Battle at the ford, Dux Bellorum AAR

As my friend Jonas have painted some realy lovely Welsh minis and they haden´t got a game yet we decided to run a Dux Bellorum game. It was indeed a long time as we played Dux Bellorum, we have almost forgoten the rules...

We played the "River Battle" Scenario on a 120x120cm table with quite little terrain just to get going.

OOB(as I remeber it...)

Welsh
1x Foot Companions with leader @ 5 points
4x Foot Warriors @ 3 points each
2x Noble Riders @ 5 points each
1x Mounted Skirmisher @ 2 points
2x Foot Skirmishers @ 1 point each
1 Extra Leadership Point @ 2 points

Total @ 32 Points

Romano-British
1x Mounted Companions with leader @ 5 points
2x Noble Riders @ 5 points each
3x Ordinary Shieldwall @ 3 points each
2x Ordinary Warriors @ 3 points each (Saxon Mercenarys)
1 Extra Leadership Point @ 2 points

Total @ 32 Points

Here follows some pictures from the game and a few comments about the action:)

We decided to have 2 fords along the river, the main one by the road and one further up the river about where the sheeps flook are. All the river could be forded at all it´s lenght but the 2 fords made it all much easier.

Welsh warriors lined up to deffend the fors, the Leaders and his Companions have hiden behind the levys...

The second part of the Welsh force had lined up near the other ford, this contingent was made up of the Welsh Noble Riders an all the skirmishers.

The Romano-British force had gathered all there soldiers along the road to the ford, the Warlord let the Saxon mercenarys lead the attack...

It all broke loose with a race for the fords...

The Welsh sent their Mounted Skirmishers away to the main ford ar the Noble Raiders and Foot skirmishers hurried for the secondary ford.

The British comander sent just one group of Noble Raiders against the secondary ford to protect it and stop the Welsh force to cross it to easy...  the rest of the British soldiers ruched to the main ford just to arrive as the Welsh men did...

Note: the read shield markers we used as Leadership Points.

Stalemate ar the ford...

The Welsh Warriors chose to cross the river and attack the less numerous Saxon Mercenarys as the British shieldwall cheer...

By the secondary fort the British have reinforece with a second group of Noble Raiders...

The Welsh skirmishers start to work there way around the british flank...

By the main fort the battle continues and raiging forward and back... to support the Saxon Mercenary one British shieldwall unit have also joined the fight...

Attrition start to build up...  Which unit will breake first and give way for the enemys...

The Welsh center warrior unit have had enought and loose their heart, leaving the Welsh battle line very vulnerable...

The British don´t manage to exploit the weaknes in the Welsh battle line, instead they send in reinforcements from the reserve, but still sits the Welsh warlord back and let his followers do the fighting...

It have been a long fight and one after another the initial Welsh warrior units have had enought and flees the river, the Saxon mercenarys have well earned their pay...

Now the welsh leader with his companions stumble in to the river to join the fight and turn the tide...

The Welsh leader with the last of the Welsh warriors manage to get rid of one of the Saxon unist as well as the British shieldwall unit...

Even so the Welsh leader choose to retreate with his remaining forces to fight another day...

...might be that Jonas are of another opinion;)

We had a nice time playing Bux Bellorum again, unfortunally we had forgot lots of rules, so it was quite some looking up in the rulebook. 

We liked the game so much that we decided to play this small scenario using the same forces BUT using the Hail Caesar rules and also once using the  Dux Britanniarun rules to see how the different game systems difference in game outcome.

Saxon Tents by Renedra

Here comes some pictures of the finished Saxon tens by Renedra

I throw in a picture of my old Viking tent to, It´s a 15mm tent from Baueda. I hope Rendera will make some nice Viking tents to...

Dux Bellorum AAR Saxon vs. Late Romans

Here comes a AAR of our latest Dux Bellorum game. This time the Saxons invaders try to sack a small village fortunate defended by a Late Roman field army.

We used ordinary 32 points armys, made up from my Late Roman and Saxon collection, mounted om trays with a front of 80mm and we played on a 180x120cm table.

OOB

Saxon Warriors
1x Foot Companions with Leader
2x Foot Nobles
5x Foot Warriors
2x Foot Skirmishers one with Sling and one with Javelins

Late Romans
1x Mounted Companions with Leader
1x Cataphracts
1x Ordinary Raiders
4x Ordinary Shieldwall
1x Archers
1x Mounted Skirmishers with javelins
1x Foot Skirmishers with Bow

The Saxon objective was to capture the village by having a uncontested unit in the village wich would force the Romans to roll extra Moral tests. The game would last for a maximum of 12 turns.

In the early montning the Romans deplyed a small force of three units in the village and splited there cavalry on the two flanks. The Saxons placed there skirmishers in the middle and divided the Nobles within the Ordinary Warriors to get them moving more easily. 

No one saw any villagers or livestock...Zzzzzz....Zzzzzzz...

As the combat begun at the fields outside the vilages the newly awakened livestock and villagers emerged from the houses and started to run all around not certain of what to do...

The Roman Commander order all he´s cavalry on the both flanks to start moving, all acording he´s cunning plan... Eager to win a swift victory he sets it all on one card and charges forward with he´s Companions and some Riders, thinking he will easy defeat three units of Saxons...

The Saxon commander order a general advance of all he´s troops.

In the heart of battle the Chronicler forgot to dokument the Battle...Sorry... 

Here we see the center of the acction as the Roman cavalry have dissengaged after the first unsuccessfull charge, trying to make one more, this time causing more damage...

On the Roman right flank the Cataphracts had a hard time fighting it out with two Saxon units...

In the Center the remaining Saxons had reached the Village and the Romans in shieldwall just outside...a fierce battle started...

The saxon puched back the defender of the Village, that lost the advantage of the deffensive wall... The Roman shieldwall just outside the vilage also had a realy hard time...

The Roman Riders and a unit of Saxons on the left flank was defeated, but still the Roman Commander and he´s Companions fought on, seeing in vain how the village they were set to protect was overvhelmed with barbarians...

By midday the Saxons had claimed the village, slaughtering the last of the heroic defenders. It was a hard blow to the Roman moral and the remaining parts of the army chose to retreat of flee as cowards as the saxon put it...

This was a nice game! As we still learning the rules and had 2 players on each side it probably tock a little longer than it should, but we had a realy nice time and some good beer:)

Dux Bellorum first game AAR

Today are the official releaseday of Dux Bellorum, if you haven´t already order your copy do it now;)

During saturday I had the chanse to properly try out Dux Bellorum, untill now it´s only been small tryouts at the kitchen table.

We used my 28mm minis on movement trays giving us a base width of 80mm, and was playing at a 120x120cm table... think we should have used the full 180x120cm as it got a little to narrow.

The forces was of the standard 32 points, one Romano-British Land Raiding warband and one Saxon Warrior warband.

OOB

Romano-British Land Raiders
1x Mounted Companions w. Leader @5pts
4x Mounted Nobles @5pts each
3x Foot Skirmishers w. Bows @1pts each
8x Leadership Points @4pts
Total: 32 pts

Saxon Warriors
1x Foot Companions w. Leader @5pts
2x Foot Noble Warriors @5pts each
5x Foot Warriors @3pts each
2x Foot Skirmishers w. Slings @1pts each
6x Leadership Points for Free:)
Total: 32 pts

I played the Romano-British and was agressor, my friend Jonas commanded the Saxons and was obvious then repellor. I have made some comments about how the rules work in to the AAR as well as this is a new set of rules.

The Set-up, the defending Saxons placed half he´s warband in the village and the other half out in the open...

The British plan was to use the cavalry to annihilate all the Saxons in the open and win the day and in the same time use the 3 units of Skirmish archers to delay the Saxons in the village... nothing could go wrong...

The set-up alternate, all steps begin with the agressor. First all Foot from borht sides, then the Cavalry and last all Skrimishers.

The Saxons in the open started to make a uneven advance, the ones in the village seems to like the good food so they shoose to stay for a while longer...

The British skirmishes advanced out of the forest to start harassing the Saxons hiding in the village... at the same time the British cavalry started to make way through the filed in there way...took some time...

Each turn start with one of the key elements of the rules, the placements of Leadership Points (LP´s) these points, right placed, will give your units benefits during the turn. As they are placed alternated starting with the repeller, this stage are like a game in the game, not giving away ones plan to obvious...

We used my red shield markers as LP´s and as you can see I at a start shoose to sprinkel them allower my British warband...

After some doubt the Saxons left the village durinng constant harassment of the British skirmishers... On the Brisish cavalry flank they at last managed to get through the filed and charged in to the poor Saxon warriors...

The movement are also alternated starting with Skirmishers then Cavalry and last Foot, each of the movement sequences starts with the agressor.

A fierce battle commence, surprisengly the Saxon warriors stod there ground several turns...

By good use of the LP´s both sides minimised their casultys and ther would be a long and hard fought combat. The single combat one unit against one are quite stright forward. But then you start to fight out the linked combat with several units there can be some problem and confusion about how hit how etc, but I think it will cleare then we get some more games.

Over at the village the Saxons had slaughtered the British skirmishers due to poor command by the british warlord...

Now the situation for the British Cavalry started to get stressed as more and more Saxon closed in...  at least one British Cavalry unit managed to exploit the left flank and ride down the Saxon Slinger:)

The British and The Saxon Skrimishers was both taken care of as they didn´t manage to evade due to lack of LP´s.... LP´s give you the opportunety to move before your opponent, but if you don´t have any LP´s allocated to the unit then you are f...  we might have missed some rule here, but I don´t think so...

Due to loss of units you start to lose LP´s to and it gets harder and harder to get the real edge in the combat situations.

Chaotic situation... as more and more Saxon warrior closed from the village in to join the fight, but the British some how managed to meet up with a singel unit of cavalry and at the same time make a last puch against the broken-down Saxons in the open...

We used the small arrow markers (1 loss)  and dead horses (3 loss) to mark cohesion loss...got a little to much markers from time to time with both the LP´s and the Cohesionloss makrers on the table.

Finaly the Saxons in the open breakes and are vipedout by the British Cavalry, the harsh reatment of there fellows was like a shock wave through out the Saxons llines and severl more Saxon units lost there will to fight on...

It was a victorius day for the British with lots of plunder in the vilage:)

Then a warband have lost more than 50% of it´s units (not counting Skirmishers) each remaning unit have to test for Bravery or flee the field of battle...

As this was the first real test of the rules there ofcourse was several rules that we missed, but it was still a realy enjoyable game. The rules have more to explore and I realy like the ideea of that I won´t need to puchase lots of suplements but all I need are in one book to a realy decent cost.

More info about the Dux Bellorum rules and a runthrough of a game turn can you find at Dan Merseys blog.

Dux Bellorum "Review"

As you surely know I got my hands on a previw copy of the new Osprey wargame Dux Bellorum by Daniel (Dan) Mersey.

The rules are up for official release at Monday the 20th of august and I thought I would share my first impressions of the game with you, especially as I now had the opportunety to try them out properly for the first time. AAR in a day or so:)

The Basics, Dux bellorum are a set of wargaming rules focusing on Arthurian Wargaming 367-793 AD.

The book in it self are 64 pages, full colour and sprinkled with greate pictures in the Clasical Osprey format. I must admit that I like the format very much, you get a full game that is easy to carry around and you don´t have to await for THAT army list to be released. It´s all in one book, splendid.

The text in the book have a clearly layout, are well writen(at least for me that not have english as my first language), and with several diagram that shows different gaming situations and rules explanations.

The rules was easy writen and easy to learn, but as with all new rules it will take some games to get all the detail right. Dan have been quite inovative in he´s rule writing and come up with some greate mechanism, like the leadership points and a twist to the turn sequence, that will take some time to get use to.

So far my only concern have been that there are quite much markes on the gaming table, one sort for the Leadership Points and one to keep track of the units lost Cohesion.

As the focus are on the Arthurian era there are a limited selection of army list, Late Roman, Romano-British, Welsh, Saxon, Irish, Pictish and two different Raider lists, that actually are variations of the other six lists.

Even though a limited number of lists I feel that there are plenty of room to customise the different armies, to try different tactics and options of how to game them. Dan have included about 20 different "Strategies and tactics" to add extra flavour to the army lists, some of them more or less historical.

So to the big question are Dux Bellorum worth the money?

Ofcourse yes! especialy if you are in to Arthurian wargaming, but they will work fine for the "Viking" era to as they are realy generic in troop clasification. So for less than £12 you will get a stunning book with easy and still inovative rules for dark age wargaming. I think these rules will be perfect for pick-up games at the gaming club.

Dux Bellorum Romano-British warband

As you know I been working on rebasing my Romano-British Cavalry minis for a Dux Bellorum warband, here are some pictures of the whole warband with some Skirmishing Archers in support.

Just a few days before the Dux Bellorum rules are officialy released at the 20th of august. If you want to get some more info about the rules please visit the authur Dan Merseys excellent blog.

Now I´m of for my firts game of Dux Bellorum :)

Dux Bellorum Romano-British Cavalry Warlord

Time for the Warlord of my Romano-British Dux Bellorum warband with he´s new bases and movement tray.

I hope to get my first test game of the rules tomorrow and be able to post a AAR and some thoughts about the rules during the weekend, in time for the release of the Dux Bellorum rules at the 20th of august.

Pictures of the whole warband are in progress...

Dux Bellorum Romano-British Cavalry #4

Yet a nother cavalry unit for my Romano-British Dux Bellorum warband.

Notised that Osprey also will releade the Dux Bellorum rules as a .pdf.

Dux Bellorum Romano-British Cavalry #3

Time for the 3rd of 5 cavalry units for my Romano-British Dux Bellorum army.

I have started to read the rules...very nice looking book and the rules in it selfs look very interesting...more about them later...have to try them out a couple of times first.

If you haven´t already been around the Authour Dan Merseys blog I can recomend it, a perfect sourse for info about Dux Bellorum.

Dux Bellorum are in da house

Back in Stockholm after a couple of weeks up in our summer house in Dalarna/Darlecarlia and I got realy glad as I run through the post and found a letter from Osprey with a review copy of Dux Bellorum:) Very nice indeed!!!

I will start to read right away...or as soon as I get the chance after unpacking all stuff we got in the car...

At request of Alan at tradgardmastare here are a picture of the summer house:)