Still smarting from my defeat at the hands of the sneaky Numidians in game one of our alfresco adventure we met a couple of weeks later, this time increasing our forces to 1500pts. Time for the Romans to seek revenge.
Increasing the points put us up to a more typical WAB type list, the first game, at 1000 points had been designed to get us back into the rules, so was deliberately restrictive as it didn't allow us too much variety, and therefore we could concentrate on the core rules. So technically I could have had the Scorpio bolt throwers and some cavalry in the 1000pt list, but I was definitely having them in this enlarged force. If anything is calculated to scare Elephants it is bolt throwers, because there's no save once they're hit! To make up the army I also added some auxiliary cavalry and another unit of archers. Chris added in more cavalry and warband units to his Numidians and we were good to go. Slightly more open terrain on my 6x4 table to allow for a bit more manoeuvre space.
Chris deployed his elephants last, putting them on his right (my left flank), and I half remembered that there was likely to be an ambush move, so had one of my auxiliary units ready for this eventuality.
Sure enough a unit of Numidian cavalry appeared out of nowhere and headed to try and take out the bolt-thrower which was pointing towards his approaching elephants! My plucky auxiliaries were up to the task, and whilst the bolt-thrower crew scarpered for the nearest rough ground to escape the cavalry, the archers and auxiliaries went to business to see off the threat.
This left the cavalry to screen the elephants as they lumbered towards my flank;
Obviously in WAB most cavalry are scared of the smelly, strange looking elephants, but my auxiliaries held their nerve before skirmishing ineffectively against the, and eventually being driven off. They did manage to slow them down a bit though whilst my bolt thrower crew crept back out of hiding, and the auxiliaries reorganised themselves having beaten off the Numidian ambush.
This heroic band of men managed to beat the first elephant in combat, a pretty even context, but won by the quirky WAB musician roll off rule, which gave them the edge and led to the elephant failing its morale and scarpering off, which left them to take on the second elephant, with a similar effect. Disappointingly no stampede results, but both of his armoured elephants seen off means certain honours for this particular plucky band.
The bolt thrower had attracted a lot of attention as a threat to them, but in the end was quite ineffective, largely due to poor dice rolls.
Back in the centre the outcome was more predictable, the legionaries extra discipline, use of pilums and good morale meant that they were able to withstand the combined efforts of the Numidian infantry and cavalry. On the other flank an inconclusive stand off between the Roman archers and a Numidian warband at least kept them out of the main battle.
Elephants tend to dominate this kind of game, and the main task of the Romans, who are always going to be outnumbered by the otherwise warband style army, is to see them off, and then deal with the warbands (and in the Numidian case cavalry) in the normal efficient way. As the first game showed it IS possible for the Romans to lose, and WAB allows for a fair degree of uncertainty, and critical points in the game being decided by luck, so they are always fun games.
WAB has a lot of character, and it was fun to play again after a long break. It would be interesting to rerun these games using Hail Caesar, or Sword and Spear and see how different they feel, and how the outcomes change. Maybe when all this is over, and we can get another game or two in...
Laurence
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