In a 6 player game, hosted by the Army of Central Maryland, the first playtesting of what I hope to be a Historicon event was played.

The scenario was one where the Romans must force a river crossing, then batter the waiting Dacian raiders out of the way. The forces totaled to about 325ish points, so less troops were on the table than in a tournament game. Each side was given a list of strategic options to take to allow for variation.

There were some special scenario rules used, including not allowing Dacian light cavarly to frontally charge--forcing them into a missile platform and flank nipper role. There were also no generals--each player was given 3 orders to work his tribe or cohorts, and that was that.

The Romans elected to flank march a sizeable portion of their army (allowing about half to deploy across the river), while the Dacians opted for 4 stands of Sarmatian cavalry.

The Dacians elected to deploy well off the bridge at first, and the Romans handily marched across it with the first cohort. Additionally the flank marchers arrived immediately, surprising the Dacian player unlucky enough to be covering that side of the board. Even worse for him, the Romans had sent the Veterans that way with all the Auxilliaries and Alae Cavalry.

Perhaps spurred by this, the other two Dacian players marched forward, and attacked the bridge area. The Romans were methodical however. Lined up in Testudo formation, they were nearly invulnerable from the archers and swirling light cavalry sent to slow them down and weaken them. The Sarmatians managed to overrun some Auxiliary archers with a long charge, but wound up out of arrows, down a stand, and thoroughly disordered from chasing the survivors into swampy ground. Meanwhile the Romans were winning the maneuver battle in the cramped quarters, deftly exploiting their trained status. The Dacians responded by piling in as many units as they could cram at the point of attack.

On the far flank, the Romans had caught the Dacians out of position and unprepared. First the Roman cavalry leapt out to a stunning win over a warband unit (which failed its morale test for loose order charged in the open by cavalry), then the Veterans and Auxilia followed to smash two more hammer blows into the warbands. The Auxilia destroyed a stand of skirmishers, then chased them off, clearing a huge hole in the Dacian flank. A Veteran cohort, four stands strong tackled a massive eight stand large warband. The fighting was savage, with the Veterans managing to kill four and the warband three models. But, left unsupported, disordered, and having lost its first round combat bonuses, the warband was now a mob ripe for the pickings. Quickly the western flank disintegrated.

At the bridgehead, however, things bogged down. Despite a tricky series of deploy orders, the Romans weren’t quite able to get the push needed to spring the waiting legions. Although the combat was rough and tumble, the Romans were not able to push any further past the bridge despite several turns to slugging it out with the warbands.

So it all came down to the success of the flank marchers. Unfortunately for the Romans, despite stunning and rapid successes in combat, the far flank failed to move with speed against the knots of Dacians bottling up the bridge crossing. Instead a slow and cautious approach was taken, giving the retreating Dacians time to recover and move in a second line. The chance had been there, but the door slammed shut.

Finally, left to their own devices, the main Roman assault physically forced enough space for four cohorts to get across the bridge. However, the Sarmatians were waiting for the Dacian collapse. Seeing the possibility many turns in advance, the player controlling the victorious Sarmatians had recovered them back up to good order, and got them out of the swamp to wind up facing the flank of the Romans as they left their square in pursuit of the exhausted warbands. Wasting no time, they rode an entire Cohort down, exposing the others to further assaults. After this, the main attack quickly turned into a massacre with Romans streaming across back the bridge spreading panic and disorder.

The flank marchers never came within command range, sealing the fate of the attack column, and the game! The Dacians won decisively by being flexible with their tactics, opportunistic with their maneuvers, and bold with their orders. It was the first game of Ancient Warfare for most of the players present, and a good time was had by all.

Raid on Dacia!

In a 6 player game, hosted by the Army of Central Maryland, the second scenario of Rome versus Dacia was played. The scenario is set at around roughly 80 A.D., during a time when the distracted empire simply couldn’t commit additional resources to fight the unruly and united Dacian tribes. The Dacians had been raiding Moesia aggressively, and the governor sent a full legion on a punitive mission.

Wholly unafraid of Roman power, the local tribes chose to meet the might of Rome at a point several miles from their village, a strong position of dense forests and steep mountains. In game terms, the field was virtually littered with terrain, with a roughly diagonal line of hills already occupied by Dacian Warbands, archers, and the fanatic Falxers. Young warriors were thrown up in a screen, and the Noble skirmish cavalry was all deployed on the most open flank.

For their part, the Romans formed up in a classic two line formation, with the Auxiliaries and poor morale cohort in the front line, with a clear intention of making use of the Roman order rules. In a very Romanish, and interesting twist of fate, a father and son combination was playing as the East and West flanks of the Romans. The Father was on the Eastern, wide open flank and commanded all the Roman cavalry. Covering the West flank was his son, who was forced to do so with no cavalry support at all.

Although in a very commanding position, the Dacian players elected to launch an all out attack. Leaving their hilltop positions behind, the swarmed down to meet the Romans. At first this played directly into the Roman’s hand. The lead Auxiliaries leapt out to attack the warbands, the Roman cavalry chased off the skirmishers and launched a series of long charges into the loose order Dacian warbands, and it looked like several units would be sent reeling back into the forests whence they came.

On the Western flank, the heavy Roman cavalry proved deadly in the wide open terrain. Holding one unit back in reserve, the Roman “pater” repeatedly used the other as a battering ram to confound the Dacian player opposing him. With a very severe command and control problem, both sides found it hard to take all the actions they needed to take to keep up with the lightning pace of the game. The six stand unit of Dacian skirmish cavalry never was activated to counter the Roman cavalry, for instance. Instead skirmishers and archers were used to slowly wear down the attack, and “blow” the horses. When finally fragmented, the Roman cavalry began a series of retreat orders (at half speed to avoid a rout), that would last until the end of the game.

In the center, disaster! The poor morale cohort’s flank was left exposed due to an awkwardly located woods, from which sprang a warband. Collapse soon followed and the raw recruits were unable to flee far enough to escape. Additionally, the Auxiliaries performed very poorly indeed and managed to lose every combat. The player controlling these troops rolled a “Terry-like” series of “1’s” for the random combat result, charge bonus’s, and morale checks. In fact I think he rolled the minimum possible for the first 6 turns or so for every single roll. Worse, lacking the orders to keep up, the second line was unable to utilize the Roman order to recover the situation, as they had been left a full foot behind the aggressive front line. By the time they arrived to help, it was simply too late. The broken front line was a disaster, three cohorts were wiped out and disorder was spread among the rear ranks. It was up the Veterans to hold out from the Dacian attack, much less spear head any kind of attack.

On the Western flank, lacking cavalry support and facing a well defended hill the “son” player spread out his forcers and attacked with the confidence of youth. Despite being outfoxed by a more experience player, his Romans seemed to have no problems with random die rolls or morale checks. In fact, the extreme legion cohort require no less than five units to finally collapse its stubborn resistance. This bought time for a bold and successful assault on a difficult and well defended hill. Multiple units of Fanatics, archers, and warbands were crushed by the perpetually disordered forces here, with one cohort of Legionnaires pursuing to nearly the opposite table edge, before being recalled to catch the final Fanatic unit in a pincer move. The Fanatic unit, already disordered, lost in combat, was pushed back (and fragmented) directly into this returning unit for yet another disorder maker, causing a rout.

In the center, the Veterans made a stout defensive stand against the wildly charging and mostly exhausted warbands, stopping them cold and forcing them back. The Veterans had defend orders, and kept their ranks in good order. There was no second wave however, as the Dacians here had seen enough and routed with failed morale. Amazingly though, one cohort charged and defeated his opposite, pursuing and striking a warband who was partially in a woods. A new combat was resolved immediately (as per the new rules—this happened several times this game), and the Romans wound up sucked into the forest by the rules on stand alignment. Since only a small portion of the Dacian stand was out of the woods, it fell to the player that won the initiative to align the stands. The Dacians had won the initiative that turn, and chose to align the Legion into the woods, causing a disorder. The next two combat rounds in a row, the Romans managed to roll over a “9”, and the Dacian player to roll a “1” (which he needed), and then another “1”, to somehow pull out a miracle win. If you wish to look good as an ancients gamer, there is a player in Central Maryland who can assist you.

Finishing up the far East flank, the second Roman cavalry unit took up where the first left off, catching the Dacian skirmish cavalry stationary (he chose to receive the charge to flank the Roman cavalry), but was unable to rout them before the disaster in the woods ended the game. The Roman and Dacian archers locked horns as well on this flank. First in an archery duel, then in actual hand to hand combat. No result was reached however before the loss of the Legionnaires ended the game.

The final result of this bloodbath, was that both armies broke on the same turn! The Dacians had a break point of eight units, and wound up losing ten. The Romans had a break point of five units, and managed to lose just that. Total points lost were much greater on the Roman side (the Romans had over 20% more points of troops in this scenario, while the Dacians had favorable terrain to balance).

This game was wildly enjoyable, and really demonstrated how the best military of its day had such a rough time with what can only been seen as a relatively poor military in terms of sophistication. Terrain had an enormous impact, and allowed the Dacian tribes to really take it to the civilized Romans. Still, this game left so many “what-if’s”. What if the Romans had managed to utilize the Roman order rules? What if the players hadn’t been so ham-strung for orders? What if the Dacians had sat back on the hills?

This scenario was so fun that I intend to run it at Historicon, and hope that it inspired some of the foot barbarian and Roman players alike!