Campaigns and Comedy

We kicked our Hail Caesar Campaign Tuesday Evening set in the Dark Ages in roughly 1000AD, The Saxons, Normans, Caliphate of Cordoba and the Byzantine Empire all square off for Control of the known world. While details on its mechanics I am keeping to our forums (feel free to join up if you're interested) . The map portion plays out "like" a game of Risk , where we move our armies during our turn, we play a game on the tabletop, and the results and score of that game are applied against all your moves and battles. Its Macro campaigning at its best ( or worst, depending on how you like it) as your one game dicates results of many battles depending on whom you played, how you scored, and how the other player did (and there scores) even the players you didnt play this week. To top it the are a handful of neutral armies on map throwing a monkey wrench into the scoring matrix should you choose to attack them
  
Round 1 of the Campaign

Game 1- Saxons vs Normans-
I faced off against Aaron, it was very close game, he shattered my center division early with a huge cavalry charge and with a dual sweeping advance rolled up the whole army, I got to close to his cav without proper support, a mistake I wont make again. Fortunately his Cav was so far exposed into my backfield with Sweeping Advance units from my other two divisions scored big rear and flank charges destroying his Elite Cav units as a response.

The game went back and forth like that the whole time. I had my 3rd Division ( my Vikings) the entire division was sitting with 4,5, 6 wounds (so shaken) Two of the units die and the game is over. Aaron pushed heavy with a bunch of units toward my 1st Division whom with failed Orders turn after sat unmolested until the end of the game...my Medium infantry  charged two units of Norman Infanty (mixed Levy, and Med) and terrible dice shattered them. But my Huscarls and there two handed axes crushed the heavy Norman footman and overran into the flank of other two both units destroying them. With two broken divisons, the game ended. A failed Order check on follow me really hurt Aaron because bringing his last Heavy unit into the last melee would have probably turned the tide.

We have a very simple scoring systems of 6 points for a Heavy, 4 for Medium , 2 for Light, 3 for the General and 2 for other commander. lossed on both sides tallied the game at 30 for me to 24 for Aaron. a Standard victory result. the Norman advance into northern Europe was pushed back, enabling the Saxons to gain a good foothold in the North.

Game 2- Caliphate of Cordoba vs Byzantine Empire.-
Rich and Chris played a Storm the Camp style  scenario where armies deployed from the short edge of the table traveling longwise. they also reserve units that had to be ordered on the board. Rich has been gathering Scenarios from various sources for Ancients play. I expect we'll trying a bunch of them as weeks go on. In this game, Chris had some terrible luck and despite some early gains, he failed his order check on his reserve in a "do or die scenario" things went very wrong and Caliphate forces crushed him   Scoring was 24-0 in favor of the Arabs. Mapwise is shows the Caliphate taking Sicily and establishing a strong foothold in Southern Italy.

We were close enough with enough armies of move points to really mix it up beyond or closest opponent but I suspect that will change next week, although the loser suffered setback on the gaming table..they choose wise expansions into neutral territory so it helped minimize the losses.

For the Comedy portion of this post, I scanned this doodle I found on one of the tables Downstairs. Its from a previous Hail Caesar team match where Aaron and I played the English facing off against Musilms and  their allies in an early Crusade skirmish.  While Aarons division kept failing Order checks needing a "8"
I was using the Army General, (we play commander in chief rules) attached to on my division and had that key re-roll with time on his hands , Aaron was begging for the general to come give his troops a visit. Anyway if you played Hail Caesar at all the image below should give you a chuckle.




In other news, I rough finished my new 4 X 8 table, we played on it for the game described above..its still needs flock and prettied up, hopefully this weekend..with photos soon. Also my 600 points of Cirith Ungol is crawling along with the tourney right around the corner, I'll be painting right up until halloween finish all the extra pieces I need for separate Cavalry mounts and riders...leaving me 4 day to try to squeeze out a new piece for the painting contest...photos of this stuff coming next time too.