Breaktime Blast from the Past: Dux Bellorum Battle Report Part 1

 The battle fought is a fictional encounter between a Late Roman Army catching up with Saxon raiders ravaging the province of Britannia. The scenario is the Annals Battle with each side having 32 points and a simple goal: Rout the enemy.

The beauty of Dux Bellorum is the use of Leadership Points (LP's) to allocate each turn.  This allows you the general to be actively involved in the battle - hey, you are a warlord and your men expect you to lead! Each leader can have between 6 to 10 LP’s depending on how many points you spend on them when constructing your army. For this fight, each leader has 6 LP's to spend each turn. LP’s can be used to help units fight and move, but are a precious resource that can dry once losses occur; if you lose a unit you lose an LP. The use of LP's keeps players thinking – always facing the critical decision about where to spend them.  Do I help this unit move? Do I interrupt the enemy's move and charge? Do I declare that the LP's I added to the battle add extra attacks or do I declare that I will use to negate the hits I just took?

 

The two armies looking from behind the Roman lines.  The Roman infantry (shieldwalls) are on the hill and the cavalry.  The Roman skirmishers are moving to the woods to the right.  The Saxons are in 2 groups with the Noble Warriors intermixed with the Ordinary Warriors.

 The Warriors were tougher than I initially thought - yikes!

 Allocating the LP's.  I just could not get those archers to move!

 Charge!!!

Quick narrative: I tried to smash the Saxon line right from the beginning with a strong cavalry charge with my "Imposing Horsemen."  As a retired Infantry officer I am ashamed to admit that I tried charging cavalry in a frontal attack against unbroken infantry.  

 The situation when I made the fateful decision to charge and before LP's were allocated.

 They don't look so tough from here.

Come on and show us what ya got!

 The die behind the stands are keeping track of the hits.

Both my Companions and my Noble horse took some serious hits as the Saxon Noble Warriors laughed.  I had to buy some time to recover; fortunately my cavalry successfully disengaged.  

I turns out that the heroes of the game for the Late Romans would be the javelin armed skirmishers and the Poor Bloody Infantry of my shieldwall on the hill.  The javelin armed skirmishes successfully drew off one of the Warrior units into the woods.  The javelins could get up close, shoot and then move successfully keeping out of range. By themselves they wore down and eventually destroyed the Warrior unit reducing the Saxons by 1 LP.

 I added an LP to give the javelins and extra attack and whamo - the Saxons take 2 hits with no saves.  Then the javelins fall back to get out of the vengeful charge range of the Saxons!

I had trouble moving my archers (kept failing their bravery roll). As it turned out that worked to my advantage as the javelins fell back, the Saxons pursuing them got outflanked by the archers and destroyed by both stands or skirmishers.

 Oh . . . there's a battle going on?  We've just been standing here for 3 turns.

Come closer  . . . I'll backup . . . closer . . . closer . . . 

 Gotcha!

My mounted skirmishers tried to do the same thing on my left flank to slow down the warriors advancing on my infantry on the hill.  Well . . . that did not work out so well and they were made into mincemeat fairly quickly and now I was down an LP.

With the Roman cavalry reeling and weakened, the Saxons launched a massive attack to break the Roman line.  On the left the Warrior unit is about to be peppered by the skirmishers but the Roman line on the hill starts to fall back . . . 

Next: The conclusion.

Breaktime Blast from the Past: Dux Bellorum and the Twilight of Empire

 Nothing like a new job and business travel to keep you off the tabletop but I was able to recently play a game of Dux Bellorum.

 

Dux Bellorum is a great, fast past set of rules written by Daniel Mersey and published by Osprey Wargames that allows you to re-fight the Dark Ages in Britain from the Late Roman period up to the year 800 AD.

Armies are element based and can be of any scale; movement and ranged combat is my base width (BW) allowing any figure scale or basing mechanism. In issue 62 of Wargames Soldiers & Strategy I read a Dux Bellorum article by Steve Jones in which his armies are mounted on 120 mm width bases but he uses 4 inches as the BW for convenience.  I decided to follow suit, mounted the armies on their bases and created my own measuring stick with a wooden dowel.

 My measuring stick.  Nothing fancy but it gets the job done.

The battle fought is a fictional encounter between a Late Roman Army catching up with Saxon raiders ravaging the province of Britannia.The scenario would be the Annals Battle with each side having 32 points and a simple goal: Rout the enemy.

The Late Roman Army: I envisioned this force as the cream of the Roman army stationed in Britain with excellent cavalry and solid infantry.

Late Roman Army.  This is the force minus one of the Shieldwalls.

1 Mounted Companions: 5 points.  This is the Roman general and his personal retinue of Huns!
1 Cataphracts: 6 points. Well, I have some painted so why not?  
1 Noble Riders: 5 points.  Veteran and well mounted cavalry.
1 Mounted skirmisher: 2 points.  Armed with javelins, these local auxiliaries have been tracking and keeping an eye on the Saxon dogs.
3 Ordinary Shieldwall: 9 points. Solid Roman Infantry.
2 Foot Skirmishers: 2 points.  One unit armed with javelins and the other with bows.

 Late Roman skirmishers.

Strategy and Tactic: Imposing Horseman: 3 points. Adds +1 die when the cavalry contact (charge) the enemy. Cataphracts and mounted skirmishers do not get the bonus.

 Hoping to ride down the Saxons.

Early Saxon Army:  An elite raiding force trying to make a get away.

My Saxon Army . . . but no skirmishers for you this time!

1 Foot Companions:  5 points. Warriors of course!
3 Noble Warriors: 15 points.  Extra armor, skill with weapons and flags.
3 Ordinary Warriors: 9 points.  We can fight.  Just point us in the right direction.

 The Saxon Warlord and his Companions.

Strategy and Tactic: Loyal: 3 points. One of the Noble units increases its Bravery to 10 for the entire game. 

The Loyal relatives of the Warlord get to carry the big flag.

Next up:  The Battle, why you should not charge solid infantry with your cavalry, skirmishers and much more.

Breaktime Blast from the Past: Sea Wolves for Dux Bellorum

 Now I have 2 completed armies to battle against each other in Dark Age Britain using the rules Dux Bellorum.  This army will represent Early Era Saxons and Sea Raider Early Era Saxons.  The Warrior units are mounted on 120 mm x 60 mm stands and the Foot Skirmishers are mounted on 120 mm x 40 mm stands.

 

I haven't really decided on which stand will be the mighty Saxon war leader with his tough, but smelly companions around him.  Any of the four Noble Warrior stands, which I have identified with standards, can fulfill the role of leader.

 

I will probably do a couple more stands of foot skirmishers since the Sea Raider army can field more of these light troops.  I currently have one unit of archers and one with javelins.

Now it is time to raid the province of Britain and see if the Late Roman army has any fight left in it . . .

Happy Tanksgiving!

 

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone as we celebrate in the United States - and a belated Thanksgiving to our neighbors to the North. It is also known as Thursday in the rest of the world. If were you live does not celebrate, just give Thanksgiving to the Lord where all good things come!