Epirus vs Rome - The Portable Ancient Wargame

With games between a Syracusan army against a Carthaginian one and a Roman one in the books, the Romans stayed on the table and I changed out the Syracusans for a Epirote army.  Once again, I used the army list from DBA's first edition as a basis for an army from Epirus. This method surprising creates two armies of the same SP strength, or just a point or two off, so its an easy resource to add to the Portable Ancient Wargame toolbox.

Initial positions - Epirotes on left, Romans on right.

The Epirotes of Pyrrus thus ended up with four phalangite heavy infantry units, two hoplite heavies, two light infantry units (one with bows [2SP], one with javelins [3SP]) two heavy cavalry units, a light cavalry unit, and a unit of elephants.  The Romans had the same composition as the previous game - seven heavy infantry units, two heavy cavalry, and two light infantry with javelins (the velites).

Roman hastati in front of the woods. In retrospect, heavy infantry cannot enter wooded squares in The Portable Ancient Wargame, so that unit of principes in the woods wasn't right. I really need to sit down and outline a solid random deployment system.

The random terrain and deployment wasn't too weird this time, although I redrew one of the terrain tiles because the "big woods" tile came up.

Epirotes. I painted those phlangites and elephants in 2021 so its taken way too long for them to get on the table.

Both sides spent their first turns repositioning infantry from three lines in the center into a single battle line with perhaps a reserve of a single unit. The Epirotes sent their elephants from their center to their right, to support their two units of heavy cavalry against the Roman cavalry.

Romans make first move and start deploying into a proper battle line.
20mm figures do fill up a 6x4ish table quite nicely...

The Roman infantry, however, was able to take position on the crest of the small hill first.  This gives them a slight advantage in close combat rolls which would probably prove the decisive factor in the game.

 

Roman lines are now starting to take position atop the hill (slight bonus if attacked and enemy is fighting uphill). Epirotes are lining hoplites and phlangites up across from them.

The Epriote battle line.

 

Epirote elephants. Although there are two figures this counts as one unit.

Roman legions atop the hill looking at advancing Epirotes.

Epirotes have commenced the attack on Epirote left.

The Epirotes accordingly tried to focus their efforts on the flanks - with the Roman and Epirote heavy cavalry tried up on the Roman left, the elephants could hit the Romans in the flank. At the same time, Epirote light infantry and unopposed light cavalry could try and flank/overlap the Roman right flank anchored at the corner of the hill.

Phalangites vs legionaries.

Close combat has now commenced all across the table.

As it turned out, the Roman cavalry got he better of their Epirote counterparts, the elephants failed to really disrupt the Roman flank.  On the opposite flank, the Roman simply would not budge from the crest of the hill. 

Roman hastati are attack in front by hoplites and in flank by Greek light infantry.

Still, it was hard fighting all around.  Both generals fled when the units they were respectively attached to were routed. And both sides ended up past their exhausted point, so we entered the twilight of battle with both sides unable to advance towards each other, trying to push the other side past the 50% route mark using only units already in close combat proximity or ranged weapons.

A unit of phalangites is routed on Epirote left!

 

The game-winning close combat for the Romans was delivered by the Roman cavalry against the Epirote elephants, but once again the real game winner was the Roman heavy infantry, which threw back multiple attacks by phalangite, hoplite, and light troops alike.

End of game. Three of four phalangite blocks have been routed...

Rome could not be budged from the hilltop.

I am definitely finding that light infantry deployed at the flanks of the battle line is more effective than in front of it in a traditional skrimish role.  With thier seven full units of heavy infantry, the Romans are proving really difficult to beat, athough I've often wondered if sheer numbers of heavy infantry were the real secret to Roman success, and not the pila and/or three lines in a checkerboard formation or whaever (wargamers can never seem to decide if Romans of the Republcian era should be in three lines or in a checkerboard of blocks).  The results on the table certainly seem to indicate that having more heavy infantry than anything else is the way to go!

Epirote elephants were not effective.

Up next will tbe final round robin game, with Epirotes going up against a Late Carthaginian army, so there will be elephants all around!

Rome vs Syracuse - The Portable Ancient Wargame

Having played the first round-robin ancients game (Syracuse beating Carthage), now it was Rome's turn to have a go against Syracuse's hoplites and catapult artillery.  I again used the DBA 1e army list for Camillan Rome to determine the make up a Roman Republic army for the Portable Ancient Wargame (the rules to which are found in Developing the Portable Wargame).

Roman heavy infantry - the team to beat, for sure.

The Romans had seven heavy infantry units, two heavy cavalry, and two light infantry with javelins (the velites).  The Syracusans had five heavy infantry hoplite units, two heavy cavalry, one light cavalry, an artillery detachment, and two light infantry units: one with slings (2SP) an one with javelins (3SP).  Terrain was again randomized and I continued to toy around with the random deployment in three lines, with all heavy infantry in the center. 

Starting positions, Syracuse on right, Rome on left.

The heavy cavalry contingents for both armies ended up on opposite flanks, with the two Roman heavy cavalry squadrons opposed by the Syracusan light cavalry, while the Syracuse heavy cavalry was unopposed.

Roman light infantry and Syracuse light infantry and cavalry skirmish on Syracusan left.

The Syracusan artillery was ineffective this time, and the Roman velites performed very well and made a mess of things on the Syracusan left.  You would think this would clear the way for the Roman heavy cavalry to do something spectacular but they were rather ineffective instead.

Syracusan hoplites looking towards the light units skirmishing in the middle ground.

Roman Velites and Syracusans skirmishers in close combat.

The Romans were then able to start moving their heavies into sweep aside Syracusan light infantry. The Greek heavy cavalry, even unopposed by Roman cavalry, was not able to make effective attacks against the Roman right flank.

The Syracusan infantry line looks in better formation, but the Romans are making short work of the Syracusan lights, and the Syracusan cavalry to the left is not making headway.

Syracusan lights against Roman hastati and principes.

At last, the heavy infantry lines make contact...

Hastati flank the Syracusan left.

The hoplites of Syracuse are underwhelming.  The more numerous Romans start overlapping the ends of the Syracuse line and attacking hoplites in the flanks...

A big scrum.

Loses pile up for both sides, but Syracuse takes the worse of it, and the Roman's Italian allies anchoring the Roman left route a unit of hoplites to push Syracuse past 50% losses and give the Romans' the victory.

End of game. Syracuse right is quite disarrayed. Italian allies on left side have just dispatched a unit of hoplites.

Romans are tough to beat, the sheer number of heavy infantry tending to be resilient enough to make advantages in enemy light infantry or cavalry numbers moot.

A victorious Roman general surveys the field.

If I wanted to adhere more closely to the DBA 1e lists, the Syracusans could actually take another unit of hoplites and forget about the artillery. Unfortunately I do not have another unit of Greek-ish hoplites, so no such luck.  I do have a box of Mithridatic Heavy Infantry which should do the trick. Maybe the rematch would play out a bit different.  

Next up is Epirus vs. Rome. My Epirote army uses a lot of the same units as Syracuse, just phalangites and elephants added in place of some of the hoplites and artillery.

Syracuse vs Carthage - The Portable Ancient Wargame

After feeling pretty put off from several days playing a totally inconclusive game of Three Ages of Rome, I reset the table and deployed a Syracusan army against a Carthaginian one for a more reliable game of The Portable Ancient Wargame, as set forth in Developing the Portable Wargame. 

Syracusans!  Almost this entire army has been painted for over a year, but never been moved in anger before!

For some time I have toyed with the idea of an ancients campaign set in Sicily, where Carthage, Syracuse, Epirus, and the Roman Republic all clashed at various times.  I recently finished painting some more Greek Hoplite types as well as some Greek light cavalry which at last made putting a decent non-phalangite Greek army on the table possible. 

Initial deployment, with Carthage on left and Syracuse on right.  Using the Grid-Based Wargaming ancients deployment system a bit, all heavy infantry is deployed in the center initially three squares deep (i.e., 3 lines).  This seems okay but the first thing both sides invariably do is fan out into basically a single line of infantry.

Using the old DBA 1e army lists, I assembled a Syracusan army whose main features were a lot of heavy infantry hoplites, supported by decent cavalry (heavy and light), light troops, and even some longer range artillery. Carthage was a usual mix of heavy infantry (Libyan, Iberian, and Gallic) with a little more light cavalry (Numidians) but no elephants at this time.

Both sides line up and advance.  The Numidian cavalry decides to tangle with the Greek cavalry, while the Syracusan artillery throws back the Iberian infantry and disrupts the Carthage line.

I calculated the Exhaustion Point for both sides at 1/3 of their total starting SP, and a Breaking Point (as borrowed from the Portable Pike & Shotte Wargame) at 1/2 lost SP.  This means that both sides can become exhausted, but one side loosing half its Strength Points causes it to route and hands victory to the other side.

Syracusan hoplites.

Plays of any variant of The Portable Wargame go quite quickly, less than an hour and sometimes done in 30 minutes.Victory tends to hinge on very small things you usually wouldn't expect. A common decisive moment, I've found, is whether one side can bring its heavy infantry to attack without suffering too many losses by its skirmishers or flank cavalry before making contact with the enemy heavies.  If a side can get its heavies in contact with the enemy while still at close to starting SP strength overall, they will have the necessary SP fortitude to take some losses but also to press advantages or exploit gaps as they become available. 

Syracusan catapult artillery. This is actually one unit, I just used to two models so as to fill up the 6" square more.

In this game, the Syracusan catapults seemed to perform well, dropping an early lost SP on one Carthaginian heavy infantry unit and causing another to fall back, disrupting the Carthaginian battle line. The Carthaginians had cavalry superiority on their right flank, consisting of two Numidian light horse units and one heavy Libyan cavalry.  Although opposed by a single Syracusan light cavalry unit, both Numidian units were routed.

Numidian light horse and Syrcusan light horse skirmishing on the flank.

Carthaginian battle line advancing.

This is after a few rounds of close combat between the heavy infantry lines. Some of the Syracusan hoplites have taken a beating but are still standing. However, the Syracusan heavy cavalry has hooked around the Carthaginian left flank and are attacking Gallic infantry from behind, while another cavalry is poised to attack from the flank after having finished off the Carthaginian heavy cavalry contingent.

These lowly Syrcausan staff slingers were key to destroying the Libyan heavy cavalry on the Carthaginian left.

The game was over but these Gallic warriors were very poorly situated at game end, with Syracusans on three sides.

Syracusan hoplites (Macedonian Hypasists by HAT).

Libyan and Syracusan heavy infantry in close combat.

Syracusans and Iberians in close combat.

End of game.

With Syracuse the victor, I set aside the Carthaginians and got out the Romans. Now a plan was hatched: a quick round robin series of games: Carthage vs. Syracuse, Syracuse vs. Rome, Rome vs. Epirus, Epirus vs. Carthage.  No Rome vs. Carthage game, they've played before already.

Three Ages of Rome

Three Ages of Rome, a new ancients ruleset published earlier this year, seemed very promising based on its own description.  The book is affordable so I took a chance and ordered a copy.  On first read through it felt like it might be a lighter, faster descendant of Hail Caesar, but perhaps with not so much dice rolling and a simpler command system.  As units lose melees or take hits in shooting they simply fall from an okay status to disordered, then disordered-to-disrupted, then disrupted-to-routed.  Use six-sided dice but not buckets of them, so maybe less swingy results?  Sounds clean and easy and good, right?  So I set up a Roman army and Carthaginian and randomized some terrain and deployment and had a playtest.

My randomized terrain and deployment may have created a less-than-ideal set-up for a playtest, especially that farmhouse/villa in the center of the board. Namely the woods screened two entire flanks off from each other.

The first stumbling block was a lot of hunting through the book to determine that units in melee-contact can still shoot at their opponent.Given the incredibly short ranges for slings, bows and javelins, shooting in melee is essentially the only option. To confirm this rule, I had to rely on the example of play and an unrelated remark in the movement section - it is not explicitly stated anywhere in the book that I could find.

Carthaginian infantry looking towards Roman lines.

Then things went smoothly enough for a while. Like Hail Caesar, both sides complete all their movement, then shooting, then all melees are resolved. But quite unlike really any other game I have ever played, you do not align base edges of units in melee with each other, so if a unit charges another unit at a slight angle such such its corner touches the front of the enemy, you stop moving the charger and resolve the melee in that configuration.  The actually fits nicely with the 50% movement penalty for turning up to 90 degrees, so units really do best just moving straight ahead (skirmish units can turn without penalty however).  Getting two-versus-one melees is fairly easy as only the edges of two units need to contact.  This ease eliminates the need for rules for supporting units and still encourages close-packed groups of multiple units. Not fussing with lining up a charge also speeds up play considerably.

Some Balearic slingers (front right) skirmish with advancing Romans.

The rout and pursuit rules are also a little spread out in the book and take some piecing together. 

Carthaginians tryg to get infantry lines into position.

A second major stumbling block is that it is completely unclear, and unstated as far as I can find, whether a routing unit makes a rout move every turn until it either stops (because it reformed/rallied) or because it leaves the table. As written, the unit seems to fall back a full march move and then simply stop and stand about.  The reform rules clearly contemplate routed units being able to test and reform back to disrupted status.  But unless the unit continues routing towards the table edge, its only a matter of time until probability dictates that the routed unit (if it is not moving every turn) will reform and end up rejoining the fight.

Romans advance with a substantial reserve.

This leads me to the worst aspect. The base score on a d6 needed to hit, save, and to reform, is a 4.  For each of these steps there are positive and negative modifiers, with fewer to apply at the hit stage, then progressive more for saves and reform rolls.  I do like that combat hit rolls are pretty same-same in terms of odds of getting a hit, with the big advantages being that massed infantry tends to roll more dice than skirmishers, and if you can line up some 2-on-1 attacks you might be rolling 4 dice vs 2.  The saving throw modifiers are also pretty mild. 

Iberian infantry on the move - some of the oldest figures in my collection, painted when I just was getting back into the hobby and still working on paint craft.

But the reform phase tests are what unraveled this rule set for me. At the end of each turn, both sides make reform tests for all units that are disordered, disrupted, or routed.  The base number to succeed is a 4 or more.  There are many positive and negative modifiers, including the current status of the unit (disrupted or routed), proximity to friendly and enemy units, presence of a commander, etc.

Melee up and down the lines.

So at first the two sides' infantry all collided in the middle of the board and units were taking disorder markers and recoiling and everything seems quite nice. But then it became apparent that units had a pretty easy time making their reform tests, so units would lose a melee, take a disorder marker, recoil, but then remove the disorder at the end of the turn and be ready to jump right back in next turn.  Even units locked in melee could test and remove disorder or disrupted markers, which seems particularly ridiculous.

Still more melee... the lines are, sort of, not moving much.

As one turn led to another, and the lines remained mostly static, and several units had taken disordered and disrupted markers several times only to remove them during the reform phase, the whole exercise stopped feeling like a game and just an endless dice-off. To the degree that one can expect a game with little toy soldiers to have some realism, these rules feel like a heavy fail, because these infantry units on both sides were fought something like six or seven turns of continual hand to hand combat and there was only mild disorder markers scattered here and there, most of which were promptly removed the following turn.

Melee now, melee forever!

So after maybe turn 10 (or higher?), I simply ended the game because it was going nowhere and neither side seemed to be showing any signs of starting to break.  This was in spite of Carthaginian success on its right flank, where heavy cavalry was able to push its opposition to the table edge, then turned and was starting to attack the left end of the Roman infantry line in the rear (the main mechanic disadvantage of this is that its more difficult to reform - but there is no modifier for to-hit rolls for flanking attacks and only a -1 on saves).

In the interest of fairness, I will concede that more open terrain and less randomized deployment (I was trying out Peter's ancients deployment method) might lead to a situation where even moderate success on a flank could lead to a decisive move towards the center, but I have to admit I'm a little skeptical. I could also concede that perhaps I was rolling more 5s and 6s on saves and reform tests than could be considered typical from a probability standpoint, so my results are not what could be considered typical. Every unit getting to roll a reform test every turn, however, feels a cousin to Warhammer with its roll-dice-three-times (to hit/to wound/to save) dynamic.  The importance of decision making is adversely affected when a player must beat chance three separate times to make progress towards victory.

If the base score for saves was a 5+ and for reform tests was a 6, creating a kind of plunging curve, that could be better?  Its also possible that simply scraping the Reform system entirely, or limiting it to a unit attached to a commander (in a manner similar to Hail Caesar's rally tests), could also achieve a more decisive result while retaining other attractive parts of the rules (the orders system, movement, lining up charges, the three-step disorder/disrupted/routed metric).  But throwing out an entire phase of the rules seems like a rather extreme step to salvage these rules.  Verdict for now: too much dice rolling.  Might revisit sometime but unlikely.