Tullicinus 170bc

Cal seems to like this Warhammer Ancients thing, no sooner has he got one army, than he's bought another. Not really familiar 20mm, he went by the scale guides on Plastic Soldier Review and bought a complete Hat Macedonian army, thinking it'd look OK next to 28 mm.

Anyone who's tried (an I have) knows it doesn't.

Still no loss, as I've more than enough 20mm armies to face them. However it did mean doing that most onerous of tasks, the one every wargamer hates. Rebasing figures.

Turning my smaller than standard DBM based army into a usable Warhammer/Impetus/Armati/proper sized DBM force was one of those jobs I'd known would come up one day. EIGHT hours later 200+ figures were rebased and my back was broken from being hunched over the modelling table. Never commit to these things with two days notice!

But in the end, the effect was impressive:

2,500 points of Romans faced another mass of brand new plastic.

As battle opened I knew it was going to be a case of turning his flanks to have any real hope of winning, my big concern was his cavalry, as I knew it would hit hard. As I advanced I formed up the Maniples to give maximum support to one another.

Cal's cavalry duly charged, but misjudging the ground appeared to charge up a cliff face and did almost no damage, they broke and I pursued, exposing the flank of the Phalanx to a drilled Roman charge.

The Macedonians broke and fled, but I couldn't catch them, already Cal was boxed in but still a tough nut to crack. His rolling today was terrible, but in Warhammer that meant there was one thing he could always do, Rally. His units proved adept at running away, reforming and then reorganising in a stronger position than before. Aside from this, he was winning the skirmisher battle thanks to his cavalry superiority and more numerous light infantry.

Still there was little he could do about my solid blocks of infantry at this stage. His Companions made another attempt to break Maniple, only to get surrounded and picked off. When his general fell, it affected him little, but the lines and his options were diminished.

At this stage he was fighting with his back to the wall, hoping his light troops could take the heat off.

Eventually one of his Phalanxes was wiped out, and a huge gap appeared in his line, but at the same point his cavalry remnants were able to apply pressure to my left. With the support of skirmishers.

The cavalry charge finally broke a Maniple, and left me with a gap in my lines. at the same time the Triarii, who had been slogging it away with a Phalanx for three turns were finally beaten.

And so it turned just like that. The Macedonians were devoid of good dice until the last turn, but by sheer grim determination just hung in long enough to survive, and indeed come out on top. Their cavalry advantage wasn't what it could have been, but was enough, with skirmisher support to eventually break through.

Next time, grrr.

Elsewhere, the models from Spartan Games new space combat game 'Firestorm Armada' caught my eye. The rules seem strongly based on the 'Uncharted Seas' system, but the space ship models are very nice indeed.