Hail Caesar Skirmish #12: Ambush!

"All right lads, let's practice one more time! The Romans'll be here soon. Everyone back into the forest!"

After wrapping up our quick "Cavalry vs. Infantry" scenario, we had just enough time to run a second scenario. For our second match we chose "Ambush" from the classic Table Top Teasers. A quick report of a Celtic ambush of a Roman column after the jump.

Hail Caesar Skirmish #11: Infantry vs. Cavalry. Kind of.

"Hey, for our Hail Caesar game tomorrow, let's do something different this time" my gaming pal Mike said, "Not just a line 'em up bash."

No problem. I'd been looking forward to trying a Table Top Teaser and this seemed a great chance to shake things up with a new scenario. I flipped through the collection to find something suitable, which proved a bit challenging as most seemed to work better for more modern armies (Horse and Musket or later), or required a ton of cavalry or terrain. I finally settled on "Infantry vs. Cavalry" and "Ambush". Check out our battle report for Cavalry Attack after the jump.

Hail Caesar Skirmish #10: Battle at the Pig Farm

It was obvious when I got home from work that I was having a crummy day. After dinner, we washed up, I got my son ready for bed and tucked him in. I clomped back downstairs and out of the corner of my eye caught a glimpse of our kitchen table set up with a pair of armies facing off across a forest clearing.

My wife smiled sheepishly. "I think you'd feel better if we played a game." It was true, my mood did a quick 180 as we settled in to a surprise game of Hail Caesar. My wife GMs her first Hail Caesar game after the jump.

Unique Commander Qualities for Hail Caesar

I was reading a thread on TMP that requested a set of ancient rules that included (among other things) variable generals. Many people suggested Hail Caesar, but it was pointed out that generals in Hail Caesar are all cut from the same cloth, barring their command value.

Commanders in Hail Caesar only have a few game rules associated with them that might be altered, but with a little bit of tweaking I think there are a lot of possibilities in bringing a unique flavor to individual generals. The Hail Caesar rules already have a few suggestions:

• Command Rating: The number under which the command dice must be rolled to issue a command. Typically 8. Vary it by +/- 1 to customize the commander. 
• Combat Ability: Maximum number of dice a commander can roll in combat. Typically 3. Increase or decrease the maximum number of combat dice, up to 6 dice for a legend such as Alexander the Great.

There are a few other inherent numbers associated with commanders that could be changed for variety: 

• Command Distance: How far away a unit must be before suffering penalties to the command roll. The standard command radius is 12", but this could be adjusted by say +/- 3" to represent a commander with especially well or ill trained runners or communication system. 
• Survivability: After concluding combat in which the commander was attached to an engaged unit, 2d6 are rolled to determine if the commander is hit in the melee, with an additional 1d6 rolled to determine whether he is wounded or slain. Grant the commander a chance to reroll one of the 2d6 (perhaps once per game), or to gain a +/-1 to the following 1d6 roll to represent either a particular hardy or weak warrior.

Commanders also receive a few special actions to help their divisions, Rally! and Follow Me! Both of these could be modified by allowing the commander to roll three dice rather than the usual two, taking either the two best (or alternately two worst) dice for the result, representing commanders who are either particularly charismatic or hated. If that's too fiddly, simply give the commander a bonus or penalty to their command rating when issuing a Rally! or Follow Me! order.

Finally, just as units receive unique special abilities, the same could be applied to commanders. A Wild barbarian general might be able to reroll the dice he adds to the first combat he engages in. A Tough Roman commander might get to reroll one of his combat dice each turn.

Want to randomly generate the quality of your army leader before the battle? Roll a pair of d6, one assigned to the general's positive qualities, and one to his negative qualities. If the you rolled a double, the general has no special qualities, otherwise consult the chart below:

Positive Die	Quality
1	Pious: Once per game, re-roll one of the two command dice. The new roll stands, even if the result is worse than the former roll.
2	Stern: The commander suffers distance penalties when issuing commands to units beyond 15" (rather than 12")
3	Orator: Roll 3d6 discard the highest die when issuing a Rally! command.
4	Charismatic: Roll 3d6, discard the highest die when issuing a Follow Me! command.
5	Warrior: Only slain on a 1 or 2 (rather than 1-3) when determining fate after being hit in combat.
6	Fierce: Roll the general's combat dice separately from the unit he is attached to. Once per game, re-roll any of the general's misses.

Negative Die	Quality
1	Drunkard: May not use the general's re-roll ability to re-roll a blunder.
2	Undisciplined: The general suffers distance penalties when issuing commands to units beyond 9" (rather than 12")
3	Not One for Speeches: Roll 3d6, discard the lowest die when issuing a Rally! command.
4	Coward: Roll 3d6, discard the lowest die when issuing a Follow Me! command.
5	Ill Health: Slain on a 1-4 when determining fate after being hit in combat.
6	No Taste for Blood: Roll the general's combat dice separately from the unit he is attached to. For each die that is a miss, reduce the maximum number of dice the general can roll by 1 in future combats.

These aren't tested, and might be too fiddly in practice, but I thought there might be something there worth trying.

Hail Caesar Skirmish #9: Won By the Razor's Edge

With my Carthaginians, Spanish and new leaders painted up it was time to get them on the table and see how they'd do. With Historicon fast approaching and another friend of mine joining us at the convention this year, I wanted to give him an intro to the rules in case we were able to get into a game together. A long time 40K and fantasy player, this would be one of his first exposures to historical wargaming. All the bloody details on a very close game after the jump.

Hail Caesar Skirmish #8: Our Favorite Game Yet

It's been a crazy busy week for me, but I did manage to get in another small skirmish of Hail Caesar the other day. We don't yet have enough figures painted up to match the army sizes suggested in the rules, but this was our first game where we had enough figures for it to really feel like an ancient set piece battle. After action report and thoughts after the jump.

Hail Caesar Skirmish #7: Back to Basics

Before children, my wife and our friends Rob and Laura would meet regularly to play games. Catan, Ticket To Ride, Roborally, and more hit the table at least once a month. Since we all started infecting our houses with time-eating rug rats, our game nights have become infrequent at best.  The stars aligned the other night though, and we managed to get a game night with all four of us. Surprisingly  the game I was informed we'd be playing was Hail Caesar . Find out how teaching two wargaming newbs the art of ancient warfare went after the jump.

Hail Caesar Skirmish #6: Who Let This Guy Be a General?

With our retro board game night of Axis and Allies canceled at the last minute, my buddy Mike and I decided to throw together a quick Hail Caesar bash. I eyeballed the ancients I have painted up, and the Romans were still outnumbering the barbarian hordes. To even things up I thought a scenario in which the Gauls began the game outnumbering the Romans with some Roman reinforcements en route would help even things up.

The Gauls began in battle array, staring across an open plain with a few scattered hills and woods at the Romans completing a river crossing with a third of their forces on the far side of the river. Find out if the Romans were able to get their lines formed up before the Gallic assault after the jump.

Best of the Hail Caesar Yahoo Group, November 2012

There was a good multiday discussion on what happens when an infantry unit defeats a cavalry unit in melee that I found informative.

M.G. parrskool kicked it off with this question:

"Here's the thing...........
A unit of Celtish light Cav. attacked my unit of early imperial romans and lost the fight. The romans followed up to maintain contact. I was a bit disturbed by this as I did not think that infantry usually charged cav."

After several days of back and forth and rules discussion, Alex Elstone's first reply turns out to have hit the mark:

"Well, the Romans followed up to maintain contact. This isn't counted as a charge but a continuation of the combat. Look at it as if the cavalry were surrounded and couldn't quite extricate themselves from the combat. The reason why it looks like the Romans charged is all due to the restrictions of model unit depiction. Everything is depicted in regimented squares, whereas in a real combat men would engage in a swirling melee. The cavalrymen would most likely have lost their bearings, momentarily and unable to escape or that the Romans were very quick to cut off their retreat.

Ordinarily, the infantry cannot charge cavalry. According to the rules, the infantry can attempt to charge, but cavalry can react to a charge by countercharging. When they do, the infantry stop and become disordered putting them at a considerable disadvantage."

WHEN CAN INFANTRY CHARGE CAVALRY?

As a followup, Alex clarrified how and when infantry can initiate charges against cavalry:

"Cavalry can only countercharge against a charge to its front as long as it is not in open order, disordered or locked in combat.

Infantry can charge cavalry, but it is not advisable to do it against the cavalry unit's front because the cavalry cavalry can countercharge. If they charge a flank or rear, then the cavalry can only turn to face. When cavalry countercharges infantry, the infantry stops and becomes disordered. See the section on countercharging on page 60. Actually the last paragraph of the first column on page 61. "

Best of the Hail Caesar Yahoo Group, October 2012

A busy month both on the Hail Caesar Yahoo group, with new members looking for advice on basing for 10mm ("do what looks good to you!"), joining the Society of Ancients (it's not just for DBX anymore!), and some niggling rules discussion regarding cavalry charging with supports and follow up victory moves if the supports never actually made it into combat ("the rules are unclear. Make a decision at the table").

There was a succinct rules clarification I found useful,

"When evading you roll to see how many moves the evading unit can make and then it moves as far as possible. If the evade move will not allow them to clear an intervening unit, then it stops its move immediately in front of the intervening unit because that is as far as it could possibly move. 

[Horse archers] could not countercharge Roman [cavalry] because it is a unit in Open Order and the Roman cavalry are a formed unit (see Units Not Allowed To Charge on page 55)."

Also a cryptic tease from Craig Woodfield regarding some HC skirmish rules his group has put together that may see print!

The Best of the Hail Caesar Yahoo Group. September 2012

Lots of good discussion this month as folks return from vacation and get back to waging war with tiny armies. It was hard to pick the best post of the month, so here are a few of my favorite highlights.

Rules Clarifications

• A testudo hit in the flank adopts battle line formation, but does not turn 90 degrees to face its attacker. The attack is still to the flank.

• Skirmishers in open order can not adopt a close order formation as a charge response to stop a heavier unit. Skirmishers in open formation can pretty much be ignored by heavier units in regards to the proximity rule.

• Two cohorts side by side with a third of same width covering exactly half of each of the two front cohorts. Would this mean the rear cohort could support either of the front cohorts or neither?
  
  It could support one of them, you choose which, but it can't support both. Of course, if they are fighting two separate enemy units, you will fight the combat with the support first, to increase your chances of victory. Then, all being well, the winning cohort will be able to sweeping charge into the flank of the remaining enemy, support following, to totally decimate that unit who will be facing two cohorts, one of which is supported. All gravy!

 Modeling Pyrrhus' Cavalry

I particuarly liked shaoloongyin's thoughts on modeling the unique nature of Pyrrhus' cavalry. The encouragement of the designers for players to hack the rules to best fit their vision of history or playability is one of the things that I really like about Hail Caesar and the HC community. I'll quote shaoloongyin's thoughts in total, because he's got some neat ideas:

I'd appreciate feedback on the following two approaches that attempt to reconcile historical troop characteristics within the HC ruleset.

Pyrrhus' mobile heavy cavalry reserve - Marauder rule

At the battle of Asculum, and perhaps elsewhere, Pyrrhus established a reserve line of elephants + skirmishers on the left and right wings and commanded his heavy guard cavalry in the centre. Apparently, he and his cavalry force would dash to wherever the lines appeared weak to either apply command or armed force.

Given this mobile role, it seems awkward to place such a cavalry squad under the distance restrictions of the usual divisional command rules. So, I've decided to use the Marauder rule in such cases, as well as the optional commander-in-chief rule for Pyrrhus.

This way, if he leaves the cavalry unit to lend command to any of his remote wings his guard cavalry will not suddenly be operating as if lobotomised. Though, per the rules, Pyrrhus' guard cavalry would be activated under the command of their original sub-commander in the centre rather than Pyrrhus himself (unless he joins the unit), no? This seems a little strange.

Perhaps it might be better to make them an exceptional division of 1?

Tarentine cavalry with 'Parthian' shot

Light, javelin-armed Tarentine cavalry apparently favoured riding up towards an enemy, casting their javelins, before riding away in a hit-and-run manner. There is doubt about whether their tactics favoured melee engagement.

Rather than used the 'feigned flight' rule, I've opted to allow Parthian Shot to be used with the Short Range value. The Tarentine javelin tactic appears analogous to the Parthian bow technique, though perhaps without the backwards-firing flourish.

Despite their initially exceptional use of shields, I've also opted to maintain Tarentine cavalry at a 6+ morale save and standard light cavalry, unless someone can offer a more elegant way to simulate this equipment. A 5+ morale save seems too strong.

Republican Romans

On a related note, with regards to Pyrrhus' enemy, the Republican Romans, I've toyed with the idea of allowing a manipular swap whereby a supporting second line principes or triarii unit can replace the unit in front provided the frontal unit gives ground in good order. There is thus still some chance for front line units to have their tactics disrupted if their break test puts them in disorder or destroys them outright.

Glad to see the chatter on the Hail Caesar Yahoo Group picking up. With my life being so full of non-game related activities in the moment, it's nice to be able to check in on Hail Caesar even if I can' seem to get any lead on the table.

The Best of the "Hail Caesar Yahoo Group"

The Hail Caesar Yahoo group contains a ton of great info, often from Rick Priestly who wrote the game, but I have a hard time keeping up with the conversation. I also seem to lose track of those neat tips  and clarifications months after they pop up in the group. To make sure I don't miss anything and to create a resource for finding those bits of info a bit easier, I've decided to pick the very best tip from each month's messages and repost it here.

August was a pretty slow month on the Hail Caesar Yahoo board, but I thought this tip from Dave Bosse (irondog068) was great:

How do you handle sieges?
"I have run a Samurai siege game before. Treated the wall as a +2 save. Had one watch tower with one teppo treated as small. Every attacker was assumed to have scaling ladders and the wall was looped for fire the whole length. To force the defender off the wall the defender had to lose and fail a morale check. If they did, the winner went over the wall but was disordered for one turn."

I have plans on running some sieges in the future, and I thought Dave's mod fit the rules and would be easy to implement. Hope this turns out to be useful for other Hail Caesar players.

Hail Caesar Skirmish #5: Driving out the Barbarian

It's been a busy summer and far too long since we got any minis on the table, but my wife and I found a  single free evening to play a short game of Hail Caesar. Each time I play Hail Caesar I try to get a better handle on the rules and try something a bit new. For this game we came up with a scenario rather than fight out a simple bash.

Julius Caesar is throwing around his muscle, using the migration of celtic tribes as a pretense to launch attacks on their "aggressive advances". In this hypothetical scenario a detachment of Roman legionnaires, having defeated one celtic tribe in battle, advance on celtic village intent on burning the inhabitants out. Will the defending celts summon a defense in time to drive the Romans off? AAR after the jump.

Hail Caesar Skirmish #4: Marian Romans vs. Early Germans

With Historicon fast approaching, my pal Mike and I got together for a rapid fire series of games to brush up on some rules. This was Mike's first time playing Hail Caesar, so he took a larger force of Romans to face off against my early Germans. Pics and a battle report after the jump.

Basing Romans for Hail Caesar

When I started with ancients in 28mm I wasn't sure which rules system I'd be using: DBA, Impetus or Hail Caesar.  To maintain flexibility I based my Romans in a combination of two 60mm and one 40mm wide bases. With that combination I thought I'd be able to flip between the different rules system easily.

DBA: one 60mm base = 1 DBA element.
Impetus: four 60mm bases = 1 Impetus unit
Hail Caesar: two 60mm bases + one 40mm base = 1 HC unit, with the option of adding a third 60mm base in the future.

Basing for Hail Caesar

After playing a few games of Hail Caesar though, I was sold and I decided to move ahead with HC as my rules of choice. I had been working on a Punic Wars era Roman army (despite starting with late republican figures), but hadn't anticipated the basing suggested in the Punic Wars army list that was released in the Biblical and Classical book. I know that the underlying ethos of HC is "do whatever you'd like", but as this is my first foray into the period I've decided to stick with their suggestions for the time being. The basing system for republican Romans is many small bases to model the checkerboard formations of the Romans during the Punic Wars. My 60+40+60 system didn't map very well to the 80mm wide small units I'd need to field, so I decided to switch to a mixture of 80mm and 40mm bases to more easily switch between normal and small sized units.

Until I can get some proper Polybian Romans painted these late Republican units will be subbing in as proxies, but with my revised basing they should fit in seamlessly with my hastati, princeps and triarii once I get them ready.

Checkerboard pattern of small units (80mm and 40mm+40mm bases)

Hail Caesar Skirmish #3!

My wife and I played another Hail Caesar skirmish. The addition of my newly painted Celts brought our tiny forces up to the same point total (although I just eyeballed it when setting up the game). Having lost every Hail Caesar skirmish to date, I was hoping to eek out a win. I also wanted to add some more terrain to the field to see how it altered the battle. The Roman legionnaires would be facing off against their barbarian adversaries lurking in the dense forests of Germania. Check out our skirmish after the jump.

Hail Caesar Status Markers

I've only played a few test skirmishes of Hail Caesar, but I realized I wanted to include some on-table markers to help me remember the status and abilities of various units. Even with only a handful of units per side I found myself forgetting which ones had used their Wild Fighters ability, or which were allowed the "Winning" bonus from victory in the previous round.

Hail Caesar with unit status markers

I thought about creating a unique marker for each potential status, but decided that would be a bit overwhelming, with dozens of extra markers necessary for even my existing units. I settled on a single figure stand with interchangeable color-coded bases to indicate the unit status. It took a little trial and error, but I finally came up with a system that should be fairly simple to both build and use in play. Check out my solution after the jump.

Hail Caesar Skirmish #2!

Hail Caesar: Rome vs. Ancient Germans skirmish

What a great game! I had another chance to try out Hail Caesar, this time with my wife. She's up for games of any stripe so it wasn't very difficult to cajole her into playing. We also watched the HBO miniseries "Rome" a few years ago, so she had a little background with the era. I offered her the choice of armies.

"Romans. Not stupid barbarians." I got out my meager cohorts and passed them to her.

"These guys are neat," she commented. "Hey, you put these spears on backwards. You've got the handle pointed forwards."

"No, those are called 'pilum'. That long metal part isn't a handle. It has a hard point, but the shaft gets weaker when it gets near the middle. The Romans would chuck those at guys when they got close. The hard point would go into their shield, and then the weak part would make the rest of the pilum bend down, so they've got this curved wonky spear stapled to their shield. The pilum was ruined, so the enemy couldn't throw it back, and it was weighing down their shield which would have hindered them too."

"Huh. That's actually really interesting."

"Really?"  She's not much of a history buff. This was probably the first time any historical fact elicited more than a polite shrug.

"Yeah. I mean... if you had just told me that out of the blue I wouldn't have cared, but now that I see the little guy and he's about to go fight, that's actually pretty neat."

<HAIL CAESAR RECEIVES +1 WINNING BONUS VS. HISTORICAL DISINTEREST>

See how she fared after the jump...

Hail Caesar Skirmish!

Hail Caesar Romans ready for battle

My buddy Mark was in town for the holidays, and with a handful of complete (or nearly complete) figures ready to go, we decided to take a shot at Hail Caesar to run through the rules, roll some dice and throw some barbarians and Romans together and see the sparks fly. Check it out after the jump...

Messing with Hail Caesar

Testing out Hail Caesar with 20mm proxies

It's been a very busy few weeks for me but I did manage to get in some work on my ancient armies.  I was still fretting about basing so I took some of my shelved 20mm ancients, quickly glued them to bases with PVA and started pushing them around a table while testing out the Hail Caesar rules. Playing solo, it wasn't much of a game since I was simply trying to see if I had grasped the rules and wanted to get the feel of moving multiple bases around to see how fiddly they felt.  Despite spending most of my time looking up rules, not having enough elements on the table, playing myself with only the most basic strategies, I actually had fun. Really looking forward to playing a real game.

Some thoughts from my first test

• There were a lot more counters on the table than I had anticipated. Towards the end of the battle, nearly every unit had at least 3 wound counters.
• Perhaps it was only because I was playing both sides, but I forgot which side was due the "winning" bonus from round to round of prolonged melees. I'm thinking of making a small marker (like a flag or standard bearer) to mark the winning side of a round.

Production line painting

I'm also making encouraging progress on my figures. I've got a 32 man unit of Germans that just need basing, 32 figures of Caesarian Romans ready for basing, and various other minis being cleaned and primed. And next week : Historicon!