2mm Strength & Honour

We got our first games in today.  For the first test game I played the Britons and my brother in law had the Romans.  The scenario was Watling Street.

Setup:

The Roman governor of Britainnia Paulinus gathered all available forces to oppose Boudica and her tribal alliance that had defeated the Roman garrisons and towns in the South East.  They met on Watling Street (now under the A5), many think at Mancetter. Paulinus found a narrow elevated position flanked by dense woodland on both sides.  Boudica drew her huge force up backed by the wagon laagers of her armies camp followers.

In our version I decided to set out the warbands with the skirmishing chariots and infantry in between.  This allowed me to attach the skirmishers to the warbands which conveys  combat bonus.

The three blocks of warband close up and can be activated in pairs when there is a supporting base in position.  The light cavalry on the left advanced to the woods.  The Romans open up into a line of three with the legions on their right and centre and the auxiliary troops on the left.

The warbands advance with the Trinovanti (in red) going up against the legion in the centre and the Atrebates (blue) got mauled by the the auxiliaries with the lead element routed and the rear pushed back.  The Iceni (in green) are a bit isolated on the right with no opposition to their front.

The auxiliaries advanced down the hill and one turned into the flank of the Iceni.  The Trinovanti and legionaries exchange blows but can’t find a decisive result.  On the Roman right the legion is worried about advancing and allowing the Light Cavalry to hit them in the flank so stay still.   Paulinus calls Homunculus Est! where the cards that the Britons have taken for the various push backs and routs are revealed and counted.  If the army break point is reached the Britons are defeated.  Boudica uses a Generalship point to cancel this action in the vain hope that something better might happen in the next combats.

The auxiliaries defeat both the Atrebates who rout and the Iceni who are pushed away into the woods on the Roman right.  The legion finally vanquish the Trinovanti, routing the first warband with the other being pushed back.  The Romans call Homunculus Est! again and the Britons have to reveal their Setback and Disaster cards.  A total of 21 sees them pass their army break point of 18 and lose the battle.

Second game:

We reversed command and played again.  The Romans won again in a much tighter encounter.  This time the Britons held all of their skirmishers as full units and they tied up the Romans quite badly.  Although a legion lost a combat exchange and was disordered the auxiliaries came to their rescue and the Romans pushed the Britons back down the hill onto the wagon laager, and despite having a hand of cards that would probably have ended up losing the game, they got a decisive Homunculus Est! call in and won again.

Thoughts:

The basics of the game are pretty easy and although we forgot a bunch of stuff in game one we still had a good time.  Things got easier in game two, especially after we reviewed the playthrough videos on Lard TV.  We struggled to get on top of exactly what happens after combat and the finer detail of movements into contact but the videos helped.

Overall the game experience is excellent.  You do feel like you are commanding a big army and the mechanics make most decisions important and the order you do things in can really affect the outcomes.  Yes the Romans won both times but it was really close the second time and could very easily have been the other way round.  The rules feel balanced but the armies play in a nicely asymetric way with different problems to solve for the two commanders.