Bibracte 58 BC

 

Today at the Hall of Heroes we played Philip's Bibracte 58BC scenario, as a training game for our forthcoming Alesia megagame at the end of the year.

Caesar and his Legions were set up and encamped at the top of steep hill, and seemed to have a good deal of bowmen and light artillery, as well as the dreaded Legions...

Whereas we Gauls, the Helvetii to be precise, had some bowmen, lots of warbands, but nack all artillery. This would have to be done with cold steel - lucky we had the 'wild fighters' attribute...To be precise, we had 4 'divisions', led by Terry, Jim, myself and Philip from left to right, each of 4 large warbands and a couple of skirmish units...

Our objective was to seize the Roman camp...

Whilst theirs was to seize ours...

I like an uncomplicated scenario, so without further ado, I charged all my warbands at the Roman camp, as I thought that was the whole idea....

However it seems I was alone in that interpretation, as 3/4 of the Helvetii just crossed their arms and watched my warbands go it alone...

There was some sort of cunning fancy manoeuvring going on over on the far left flank - very pretty I'm sure, but not much use to my lads...

Eventually, Jim's warbands came up on my left and relieved the pressure just as my warbands were reaching their stamina limit...

Next it was Caesar's turn to try some fancy manoeuvring around our right flank to try and sneak around to our camp. However owing to some political skulduggery of some sort or another - Romans Eh! - the Legate's sister ended up running that operation with a command value of 7, so Philip pretty much locked down that flank with a couple of skirmish units...

Meantime back at the foot of the Roman camp Jim and I were doing the heavy lifting....

 

Whilst Terry and Philip on the flanks provided moral support:
(Yeah, thanks for turning up Terry and Philip!)

They obviously had bad memories of what its like to face Roman Legion!



'Pilum! - Lift! - Aim! RELEASE!

 And together with the state of my units it looked like our last, best hope to seize the Roman camp, and victory, lay with Jim's warbands - and he fought his way to the point where the last line of Roman defence was a unit of raw Legion - if he broke these we would win the game!

Alas it was not to be - the young Legionnaires held, and the game was a draw...