Saka Light Cavalry

Saka Light Cavalry
Showing posts with label Hail Caesar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hail Caesar. Show all posts

Friday, 3 September 2021

Two Games of August

 I have actually played three but only have the pictures from two of them. So just a quick run through based on a failing memory....

Another tilt against Matt, same armies but with a few more points. We did better with the rules but Matt continues to stink up the room with his dice rolls.
I on the other hand was rolling laver, this helped me with some questionable decisions but again the light troops seemed to do better against bigger units by disordering them on a number of occasions. 
Matt was able to clear away my skirmish line but unable to do much else allowing them to go back in.

My guys on the left run from the Persian skirmishers whilst my Cretan's watch. Fortunately I was then able to clear his troops away and continue to march forward.

My skirmishers on the right were doing much better, though we were to more or less wear each other down over the following turns neither able to get an advantage. However Matt was also wearing my cavalry down as it was much weaker on this flank than on my left.


The main action was on my left with Matt sending in his Cataphracts against my Agema, I had managed through eye watering rolls seen off one regiment whilst I was certainly losing another but through epic rolls not quite breaking.

But all good things must end and ended with a rather poor roll. Matt's quality then started to take over and my left wing was crushed leaving the ever vulnerable infantry phalanx's at risk. I did have the pleasure of seeing a Gallic warband hit one Phalanx and whilst it just survived the first round was not going to stand beyond that. 

Whilst we did not fight to a conclusion it was obvious the winner would be Matt. So after two games of Hail Caesar we will try Napoleonic 6mm with Matt trying the rules Lee and I worked on. Which is a nice link to....

Lee, my son Joseph and I have joined Chesterfield Open Gaming Society (COGS) which seems to be a retooled version of the club I used to go to in Chesterfield YMCA, certainly plenty of old faces there.

So this is our third visit and this time Lee played his Russians against James and me with the French.

The issue was that I had left the rules at home and Lee had not taken a set away so we were without the rules and trying to work without the charts. We did fairly well but I was rather annoyed with myself. Still we had a good game.

Joseph sent his cavalry against Lee's on the far left after Lee instigated the attack. His use of combined arms a timely reminder of how effective it is. Meanwhile on the right I was sending my light infantry through the woods after Lee had moved into it whilst keeping the rest of the Division back.

I had the heavy cavalry which I first moved towards the centre as Lee used his heavies to threaten Joseph's infantry with some success. Lee was to pull back when faced by my cavalry's move but we did not get chance to fight them as I had thrown them into his infantry.

Joseph in the centre about to be charged by Lee's heavies, Joseph did not have light infantry so his movement into the woods was slow going.

Lee's light cavalry had made a bit of a mess of Joseph's light cavalry and a foot battery but Joseph's response was to give him a taste of his own medicine. First defeating the weak Cossack division and then facing the better quality second line of cavalry.


Lee had two divisions of infantry to my one (Joseph had two to Lee's one) but I had cleared the woods and was starting to reposition the infantry to make it hard for Lee to drive against me and for good measure had sent my heavy cavalry into his weakened division. I should have taken the option of falling back but having kept in contact with his squares I was being sucked into a lengthy combat. One I was sure to win but it would leave them vulnerable to Lee's still strong heavy cavalry.

On the left Joseph was closing with Lee and able to either press the one Division of infantry with his one or threaten Lee's centre where he would then dilute Lee's strength of cavalry. By this point both Lee's and Joseph's light cavalry had reached their forced retire orders through mutual combats. Joseph effectively winning that battle as he had also dealt with Lee's Cossacks.

The shattered remains of Joseph's cavalry that was now limping off the field. This is the point we had to end but it still had plenty of play left with either side yet able to make a successful breakthrough. Still plenty of tweaking yet to happen but it felt like Napoleonic's and looked good too. We typically use these rules for BIG games and they work well with them. Club size games has been put under less stress. I think they will clear down to a nice set of rules.

We are back next Monday but changing to a Gunfight using Dead Man's Hand, that should give us a nice quick game or maybe two. Nice to get the opportunity to play again.







Sunday, 18 June 2017

Han Chinese Persian AAR

Over a month between posts! Well whilst painting has been on an all time low I have been playing games, just not recording them. Hopefully I will get back to normal and get posting again. I have a Saga game this week and a Black Powder game the week after if all goes well. I have even started to paint more regularly again with a couple of 15mm units finished this week just waiting to be photographed.

I have had a few games of Hail Caesar with Matt recently and another with Lee. My Persians have not done too badly so maybe I am starting to use them correctly? Probably the dice have had more to do with it with two games having molten dice. This then is the other game played against Matt.

The thing about the Persians is you get a lot for your money. A lot of low cost units that is. In the distance you can see the Han whilst I have enough troops to wrap round them if the terrain would allow.

On my left flank I send in hoplites and two units of levy bow infantry. These are facing Matts only mounted force so have to be careful, I do have one of three mounted brigades just to the left in the photo that should help some.

Only trouble being that they don't much like moving forward. Matt and his group have developed a few changes to the basic activation rules giving a bonus for units and formations over a certain distance. This usually means whilst at distance you can get a few moves a turn.


On the opposite flank I charge my cavalry into Chinese infantry. In Black Powder crossbows have a few restrictions and other bonus abilities a definite disadvantage is the inability to use closing fire. As such I charged some cavalry units in his infantry on his flank. This is risky as a roll of 6 can cause you a MC that low rolls can cause some nasty effects. Also the cavalry have a 50/50 chance of becoming disordered, in this case I got lucky.

I still had another cavalry division waiting the results of the first attack before being unleashed for a clean up attack. Or they failed to get any moves!!

Back on the other flank I try to bring the Chinese chariots into melee but Matt keeps dropping them back to allow his bow armed crews to cause casualties but I have good save rolls allowing them to continue to march forwards in the hope of finally catching them.

Matt sent his bow armed light cavalry up to my right hand cavalry division in an attempt to get me to charge and in the meantime push up my casualties. This was partially successful but my cavalry are armed with javelins so it's not all one way traffic.

The centre was for the most part rather quite as I struggled to move forward. My right hand cavalry has come back from a bruising round or two of melee and needs time to get sorted out.

Disaster for my hoplites as Matt gets a open flank to charge. He went on to destroy these and move on to the second unit destroying those as well. The first time Matt can remember such good fortune for his cavalry.

However in the middle I had the advantage and was just starting to force the two wings of his army apart.

On my right I had broken some units and now can both more troops most of which were in great shape and the ability to strike from a distance.


One of Matt's brigades on my right was broken and a second flanked and bent back. All the mounted units are mine in the image above with one retreating Chinese unit in the middle. My task here was to get the most forward cavalry behind the Chinese cutting off their retreat whilst bringing the rest around the flank and the infantry to close quarters and simply attack with whichever units are presented the Chinese rear.

We called it at this point, my cavalry had managed to not only charge home against Matt's infantry but won most of the melee rounds causing Matt's position to become impossible to hold.

Monday, 5 September 2016

I Won I Won

Hail Caesar Army Lists - Biblical & Classical



Big Lee ran a great prize draw for 2 million hits, that is a HUGE number. Best of all I only scoured the top prize. £50 Warlord voucher so I thought I would share it with my Lee as he was yet to get the Black Powder rule book but had bought it the day before! We both already have the SYW supplement so I thought it a good idea to buy the two army lists for Hail Caesar, this way both of us could benefit as we plan to have a few goes with those rules. I already like them and expect Lee to do so as well.

I also thought I would try Warlords drybrushes so got a few of these. The prize has already been shipped so I await with all the excitement of a small child. 

Massive thanks to Big Lee for being such a sport and I will be thinking of the gift every time  I use an army from these books.

Hail Caesar Army Lists - Late Antiquity to early Medieval

Wednesday, 15 June 2016

Ancient Casualty Markers

I used the last two Warbases small dials to rebase two of my original casualty markers that I painted up five or more years ago. I still have a bunch to do with the markers I bought at Partizan.

These will be used for Hail Caesar so I will need quite a few more as our games now have twenty plus units. Matt has already got loads for his army so I am playing catch up.

The figures are from Donnington Miniatures and cost 30p per figure. The dials cost 60p so each one comes in a little under £1 so not too bad given the number required.

Thursday, 28 May 2015

Seleucid V Parthian AAR

Managed another Hail Caesar game with Matt but this time we pushed the points up to 500. My plan was to run his troops out of space and force his cataphracts to receive the charge from my pike. I went pike heavy, indeed fielding more pike than I have ever done before. 

Matt's Parthian's on the right took up a much greater area, the question has to be would they be able to use such large numbers effectively?

Not only did I not go for the cataphract option but the cavalry were javelin and spear armed. I wanted the ability to do damage when not in contact and I also knew I would never catch the horse archers with the very slow heavy cavalry. Unfortunately I managed far too few shots from these guys.

My Gallic infantry took a fair pounding, I was playing them as naked fanatics and their ability to clear away some of the horse archers worked but the Parthian Shot ability caused too many losses.

On my right flank my javelin armed light cavalry had cleared off the first wave of horse archers whilst on my left flank I had lost one of it's two units to a bad test roll whilst the other unit caught an evading unit removing it from the game. 

At this point it was clear the idea of javelin armed light cavalry was good but just two per wing was way to fee. Indeed my points spent on the heavy cavalry would have been much better spent on more light, something to consider for the future.

My pike on the right were being held up by the skirmish elements due to poor command rolls. Indeed I was just getting one moves almost all the way along the line. I had countered on getting two to three moves every other turn so I would be able to push Matt's archers to their board edge.

My light cavalry were shaken but poised to charge into the flanks of several horse archer units but it was not to be as they were finally booted out the game.

The surprise of the night was that my Gallic infantry stood and survived a charge by a cataphract unit supported by two horse archer units. It was pushed back and shaken but in the following turn won the melee seeing them off. I had turned the pike to face to try and take advantage of a possible stand off.

I was still in danger of having a gap torn in my line if the cataphracts charged again so I planned on plugging the gap with some of my cavalry.

On the left I continued to fall back with my two spent light cavalry, they were in no condition to continue to try and push against the numbers they faced.

I was also falling back on the left but I just could not get more than a single move out of them and with 50% of shots supplying hits and saving on average 33% of these I was losing the battle here as well.

Matt charged in again with his mauled cataphracts with two supports whilst I received with the pike as support. I had been rolling some good dice but at this point they deserted me with me losing 6 pips to 3. Not only did the cavalry break but so too did the pike.

Same spot, different picture, suddenly not only did I have a big hole in my line but one side was propped open by a shaken unit, I was in serious trouble.

Whilst Matt's cavalry were also shaken he had the light cavalry to pour into the gap and recover at least one more pip to allow his heavies to finish off the Gauls if the bow troops had not already done so. My cavalry on the left flank was a broken brigade and no way could I now win so yet another victory for Matt.

However I think I have a lot more mileage with my Persians, I need to send in more bow but they are the troops that can cause the biggest problems for the horse archers. So I guess I will be back with them next time.

Tuesday, 26 May 2015

Companion Cavalry and Command Bases

My Ancient army gets a little help with a couple of Baccus Companion unit's. I can get two and a half units out of pack which is why I bought a couple more packs at Triples as a few units would not really cut it.

Again the plan is not to paint them to win any prizes but to allow me to paint them up in a fairly fast manner. I went with one unit with red and one with blue cloaks as their stand out points. I will be painting a whole bunch in each colour, though different shades to give variety whilst allowing them to be fielded as the blue/red division etc. From speaking to Lee he plans to expand his 6mm armies picked up at Hamerhead by quite a bit so the arms race is on. I also intend to buy a Persian army as I think it could look excellent in this scale if given it's head.

These are very nice sculpts and capture the look of the Companions really well. I will get some of the other cavalry to supplement this pose for some of the other units available to the various Macedonian armies I can bend this too.

I had a bit of a play with these, the blues are in a form of wedge formation whilst the reds play it safe with two lines. The bases are 40x60 from Warbases and give enough mass feel to work along side the larger phalanx and smaller Hoplite blocks. 

Command is catered for with two figures to a 1p for sub-command and three figures on a 2p for the Army commander. This will make it clear who is top dog.

Again Baccus did a top job of sculpting these rather fine figures. Once I have a 2p loaded I will have enough command for four divisions and figures for almost three so I guess I need to get cracking with more of these. Before that I need to clear my desk down a little of what is on it at the moment.

Having had a bit of a test run of 6mm with Hail Caesar I am really excited to get the chance to play a bigger game with lots of painted units, it's going to look excellent. 

Friday, 15 May 2015

Seleucid V Carthaginian Bash Hail Caesar AAR

Only two days after the Hail Caesar game with Matt I was back over at Kev's for another HC game. The feel is quite different as the figure size is 1/72 and two very nice armies they are and Kev and Andy have converted HC to conform to hex movement which works quite well overall.

Being as nothing is scared the UgoIgo system has been replaced with a card activation system where each brigade has two activation cards plus a Joker that allows you to choose one brigade to move again. So one turn through the deck can allow you to try to activate one brigade three times and the rest two. This can lead to some tense moments as the run of the cards can add a fair bit of drama as when one division gets activated three times out of say five cards or all your cards come out early and then you have to hold on till the deck gets a shuffle. Last night they played out well creating many a worrying moment though the last two run through's Kev's cards came out in a bunch at the start much to his discomfort.

I forgot the at start pis and after failing to activate a couple of times my Carthaginian cavalry (Numidian light horse and Gaul medium cavalry) finally got going. I was facing superior cavalry so was not planning on leaving the hill with my mediums but threw my lights into javelin range to start peppering my opposing cavalry.

Glenn our commander and owner of our troops plan was to move as far forward and as quickly as possible our light troops and start to pepper the opposing skirmishing and open order troops. Meanwhile our main troops were to remain at the halt. 

I had the first success and this was to have a huge impact on my flank as Kev's Gaul cavalry was hit with two rounds of missile fire sending them shaken and retreated disordered. They went back through two other cavalry units disordering both of them. This was to slow Kev down and the Gaul's never got back in the game making the contest that bit more favourable. 

View down the table, it's still early with both sides still moving towards each other. Kev was mostly moving one sometimes two moves forward with his infantry which actually played into our plan of keeping our infantry from the pitched battle till as late in the game as possible.

Revenge for Kev, I should have evaded from the charge but not wanting to go off the table I stood. I rolled poor and Kev rolled well (one of the few good rolls for Kev who really did suffer from bad dice all game). The end result was one of my light units broken.

Our skirmishers make contact and start to win the skirmish battle. Aided by my ability to roll 6 on most save throws.

 Glenn broke one skirmish element and started to pick on the light infantry covering the pike facing our right hand division.

I kept moving my light cavalry back into javelin range, Kev would charge them and remove them from the front but I kept bringing them straight back and whilst Kev was rallying off some of the pips from his Kontos armed heavies I was always able to keep some hits on them. Whilst my cavalry remained on the hill they would be difficult to shift but Kev was not able to do enough damage on my lights and Gaul's to get a better chance of winning the melee. 

My biggest set back was one light infantry unit becoming shaken and disordered but overall our light infantry and skirmishes were getting the best of the early battle and driving the Seleucid skirmish line away from the troops allowing us to start working on the main battle line,

Glenn had a couple of great results and Kev had no luck that saw his pike blocks becoming disordered which set them in place for awhile and of course the casualties were starting to creep up. However our decision to remain near our starting locations meant that Kev would be able to get his house in order though by this point he only had his bow skirmishers left to mask his pike and they were unable to hold back our missile troops.

Kev's view was somewhat different to ours. The cavalry choke point does look tougher for him with a long trip behind the woods to get at our rear. Success would have meant I would be forced to move two to three units to block a route into my rear which may have weakened me enough for a drive on my infantry division. Failure would have really stretched his defence as I would have more space to exploit the victory.

In the centre evidence of the skirmish battle with most of his missile troops pushed back and disordered. The scythed chariot waiting for a chance to be unmasked and charge hard into my Gaul infantry but the battle lines were remaining tight.

Not many casualties but the disorder was stopping forward movement which in turn slowed down his advance in the centre. This of course gives us yet more time to keep up the missile fire.

I finally lose a second light cavalry unit which in turn allows Kev to start hammering my left hand medium cavalry unit though I was able to rally some off whilst keeping the Kontos armed cavalry under a similar number of casualties so that Kev was not confident of winning the combat.

Finally the pike close on my 2nd division but Kev's own skirmishers left in forward positions were now in his way. More time, more missile fire and just past my division the fire from Glenn finally separated a medium infantry unit from it's supports.

Just to the right of the round commander base is the rear support of Glenn's first charge, the target has not a single support whilst Glenn got rear and one flank support but his other flank being disordered are unable to help. Not that he needed it as he smashed the unit again aided by our run of good dice whilst Kev remained staunch despite terrible dice, not managing to do more than dint the attacking unit slightly.

The Iberian Celt's remain fast on the hill but once they started to move they would surge over the empty space to confront the now thinning battle line.

Energised by his previous success Glenn threw in a heavy punch in the centre with both flanks and rear support against a unit that had taken just two pips of damage. This time he would have help, a unit of Celt's and two elephants. The bad news is that all three of these supports only give two dice each whilst Glenn not only had more dice in the attack but also was one pip better on his to hits and saves. To add insult to injury he threw his general in as well (my suggestion). The loss was bad, real bad with a difference of 6 casualties the only way the loser could save themselves from breaking was boxcars! The result of course WAS double six and their reward was to be pushed back disordered with his supports. Happy for us it was the expected result that of Kev being pushed back as failed to get even one hit!

Before Kev could do anything to try and rescue the situation, Glenn gets another activation and not even double six could save him as the unit was shattered and then all three supports failed their tests to leave a big hole and broken division. Worse still his follow up was to turn to his flank and smash into the nearest pike phalanx flank.

Whilst he was not able to get my light infantry in to support his charge he still had rear and one flank support. This was a repeat of what happened to me a couple of weeks before so I knew exactly what was to follow. The only consolation for Kev was that it was not supported by any other unit and sure enough it was broken leaving a second division close to being broken and facing attacks on both flanks.

Positions at the end of the game down the line. It looks like their is still two lines facing off against each other but just past the pikes in the centre is a gap in the Seleucid line filled by our troops ready to turn towards the flanks and drive along the lines as well as burst into the rear.

Hats off to Kev has he did take a pounding that was made possible by lousy missile shots on his part that when they did get through were past far more often than deserved and then the mother of bad rolls in close combat but took it on the chin and battled on.

Not that is was all down to Kev's dice, that just made it a sure thing. Glenn had a good opening plan and despite a slight wobble early when he wanted to move forward stuck to it. All that said it was Glenn's taking advantage of that isolated units position with a quick and nasty attack that then allowed the follow on attack and the sudden collapse.