Dux Bellorum - 1st game

So having painted my Late Romans and dug out my Late Saxons masquerading as Early Saxons (and some Vikings... shh.. don't tell anyone), it was time to actually get them on the table.

The rules are Dux Bellorum from Osprey which are yet another great set in their blue book series of rules.  They are pretty simple to play but have a suitable Dark Age feel.  I've always felt battles in this period should really emphasise the influence of the individual Commanders and these rules reflect this really well with the use of Leadership Points (LPs).  These allow you to improve the chance of activating a unit, add dice to an attack, cancel hits and enable units to interrupt another units activation... all very useful and of course as the action heats up you don't have enough LPs to go round.  If a unit routs you also lose a LP and this shift in the balance of leadership can make a real difference.

Our battle pitched a Romano British force defending against some raiding Saxons.  As neither of had played before we went for a straightforward scenario without too much complicated terrain although in hindsight the river was a bit of a pain.

The Saxon Horde...

...and the British

The British have Shieldwall infantry which are less aggressive but harder to damage.  A legacy of their Roman training and discipline I guess.  Combined with the LPs allowing hits to be cancelled this can make them pretty tough to damage.  And of course the Brits have Cavalry.

The Saxons are all infantry and have the 'advantage' of an uncontrolled advance.  This means they can charge further  than the British Shieldwall and are more aggressive but they have to charge unless you can make them fail a Bravery test (handily the LPs can be used to help fail tests as well as passing them!).

The  neat lines at the start of the game broke up as the fighting started

The Britons had 3 skirmish units of archers vs my 1 Javelin armed unit.  I'd read people complain that skirmishers are very weak in these rules but the British archers were deadly, combining fire to cause lots of casualties.  To be fair I probably tried ignoring them for too long and should gave tried driving them off sooner.

A very messy fight at the river

Andrew, commanding the Britons, used his cavalry to try and turn my flank, forcing me to split my  warbands and it quickly became obvious that the fight at the river was going to be a sideshow with the battle being decided between the Cavalry and the Saxon warbands on my left flank.

The 2 Warlords slug it out

The fights became very scrappy with a lot of to and fro but the British Cavalry began to press hard and the Saxons units began to disappear, shedding Leadership Points in the process.  The cavalry was also pretty beaten up by this point and could have broken but some careful use of LPs by Andrew stopped me causing enough casualties and eventually the Saxons reached 50% losses and began to melt away from the table.

The rules were very impressive and felt just right for this period.  It was great to actually get my newly painted figures on the table and into action and I've just spotted that Gripping Beast have been previewing the artwork for their forthcoming Picts which would be a great addition.