The Portable Ancient Wargame in 20mm

Having fallen for larger 24-figure heavy infantry units, I painted up an additional box of HAT Roman Hastati/Velites and a box of Princepes/Triarii, which let me field a Roman Republic army of 2 units each Hastati/Principes/Triarii, plus 2 Velites and 2 heavy cavalry. This a paper strength of 36 strength points the ancient rules in Developing the Portable Wargame.

Initial Carthage positions.

To face them Carthage brought 37 points consisting of 3 Libyan heavies, an Iberian heavy, Gallic heavy tribesmen, 1 Libryan heavy cavalry, 3 Numidian light horse, an Iberian light infantry unit and a unit of Balearic slingers.  The table was set using the blind tile draw from my Italian Wars battle generator and deployments determined using a randomizer I drafted for use in Late Roman games. 

Draft ancients deployment table.

Carthage rolled a "1" and Rome a "5".  I need to add a subset for deployment of elephants, although for this game I just counted them as the heavy infantry.  With the table set, Carthage was attacker so went first.

After second turn.

After one round of moves, both sides shifted sideways so as to be across from each other in the open, flat ground.  Carthage sent the 3 units of Numidian light horse forward to harass the outnumbered Roman cavalry on the opposite flank.  The Romans moves velites, hastati, and a cavalry unit forward on its right in a demonstration to scare off any Carthagenian flank moves.

Roman heavy infantry line.

Carthagenian heavy infantry line.

With just one Numidian horse doing quite well at keeping the Roman left cavalry at bay, the other two Numidian units scurried across the field and made javelin attacks against principes and triarii by the woods. Unlike some previous games, I read (and remembered!) the rule that a light infantry, light cavalry, or elephant unit may make a double move if testing and passing on a 5+. Light cavalry and especially the light infantry became much more dynamic as a result. 

Both sides positioning their lines, while Numidian horse harasses the Roman right.

Numidian horse engaging Roman cavalry on Roman left.

Numidian horse skirmishing with Roman infantry on Roman right.

With the opposing lines of infantry now fully lined up with each other, the Numidian horse passed through their friend lines and guarded against a possibly flank attack by Roman cavalry. The Roman heavy infantry line had the option of being the first to charge into close combat, but opted to move one square forward and throw pila instead (pushing back one Libyan heavy infantry and dropping a SP on another).

Pre-contact. Roman pila have driven some Carthagenian infantry back.  Numidian horse has moved to extreme Carthagenian left to fend off potential flanking move by Roman cavalry and velites.

Roman infantry arrayed with hastati on flanks, principes in middle, and triarii in reserve.

Carthage elected to throw the punch, however.  They caused some lost SPs and took some lost SPs, but overall the lines remained "locked in."  The critical action was that the Iberians on the Carthagenian right were able to sweep Roman velites aside and flanked the adjacent hastati.

And the clash - the Iberian infantry in the foreground dispatched the velites securing this flank and were then able to turn and flank the Roman hastati, who were also attack to their front by Libyan heavy infantry...

This hastati unit promptly fell from 3 SP remaining to 1 SP...

Hastati with three of four SPs lost...

...and then to zero. Coupled with a lost cavalry unit and lost velites, along with lost SP up and down teh line, the Romans had lost 12 of 36 points so were over their exhaustion point (with Carthage still at 9 or 10 lost).  This meant that Rome could not move towards enemy units anymore, although it could shoot at units in range and could engage in close combat with enemy still adjacent. The game would end when one side or the other lost a full 50% of starting SPs (taken from The Portable Pike & Shot Wargame).

Hastati destroyed. This pushed Romans past exhaustion point.

The Romans succeeded in destroying the Gallic infantry and pushing back the elephants, and pushing Carthage past its exhaustion point, but in the process the Romans also slipped past the 50% mark and victory went to Carthage.

End game. The Gallic heavy infantry on the Carthagenian left has been routed.

The defeated Roman general.

The victorious Carthagenian general.

When I first purchased Developing the Portable Wargame, it was so I could use the ancients rules for my Italian War collection and my Late Roman collections.  I had increased the size of my 20mm plastics ancients armies pre-pandemic, resulting a few Hail Caesar games, but between the somewhat absurdly long-to-play battle of Dertosa game, and the swingy combat results in the Scarponna game, I was considerbly less impressed with  Hail Caesar and wanting to try DtPW instead.  Like many of the previous Portable Wargame outings, I am again impressed with how a defeat seems to be related to a wrong decision rather than "a lot of 1s."  In this case, the Romans had an opportunity to have their heavy infantry attack en masse first, but did not pay attention to how close they really were to their exhaustion point, and opted for a round of throwing pila instead (to little effect).  This allowed the Carthagenians to make the en masse attack first, resulting in the turning of the Roman left flank and a victory for Carthage. 

These 20mm games are somewhat emotive for me.  When I became interested in wargaming again 10 years ago, I was initially drawn in by 54mm gaming (today manifest in my shiny Britains toy soldier games), but I also acquired the first four or six boxes of HAT 1/72 figures used in this very game (at a measely $5/box - they now cost $8-$9).  The eagle-eyed reader may notice that some figures are painted using a different technique and have a lot of chipping on spears and such (the chipping is because many of these little guys were relegated to being stored loosely in a cardboard shoebox for several years!).  So to have doubled the size of these armies, usually by painting more of the same sets I previously painted 10 years ago (to an arguably better standard!), its like an old friend from out of town coming to visit again.

The larger 24-figure units and resulting long lines of dense blocks are a big improvement visually, of course, and I look forward to some sort of campaign series, to be set either in Spain or Sicily.