Romano-British for Dux Britanniarum

In Dux Britanniarum, nobles and forces are activated when their card is drawn from a deck made up of a card for each noble and any missile troops that may be included in the force.  Each side is also given a separate set of cards with special abilities that a noble may spend a command initiative to play.

Peredur Constantine’s card was first out of the deck and seeing Ceawlin’s elite forces coming towards him he decided to have his men form a shieldwall and then try and move towards the road leading to the border tower.  This was a mistake on my part as troops in shieldwall find it harder to negotiate obstacles.  True enough, they only just managed to make it over the drystone wall and both groups took a point of shock.  I should have made the movement roll first and then formed the shieldwall, or simply formed shieldwall behind the drystone wall to get a defensive bonus.  As it was, I ended up making only marginal progress towards the road and forming a shieldwall out in the open.  Still, these initial games are all about learning.

Ceawlin however was faced with a different dilemma in that the gap between the farm buildings was only wide enough to admit one group at a time.  As he wanted both groups to attack Peredur’s force together, he sent them both around opposite sides of the barn, keeping one group under his command and the other under Saebert the Old.

In the rest of the turn Garcianus and Urien struggled to get the Comanipulares and the Levy moving, whilst Berhthun the Devil brought on two groups of warriors on the Saxon board edge.  Meanwhile the Saxon bowmen sent an ineffective volley against Peredur’s men, whilst the British missile troops made slow progress through the forest hoping to emerge on the other side and harass the Saxon right flank.