Ave Antiochos...

A few of the gents from the Irish Historical Wargamers Guild met up for another of our Big Game Sundays last week to play a spot of Hail Caesar. 

We once more played an apocryphal match up between the objectively true heroes of the ancient world (AKA the Seleukids) and their Punic pals (Tony and myself), against the barbarous hordes of Iberia and the Roman Republic (Karl, Paul and Garry). The nominal and not really at all significant objective for both sides was to hold the oasis in the centre, uncontested, for two turns.

I'm not overly fussed with playing on such a cramped table, but we only had two terrain mats and nobody wants to leave painted toys off the table. It did look impressive if I do say so myself!

The mighty line of 28mm heroes.

The savage line of 28mm barbarians.

The Seleukid line was matched against the Iberians and about a third of the total number of Romans. The Seleukids looked the business, but their force contained rather more cavalry, light infantry and skirmishers, meaning a lot less heavy infantry than them'uns across the table. As heavy infantry are an unmatched and unstoppable force in Hail Caesar, it was always going to be a tough fight.

The opening gambit of the Roman commander was to throw an entire legion against an unsupported unit of Seleukid thureophoroi and my elephant with predictable results. The elephant fell back, the medium infantry evaporated allowing the Romans to carry out a sweeping advance. Theis resulted in them destroying another small unit of thureophoroi and punching a hole right through the Seleukid line.

The single Seleukid pike phalanx marched forward unperturbed, seizing the objective, while the rest of the Seleukid line turned in to engulf the legion in their midst. Like a candle that burned too bright, the Roman division broke, and it was time to get on with the victory day parade...

Then the second Roman legion turn away from their Punic opponents and, charging through the oasis, took the pikemen in the flank. They couldn't break them, but the pikemen became shaken and proceeded to shuffle their way sideways, pinned in the flank by the Romans. Seemingly HC doesn't allow you to reform to fight an opponent in your flank...?

 

As the broken remnants of Rome's first legion tried to exit the battlefield, the Seleukid cavalry charged and drove back some Iberian medium infantry, and the Arabian division, variously shooting and charging, knocked out the single Iberian cavalry unit.

The Punic line was still in excellent condition as the Seleukid pikemen continued to lose combats, bloodied, but unbroken.

The Seleukids and Carthaginians reformed to try to drive the Romans from the oasis, but sadly it was all a bit too late and the western barbarians won a very technical victory by cynically completing the game's objective...

Just as their second legion and half the Iberians were on the point of breaking too. Sneaky dogs!

That's the last planned Hail Caesar game for a while, with the rules changing to Black Powder next month for some 1812 mayhem.