Well we actually got lead on the table last night in a 200 point per side trial outing, to see how things went and how much of the rule reading actually had stuck in our brains!
The points total delivered a Roman army of sixteen units matched against a Persian one of twenty.
We played 28mm armies with units having 80mm frontage using a 6ft x 6ft table which looked pretty good and provided plenty of space.
The Romans, being out numbered 2:1 in cavalry, decided to find a hill and stick to it. Forming up in two lines, with the Legions in the centre, screened by light troops. The Persians for their part also formed two lines, with their infantry in front, along with the Elephants and the Cataphracts making up the second line.
With the Romans confining themselves to shouting rude things in Latin, the Persians elected to attack, advancing the front line on their opponents.
It appears that the Persian player was still in "Hail Caesar" mode thinking that the infantry/elephant combo would disrupt the Roman line enough to allow the Cataphracts to steam in and finish the job.
Sadly it didn't work. The Roman light units managed to disrupt things sufficiently for the Legions to get in the first blow and the Persian infantry crumbled.
A spirited counter by the Cataphracts drove the Legions back causing some damage but with support from the second line the Romans managed to inflict punishment of their own and cling on to see the Persians run out of cards and lose on the "Exhaustion" rule – their army no longer capable of effective action.
The rules played smoothly and little time was wasted checking things we had forgotten. In fact with a little more self-confidence we could have done the whole game off the QRS.
The Persian player really needed to have read the rules more, to get a grip on troop abilities compared to other rules. More manoeuvres from him and the Romans would have had a tougher time of it.
Sending in the Cataphracts sooner would have seen a different game altogether, as would have using the Persian infantry to threaten a flank rather than butting heads, particularly if done at the same time.
There was an impression that committing to the offensive was "a good thing" – there is a big difference on all units between baseline Attack and Defence factors that means defenders have to commit higher value cards than attackers most of the time, although defenders always win a drawn result. Of course it's way too soon to see how that pans out over time.
Cards vanish at quite a rate, so the armies fatigue racks up in a manner that makes players think about what to do rather than drift along without a game plan and run out of cards.
We got a result in around two and a half hours which we thought fine for a first outing and would expect two to three hours with this size force to be a norm.
The card play itself is intuitive and we were soon in the swing, calling the numbers and outcomes in shooting and combat with ease and picking out the movement options in terms of how many ‘points' were available each turn, was very straight forward.
Only goof on the night was after the first two turns we forgot to give up the mandatory card at the end of each player turn that reflects the general growing fatigue level but that didn't affect the game at all. It was bad enough shedding cards each time a unit broke, any more cards falling by the wayside would have really put novice players on the rack!
Obviously we need loads more games with different players in different roles to see whether the rules control the outcomes over player skill, or vice versa but a very encouraging start.