Romans vs Hebrews with Sword and Spear

As Mark has finally finished re-basing his 15mm Hebrews, he gave them an outing against Colin's EIR army. I sat in as the Hebrew 2ic.

We out scouted the Romans and as the Hebrews have no heavy infantry, that meant that Colin  had to deploy the bulk of his army first. He put the majority of his legionaries on his right, obviously intending to smash what was in front of them on that side. Right in the centre he put his bolt shooters, with a couple of units on legionaries to hold the left. On either flank was a unit of skirmishers and 1 or 2 units of cavalry.

The bulk of our infantry were vastly out classed by the Romans, but we had quite a powerful mounted arm with 2 units each of heavy chariots and light chariots. We split the army roughly equally, I took a large force of dross spearmen, flanked by archers and sat them on a hill facing the Legions. On my flank I had a unit of skirmishers, one of camel mounted archers and 2 units of light chariots.

Mark had all our decent infantry, plus 3 units of dross, with skirmishers and the heavy chariots on his flank. Our plan was for me to hold up the main Roman attack, while Mark took out the smaller force in front of him, then swung around to roll up the line. On both flanks we intended to use our superior forces to break through and get behind the infantry line and attack from the rear (or at least break up the formation).

The Roman deployment.

Cavalry and skirmishers protect the flank of the Legionaries.

The Hebrew deployment.

Our stronger wing, led by heavy chariots.

My camels inflict the first blood of the game!

The cavalry wing guarding the Roman right flank (if you look closely you might see some bloodied remains beneath the wheels of the chariots!).

On my flank the Roman cavalry pull back to avoid massed bow fire.

Whilst the legions slowly plod forward.

A lucky round of shooting from the camels rout the last Roman cavalry unit.

The Roman casualties after turn 4.

And ours!

Unfortunately all my photos of the decisive action came out very blury, so I'll have to make do with a brief description.

With their flanks gone, all the Roman legionaries started advancing to get to grips before we could attack them in the rear. The problem with our heavy chariots was that they had been forced to pursue so were out of command range of the General. I had the two captains on my flank, so I was able to keep one moving up to maintain control of the chariots, but Mark only had the General on his side, another captain would have allowed him to be more flexible.

The legions eventually crashed into our rubbish foot, but because of the placement of our skirmishers and archers, they hit piecemeal rather in two solid blocks. On Mark's flank, one unit managed to hit the infantry line and routed our unit in two rounds of melee. Mark managed to charge one of his chariot units into the rear of the second legion, then hit it with the skirmishers in front and charge his best armorer foot into the flank. A Roman sandwich! The legionary unit was swiftly routed.

On my flank, one of the legion units detached and wheeled to face the chariot unit I have brought on to their flank, so when his line hit mine I had an overlap. The advantage to being on the hill helped my poorer quality infantry stand up to the legionaries, in fact I inflicted more hits in the first round of melee combat (Colin's dice were very poor for most of the game!). I wheeled my overlapping unit onto the Roman's flank and charged them in on the next turn, routing another legion, just as Colin managed to rout my infantry unit on the other end of the line! I managed to get the camels and the second chariot unit behind the flanking legion and poured in bow fire (at one point I could hit it with 5 units!). Eventually the unit routed, again just as another on my units routed. We were losing tit for tat on my flank, but I could afford to do that as his units were much better quality than mine and had a bigger impact on his army morale.

Eventually the Roman morale broke and it was an unexpected win for the Hebrews. Undoubtedly smashing the Roman Cavalry and getting the chariots behind the legion's line was the winning tactic. That said, if I hadn't had that convenient hill, my infantry might have broken too soon for the chariots to get into place. A good fun game all round.

The final Hebrew casualty count.

And the Romans!

Other games on Friday night.

WW2 28mm with Chain of Command.

6mm 18th Century using Black Powder.

Dystopian Wars naval game.

And a Warhammer 40K game with some impressive models.