Battle of Pharsalus 48BC using When Warriors Collide

 Introduction

This is game 59 in play testing my ancient rules by replaying historical battles.  I have gone back to free form movement on a 60cmx60cm table, compared to a 12x12 grid.  No other changes to the rules other than now using a ruler.  I don’t know whether I will go back to gridded for ancients or not.  Who knows?  This is the third time I have gone to gridded and back out again. (Spoiler: I did for Game 63 onwards)

Update: After the first melee, I changed the results table for melee and missile and added back in disorder (hits) and some reactive moves.  So it reintroduces some of my older mechanisms back in but the results table is cleaner (it looked more like DBA with each unit type having their own results – now it is a single table with limited unit types referenced.   I could not help myself but adding in reactions for solo play.

This is the 4th last game I played using rules loosely based on Ancients Battlelines Clash.  It is posted a year after I played it. 

Battle of Pharsalus

In the midst of the Roman civil war, the two opposing generals face off in Greece.

Troops

Roman (Caesar)

Caesarean Roman line

4 HI (swords) elite

1 HI (swords) (represents the cohorts with the cavalry on the right flank)

2 LI

1 MC elite

1 Elite Leader

1 leader

Breakpoint: 10

 

Roman (Pompey)

Pompeian Roman line

8 HI (swords)

2 LI

4 MC

1 poor leader

Breakpoint: 13

Scenario changes

Mainly reduced the number of bases to fit onto a small table.  I used a normal HI (swords) to represent the 3000 (or thereabouts) legionaries Caesar had placed with the cavalry.

 

Deployment

Deployment, Caesar on the left, Pompey on the right

Game

End of first move of both sides see them closing quickly.

The battlelines close in.

Caesar, the cohorts and his cavalry charge the light infantry and rout them.  They then pursue into the Pompeian cavalry.  A few depletions.

Caesar in melee with the opposing cavalry

Another round of melee sees a Pompeian cavalry routed, and the accompanying Caesarean light infantry retire.

The opposing Roman legions meet.  Caesar’s legions roll badly, but then so does Pompey’s and it evens out.  Caesar’s legions are elite so may hold out longer.  The cavalry melee continues.

Legions melee in the centre

Two Pompeian legion is lost but the Caesarean legions are being depleted.    On the cavalry melee, two Pompeian cavalry are routed.  Caesar pursues one of them.  The remaining Pompeian cavalry unit wheels and charges the reduced legion in the flank but both remain in melee.

Cavalry flank now has less of Pompey’s units.

Another legion of Pompey’s lost in the centre.  The cavalry on the flank of Caesar’s heavy infantry rolls badly and routs.

Pompey’s side is broken.

This breaks the army of Pompey and Caesar has won.   

 

Rule changes

I updated the movement rules to work without grids.  I added in some reaction moves when fired at or an enemy moves into a Zone of Control.   While most units can take two hits, heavy infantry can take three.  I have wanted to do this for a long time and it really works here showing the grind of heavy infantry melees.

 

Verdict

I really liked the way the game played out and the interactions.  I did play about a dozen games previous to this game with the 12x12 grid and no “hits” (mostly with 6mm figures), 

Holiday games – battle reports for WW2 and Ancients and some SF RPG

Introduction

It seems my gaming mojo is increasing.  We were going to the beach at Cooloongatta for a family 5 day holiday; so I thought why not take the three portable games I have recently been interesting in playing?

I managed to get in some Ancient games, a WW2 game and some SF RPG action.  There is a detailed report for each.  Some of the photos are a little poor as I was using my phone and I have not a lot of practice of using my phone in documenting battle in progress. 

Portability

Into a document box (40cmx30cmx7cm) I packed a grassy A4 page for the WW2 game, an 8x8 small gridded timber square (I will use the plain reverse side for the SF stuff), three boxes containing the 6mm WW2, 6mm ancients and some 20mm railway figures that I use for my SF RPG games.  I also packed some ww2 terrain and a one page QRS for each game.

Unopened - picked this up second hand for a few dollars and put in the centre veneer feature to cover up a crack

Opening the box.  WW2 terrain in the plastic packet on the left (under it is 6mm ww2 forces), top is 6mm ancients box, lower is 20mm railway figures.  At the far let next to the box are the A4 QRSs.

Blurry but this is with two figure boxes removed - on the left  is the 6mm ww2 box that was under the terrain packet, some large (Society of Ancients) dice (each figure box also has smaller dice in them as well).   The a4 grassy page and the 8x8 gridded timber square also shown.

Ancients

I have modified Phil Sabin’s Phalanx to work on an 8x8 square grid and with about 6-8 units a side (rather than the standard 10). The number of commands is reduced by 1.  I start play with the units deployed for battle – I am more interested in how the battle played out than the deployment from camp as per Phalanx.  On holidays, I decided to play Marathon as it was easy to setup.  I managed to play it 6 times on one day as each game was only about 5-10 minutes.  This was because the Athenian breakpoint was after the loss of 2 units and this happened a lot. After playing the game I considered should I add a unit to the Athenian side?  It was only when I finished for the day I remembered the Defence Bonus for phalanxes if being attacked from only non-phalanx units.   I played two games the next day with the correct Defence Bonus and both were nail–biters.

And then I played the Battle of Hydaspes just to do something different.  I do a full battle report for it below.

Battle of Marathon

Athenians

2 Hoplites

3 Hoplites – poor

Persians

1 Heavy Infantry (Archers)

2 Heavy Infantry –poor (Archers)

4 Medium infantry (Archers)

Notes:

Poor units subtract one from the Fortunes of War die.

Heavy Infantry attacking Medium Infantry get an Attack Bonus.

Archers being attacked from the flank give the attackers an Attack bonus.

Selection of Marathon game photos

A selection of photos over the 6 or so games.

Marathon setup

Persians (top) attccking a hoplite (with the green marker)

Hoplites attacking some Sparabara (with green marker)

Hoplites successfully routed the Immortals (where green marker is)

General (unit with cavalry) and others have routed a hoplite (where green marker is)

Bonus Battle – Battle of Hydaspes

I thought I would give the Battle of Hydaspes a go as well.  I know the units fairly well as it is a favourite battle of mine.

Macedonian

3 Phalangites

1 Heavy Cavalry – good with general

1 Heavy Cavalry

1 Light infantry

1 Light Cavalry

3 Command points

Indian

2 Elephants, one with general

1 Chariot

3 Medium Infantry (Archers)

1 Medium Cavalry

Note:

Medium Cavalry being attacked by heavier cavalry give the Attackers an Attack bonus

2 Command points

Game

The forces deployed.

Deployment.  Porus at the bottom, Alexander at the top.

The Indian Cavalry charges into the Greek Heavy Cavalry.

Right flank cavalry charge

With the assistance of some Indian infantry, the Indian cavalry routs the Heavy cavalry

Macedonian cavalry routed

The two elephants, with Porus, charge into a phalangite unit and it is routed

Macedonians lose a pike unit in the centre.

On the Macedonian left flank, an Indian heavy infantry is routed by Pikes and Peltasts, but the Indian Cavalry is positioned on the flank.

Indian cavalry flanks a light infantry

And it is gone.

In the centre, two Pike units are ready to inflict some damage.

Pikes lined up against the Elephants and Archers

And the archers are routed.

On the Macedonian right flank, finally Alexander and his Companions charge into the enemy Chariots.

Companions facing the Indian chariots

The Indians have lost 3 units and are broken. Macedonians win!

And the Chariots are routed!  Position at end game.

Thoughts on Phalanx

I am not sure how long I will keep using Phalanx but it is fun to play.  I really like how it works and shows the challenges faced by each commander in the historical battles. But it is so fast!  I may tire of it soon; it provides interesting and challenging games but can see I may want something that has a bit more chaos and so more solo friendly.  I am already working on a version with more dice rolling J

WW2

I orginally did setup this scenario to play with other rules and not on a grid.  Bt never played it. I chose this to play on my A4 4x3 grid as it seemed it would easily translate to the small grid.  I looked over my ww2 4x3 grid rules from a year ago and could see no changes required.

The scenario is A Bridge too Late from the web magazine Frontline Observer.  The scenario is still available at the Wayback Machine.

Scenario

A small British force have managed to take a bridge across a canal into a town that the Germans are defending.  British reinforcements are coming from another side of the town.  The Germans win if they can take the bridge back and prevent the British from taking it back for as long as possible. (British minor victory if hold the bridge and 50% casualties inflicted by turn 8, major victory if hold the bridge until turn 11). 

I modified the forces slightly to match what I had brought with me.

German

5 sections with 1 platoon leader

2 Panzer IVG

Breakpoint: 4 lost.

British

The British force

1 section (bridge defenders)

Reinforcements (may enter turn 2 onwards):

    4 sections with 1 platoon leader

    2 Sherman M4

Breakpoint: 4 lost.

Terrain grid (4x3)

Buildings     Buildings     Buildings    <river+bridge> Light cover

Buildings     Light cover Building      <river>              Light cover

Light cover  None          Light cover <river>               Light cover

Game

Deployment sees the Germans focus on the rear buildings to protect the bridge.  An advance Gruppe is in the centre to stall a British advance that is likely to focus on coming up the right side of the village.  A single British section holds the bridge on the other side of the river.

Deployment.  British will enter from the bottom of the image.  One section is the bridge defenders (top right)

The 4x3 grid.  I have highlighted the one square that sees all the action (bit of a spoiler).

The Germans spot the Brirish bridge defenders and fire with everything they have.  The defenders are routed! (rolled all 5’s and 6s’!)

The Germans fire at the bridge defenders

The British reinforcements enter.

Two British sections supported by a Sherman enter on the right flank.

The Germans react and move an extra Gruppe in to support the Gruppe in the centre.  They also move one Gruppe to the other side of the bridge as that will help with victory.

Germans reinforce the centre building

The British assault the building.  The Germans fire at them as they advance but miss entirely! In the ensueing close range battle all the infantry on both sides are supressed.   The Germans are forced to retreat as the British have an unsuppressed Sherman in the same area..

The British assault!

The Germans retreat

In the centre the British bring on most of the remaining force - 2 sections, a Sherman and  the commander.

Most of the remaining British force enter in the centre.

The Germans throw everything they can into the centre building occupied by the British – 2 Gruppe, the commander and a tank.

The Germans assault the British occupied building.

Poor German dice rolling and excellent British dice rolling see the Panzer IV and a Gruppe destroyed and the other Gruppe suppressed.   The Gruppe is forced to retreat.  The British force it still intact (although suppressed).  This is not good for the Germans if they cannot dislodge the British.

Panzer IV destroyed.

 

Germans retreat

The British attempt to unsuppress the sections but one routs and the other remains suppressed.  The Germans take this opportunity to then assault with what they have left and able to move - one Gruppe and one Panzer IV.  The Gruppe is suppressed while assaulting.  In the ensuing firefight the Sherman and Panzer IV are destroyed, leaving one Gruppe and one British section.

The Germans assault with what they have left and can move.

A Gruppe and a section is all that remain of the firefight.

The other British force splits  - one advancing in the centre and the other Sherman, a section and leader into the contested building.

The British advance into the centre an contested building

The British lose a section in the melee.  They are at their breakpoint (the Germans are one away from theirs) and decide to cut their losses and retreat.  The Germans hold the bridge and so score a victory!

 Thoughts

Really enjoyed this game.  At the end of my last blog post of a 3x4 game a year ago I wrote I was thinking of expanding the game to 6x4 so I could play scenarios, as most scenarios are designed for 6’x4’ tables.  I think I will be fine with 3x4 – the above scenario was designed for a 6’x4’ table.  I will look over for scenarios that may convert easily to 3x4.  I am surprised the ww2 3x4 rules have held up – I made no changes to the rules to play them this time.  Normally there is some situation that comes up I have not thought about and need to tweak them slightly.  I guess the simplicity of them helps so that they don’t need much changing anymore.

I am still going to keep playing the Operation Jupiter campaign in 20mm, just need to decide on rules J

 

SF RPG

I have been playing around with solo SF RPGing for quite a few years and chop and change my own rules all the time.  This time around, I am reusing some rules I wrote late last year and played though about 20 adventures with them.  I have removed most of the modifiers to the various tables so just about everything to set up scenes, encounters, NPCs etc is just a straight 1d6 roll.   I have also made it a lot more friendly to a single PC being in the game. The only exception ito straight rolls are task rolls – there are 6 tasks and have 1-2 modifiers.  I also made the tasks similar in results to make it more consistent.  And it all fits onto 2 (dense) pages.  If you are familiar with Two Hour Wargames Lovecraft’s Revenge it sort of follows that framework but with some Two Hour Wargames 5150 New Beginnings Quick Play type encounters.

Game

This is not so much as narrative as describing the game events.  There are only pictures for the first few scenes.  As I was using a single 2 sided A4 sheet to play the game, I did not have room to put in my normal narrative tables to flesh out NPC names nor descriptions of objects, clue, locations, obstacles, hazards etc.

Opening scene

Yent is a hospitality worker from an industrial, worker background seeking atonement.  Yent skills are excellent physical, excellent technical and good social.  They are armed with a handgun and also have a tech kit.  Yent is starting in Leewin, a rough area of the planet.  They are looking for someone highly experienced to give them an aim in life (objective: find person, class: Achiever).

Yent

Yent encounters a hazard (table and chairs as I had them in the box) and loses some funds to fix things after he fell over them.

Yent with tables and chairs

Oops

Yent meets a cunning mechanic and try to obtain some information but the mechanic knows nothing (result= ignore).

Finally Yent meets a Commander who tells Yent about some lost treasure to seek.

Yent meeting the commander

Scene 1

The Commander asks to be escorted to the nearby desert location. On the way they meet some workers that provide some advice (in rules terms a hint that provides a +1 bonus to a subsequent die roll). 

Yent get some advice from a worker

They then are approached by a ganger. Yent’s extremely poor attempt at negotiation sees the ganger draw their handgun and shoot at Yent, but misses. Yent returns fire and the ganger drops to the ground.

Finally they reach the desert but two shady dealers jump them.  They shoot at Yent but Yent manages to make a run for it and escape.

Yent not going very well in negotiating with some criminals (the two figures to the right).

They have reached the destination, Yent hoping the Commander will help with a clue.  Yent fails miserably to extract a clue from the Commander.  What is worse the Commander takes extreme offense and tries to melee with Yent who runs away.  

There was a lot of really bad dice rolling for Yent when talking to others.

Scene 2

Yent needs to travel to the rural area to hopefully get a clue through investigative methods. After overcoming an obstacle, Yent questions an entertainer and gets some information. They successfully talk their way out of trouble with some criminals before meeting a Patron.  Tough talking get more relevant information.  Meeting another high achiever reveals nothing.  Yent finally gets the information to put everything together by talking to a senior bureaucrat on their own estate.

Scene 3

Staying in the rural area, Yent needs to find an object.  Yent manages to overcome a hazard on the way to the plantation that may hold a clue.  It does and Yent manages to find the object that provides  another clue to seek the lost treasure.

We will leave the adventures of Yent here (as that is as far as I have played!).

Post-game

After the encounters I played out above I realise I have set the roll required for a task success too high – on average a PC is going to succeed at a task about 50% of the time (after modifiers) i.e. a 4+ on a d6.  In my games, PCs are larger than life and should be doing better than that.  So I have since changed the rules and now success will average 2/3rds of the time, a 3+ on a 1d6. 

Holiday verdict

Well, it worked.  I packed a game for each era into a box and played at least one game from each.  So my mojo cannot be that low – I did not have to force myself to play.  My focus since the holiday has been on the 8x8 ancient rules.  But who knows how long that lasts before I am distracted by something else.  Actually, I have been distracted by the Shooting’ Iron rules I found recently. Simple 1d6 rules for Wild West skirmish but I am using some old Warhammer 40K figures I have to test them out.  Simpler than Fistful of Lead and alternate figure activation – will see how I go! 

600,000 views and 13 years

Introduction

Well my blog has reached 600,000 views.  Looking at Google Analytics that includes about 60% bot hits, but let us not dwell on that. It has been going 12 or 13 years.  Why 12 or 13?  Followers may have noticed I have posted nothing for a year.  So you could say is lasted 12 years, or that it still exists and so 13 years :-)

Addressing the last year then.  The good news is that I am still doing wargaming, just less playing and no posting.  My mojo was low for both FTF play and also solo, especially solo. And with not much for playing, none for posting.  I was fine playing both sides for 10 years - somewhere is the last few years I have lost that ability!  I madly write lots of rules but when it gets to playing them I rarely get it set up and usually not that far. And then write some new rules, and then not play them either etc.  

I am still playing occasionally (and have a lot of draft rules :-)) and my interest seems to have recently picked up in blogging and playing, so you may see some posts out of me this year.

My gaming spans mainly Ancients, WW2 and solo SF skirmish/role play so will discuss them each as I have done some in each over the last year.

Ancients

I played four more of the Peter Sides’ ancient battle scenarios about May-June 2022 and they mostly written up but need an hour or so each to finish and just don’t have the energy.  

A melee from the Pharsalus battle.

About 18 months ago I play a dozen or so games of my modified ABC rules without marker on a 12x12 grid.  It worked OK but the no markers thing really needed other rules, not a modified set of mine. Not a big fan of DBA 2 onwards (don’t mind DBM), I thought about playing DBSA (the precursor to DBA) but then modified it to add elements of DBA 1.0, then made it work with a single die roll for combat, then made them for a 12x12 grid and added in some reaction moves.   I did actually play the resulting rules a few times and they were fun but so many recoils!  The DBx game mechanisms rely on recoils as it has no unit degradation and for its command and control system.  The system is so elegant but without recoils the game doesn’t work so well.

DBSA derived game playtesting, on a grid

So I looked at a few other ancient rules without markers.  I tried Phil Sabin’s Phalanx rules out but found that a) they don’t work as well when you set them up as a deployed battle (compared to the rules where they deploy out of a camp) and b) I could not keep track of the modifiers.  But I did like Phalanx and may go back to it (spoiler – I did go back to Phalanx).  I also tried Ritter – markerless and diceless - but it is not for me playing solo but a really well thought out diceless system.  I may get back to Ritter as well someday.

I was playing with 6mm forces on a 12x12 grid but really wanted to use my 15mm based figures but will small forces.  I had done a 1’x1’ board before so why not try my favourite rules – Armati 2 – with just the core forces (about 5-7 bases) on a 1’x1’ table at Intro scale.  I love Armati 2 – it to me feels a little like a chess game.  And that is the problem with only a few units and little manoeuvre.  You can see what is going to clash with what and have a really great idea how the game is going to play out.  Ah well, the normal game size is where these rules shine.

Intro Armati 2 - core units only on a 30cmx30cm (Macedonian Vs Indian)

I then started to look at other rules and then went back to DBSA.  But quickly pivoted to DBA and then I realised maybe I could handle a marker.  So looked at my favourite single marker game – Bill Banks Ancients (BBA) and looked again at DBSA, then added in BBA components.  But haven’t played a game yet.  And still haven’t.  I did go back to Phalanx, redid the modifiers chart to make it easier to follow, modified movement slightly to work on an 8x8 grid and did play from deployment rather than from a camp.  I found after a few test games with deployed forces it worked quite well after all.  There should be some blog posts on historical games with Phalanx coming.

Phalanx on an 8x8 grid. Midway through Battle of Taurus 39BC.

WW2

So my last WW2 game was on an A4 3x4 grid with 6mm forces.  I was expanding it to play on a larger 5x6 grid and then thought I should try and play with my 20mm stuff.  So I went back to my rules but was looking for something where could have 3 figures (or bases for 6mm) per section.  I did play one 6mm game with the WRG 1st edition (1973) inspired rules (I just streamlined them a little) and they were ok.  So then I thought I could play a small game with 20mm and 3 figures  one section.  I set up the next Operation Jupiter game on a 2’x2’ table in my map drawers  It take place in a town so does not need a lot of space.  And then lost interest.

2'x2' setup ready for a ww2 game; still the same after 12 months.

I then streamlined the WRG rules a lot more, thought about a Five Men in Normandy campaign (using 5MiN rules) and then went back to the rules I used to use for 20mm games – Take Cover!!  I started streamlining them and realised I had been on this path before about 10 years ago.  So I grabbed those rules and updated them slightly and setup a game.  And then realised they did not work for 3 figures per section too well.  But did that matter anymore to me anyway? Not sure still.

30cmx30cm 6mm ww2 game with 3 bases = 1 section.

I remembered a draft version of 5Core Platoon Commander (no longer available) and wrote up a QRS for it as it could work quite well using 3 figures per section.  As you can see skipping around and not actually playing.  Nothing really capturing what I am looking for.  I then thought maybe I should go back and play some games of the A4 6mm games as I did enjoy them (spoiler: I did).

Recent ww2 6mm game on an A4 page in a document box.  

SF RPG

Over the last 5 years I have been doing some SF skirmish mainly in the wider context of solo SF RPGing.  The odd posting occurs on another blog just for these games.  In 2021 I wrote some fast play rules similar to some ones I wrote for WW2 skirmish.  I played about 20 games (they only take about 5 minutes each) but not really happy with them.  I toyed around with Fistful of Lead – Galactic Heroes and played a few games with them and quite enjoyed them but found they were not really suited to 2-3 figures a side, which is a common occurrence in my solo SF RPG games.  I tried to change to rules to be faster and more suitable to a small number of figures but was not happy with the result but will get back to Galactic Heroes as they are a lot of fun. 

Some Galactic Heroes with Heroquest figures and Battlesystems terrain

I was playing my solo SF RPG quite happily and then the Two Hour Wargames Quick Play Kickstarter was delivered and so I madly played two of the titles for a few months.  And got a hankering for more skirmish combat and thought about this for a while.

THW 5150 Quick play

And during this time also played a few games of Nordic Weasel’s Starport Scum (underrated but many elements now incorporated into Five Parsecs from Home 3rd Edition)  and Dwarfstar Games Star Smuggler.  I really like Star Smuggler but it takes a lot of effort to play and after a few weeks (game time) I found I just did not have the time to do it justice. I did rewrite bits to make it clearer and made the random events spread out over multiple planets.  I did play a turn a day (so game time = real time) which is one reason I found I had to invest too much time into it. But one day I might get back to it – it has a lot of interesting parts.

And then I thought, I really did like the solo SF RPG games I was playing in early 2022 so rejigged the rules a little and played a few rounds with them.  Still in playtesting as I write – I think I am making it too difficult to pass tasks. And I am still getting distracted by simple skirmish rules. 

An SF RPG scene (interaction) using 20mm railway figures.

Postscript

Anyway, I do have a Peter Sides scenario with Phalanx to post, as well as a holiday where I played some of the above games.  And four other Peter Sides scenarios that are nearly writte up.  Hopefully you will see these posts soon!