up with the victorious wing turning in on the Roman centre. As they dropped further back and out of group movement range then of course they were always the last unit to be rolled orders for and sometimes they missed out.Lesson learned was put them either in front of the attack or as a central reserve . Heaven knows I needed one .
Regarding 10/15mm games. I no longer want rules that involve removing casualties and instead either use tiny dice as hit markers or some other method like hoops but stamina in HailC works just as well . Multiple figures per base but with some bases and not one giant base.See above for the rest of my requirements .
There was one event in the game which was a talking point regarding combat and that was my left hand Pike block losing 5 or 6 rounds of H2H and still hanging on. In rules with casualties then they would have been wiped out however my next 2 units wouldn't have run away after just 1 round. So Stamina or Casualties doesn't really matter as long as the results are consistent .

Is it right that they move more slowly?
Slow moving cataphracts is something wargame rules often have, but I wonder how much historical basis it has.
Armour generally causes horses (and men) to get tired more quickly, not to move more slowly.

Very nice AAR and pics, Dave!

I have been playing and enjoying Hail Caesar in 15mm since the rules were first released. I always enjoy hearing about other folks using HC to fight battles this size/scale.

Cheers,
Scott

Dexter, it isn't the armor weight that slowed them down but the fact they went below the knees on the horses preventing a full gallop.