Six various figures

 I finished off six more figures, you'll have to scroll down to see them all.

 First, these were from the Victrix British chariots set that someone game me. I decided to paint them as a Druid and a Gallic or British Warrior Queen. 

Next, two more officer types using the last two bodies from the Victrix Roman auxilia set. They are an Optio and a Centurio;

Not sure what I'll use them for, but the Optio could fit in with the dismounted Decurion I posted previously.

Finally a pair of figures designed to represent the same character with and without his armour.

 This pair are for our long-running D&D campaign. They represent a character who the party has just rescued from a band of Goblins. The figure on the right is him at that point. All his war gear is missing and he just has a borrowed sword and the clothes he was wearing them we liberated him.

The figure on the left is him once he has acquired a new helmet, mail shirt and shield. The armoured figure is a Gripping Beast plastic Saxon Thegn and the unarmoured one is from the Gripping Beast plastic Dark Age Warriors box. Clearly, in his captivity his beard has grown bushy and later on he will have found time to give it a nice trim.

The shield transfers in all the photos are from LBMS.

Gripping Beast Later Roman Cataphracts

I say "Later" Roman but these could fit in pretty much anywhere from the time of Hadrian until the 5th or maybe 6th century.

I've mounted them in groups of three to give me two units of 6 riders, which I can use for Sword and Spear or, more likely, the new Midgard rules from TFL. 

I've already got my Midgard rules and I'm looking at creating a Late Roman army using my already quite large Gripping Beast collection of Late Romans, which you can find elsewhere on the blog by searching for them. I've got more cavalry to get assembled and painted, which would give me more heavy cavalry and some horse archers. I'm also painting up some Saxon Thegns who I think will serve perfectly well as Germanic foederati with a few Roman-style shields mixed in with the round ones and some suitably generic shield transfers. After all, they are all just blokes in mail with shields and spears.

And now .... at long last ..... Dux Britanniarum!

First, a mea culpa. I've had the Dux Britanniarum rules for ages but never played a game until now. A few of us at the club talked last year about starting a campaign in 2020, but we also thought we should get to grips with the rules before getting things too wrong during the campaign games. So, yesterday, Brian and I played out a basic game as a battle.

First, here are my Romano-British troops. First the Comanipulares, the elite Bucellarii of my British Lord.

Now, my Lord, on the larger base, with his two junior leaders and his Champion. No names yet, as we are still experimenting with the rules.

Next, two groups of six Milites, basic Warriors. I've given these all the same shield design to ensure that they are distinct from the Comanipulares;

Four slingers, representing the force's Harassing missile troops;

And finally, three groups of Numeri, levies drawn from the peasantry.

All these troops are taken from my existing Gripping Beast plastic Late Roman army that I use for Sword and Spear and Saga. I love the idea of figures that have multiple uses.

So, on to the game itself. Brian's army were supposed to be North British, but we used them as a Saxon horde for this game. The table had a fairly shallow running stream across the centre of the table, classed as a Medium Obstacle, with two fords, classed as Minor Obstacles. On the Saxon side, was wooded country and there was a villa complex on the Roman side. The buildings we used were actually of a later period, bought by the club for a pirate campaign about 10 years ago, but a reasonable match for Later Roman structures (apart from the chimneys). They would be perfect for Peninsular War Sharp Practice too.

After initial movement and skirmishes between missile troops, the battle pretty much centred on the Saxons getting across the stream and the Romano-British  (henceforth just "the Romans") holding the high ground between the two fords. The Roman Shieldwall formation remained strong on the hill, fending off all  comers, aided by some helpful Fate Cards.

The Saxon main force was eventually forced back across the stream and the Saxon Lord reduced to Status I. The Saxons had previously lost a Noble in combat with my Numeri.

I also managed to drive off the Saxon archers with a flanking attack from a single group of Numeri on my right.

There were plenty of things that I am sure we got wrong, having never played the game before, and we were unsure if the Champions should have a Leader Card in the deck or were just stuck with the Lord. I am pretty sure now that we had the Fate Cards all wrong too, keeping things like Shieldwall in play, rather than discarding it once used. We also forgot to replenish our decks as they became depleted.

Having said that, the game was a lot of fun, and the mechanisms simple to understand, seeing as we are both seasoned Lardy gamers. I wonder if there is a FAQ somewhere online?

I am sure we shall be playing again before long. It is nice to see my Late Romans in use.

Planning a Dux Britanniarum campaign

A few of us at the club are thinking about getting a Dux Britanniarum campaign going next year, so we are looking at our existing armies to see what would fit. 

As I already have masses of Gripping Beast Late Romans, augmented with slingers, levies etc from the "Dark Ages" boxes, I automatically assumed that I have everything I'd need and wouldn't have to do any work at all.

Unhappily, as things transpired when I started looking in depth, the one area where I was lacking was basic levy troops. It isn't that I have too few, it is more that I have based most of them up eight to a base for Sword and Spear.

So, I had to assemble and paint up six individually-based levy types using some of the many spares I have lying around, and here they are;

I wanted to make them look a bit muddy and battle-worn, so I put most of the effort into making their shields look old and battered. I think that they fit in pretty well with the existing dozen individually-based levies I have, although those guys look a bite more nicely turned out. Perhaps the new ones might represent a group of really unwilling peasants pressed into service at the last minute?

They'll also fit in with the slingers I intend to use as missile troops, although I'll only need four of those;

The rest of my Dux troops will be taken from my Late Roman armoured and unarmoured infantry.

A big Sword and Spear AAR

This was something that Clive and I had been discussing for ages, and now it actually took place.  The scene was somewhere in the Roman East, probably in the province of Palaestina Secunda, around the time of the emperor Heraclius. 

Arabic forces, newly united under the banners of Islam are pushing north, and are opposed by a mostly infantry force of Romans, near a ruined temple complex from classical times.

The ground is dominated by the temple ruins, which are overlooked by a hill on one side and some rough ground on the other. The Romans have information that an Arab flank attack can be expected on their right.

The massed ranks of Arab foot make a daunting impression on the thinner Roman lines. The Roman troops are mainly medium foot and local skirmishers, with some armoured infantry and cavalry.

Before long, both sides are advancing towards the temple complex, with the Arab foot troops getting there faster. Medium foot and skirmishers don't suffer movement penalties in these ruins, but gain the benefit of being in cover for melee purposes.

Arab cavalry emerge on the Roman right and a unit of armoured cavalry charge into combat.

To the left of the temple ruins, Arab cavalry charge the Roman medium archers on the hills.

An early success for the Romans as a unit of Arab foot breaks and routs. The Romans must capitalise on this to have any hope of throwing the Arab forces back.

On the Roman right, the armoured cavalry fail to destroy the Arab horse, but are in turn wiped out.

The disorganised Roman foot need to get into a defensive line to have any hope of surviving.

Disaster on the Roman left as a unit of skirmishing slingers is simply ridden over by the cream of the Arab cavalry, who are now able to exploit the gap made. More Roman armoured cavalry sweep round to engage the Arab horse archers who are firing on some Roman medium foot.

Things could go either way in the centre where the Arabs and Romans exchange archery fire.

The Romans manage to get a unit in position to take the Arab foot in the flank.

The elite Arab cavalry sweep round behind the Roman lines.

Two Roman units break and rout in the centre. Things are looking bleak. Surely that unit of javelin skirmishers cannot survive for much longer?

The Arab cavalry charge the archers on the hills, who manage to survive the onslaught.

On the right, the Romans have stabilised and formed a defensive line, which is being attacked by skirmishing mounted archers.

The skirmishing javelin troops are inevitably wiped out, causing a unit of Roman medium foot to flee. It looks all over for the Romans.

The Roman and Arab foot on the Roman centre-right clash, with one unit being wiped out in a single round of combat.

The remaining heavy foot take a lot of damage. It is obvious that the Romans have lost  the battle.

In the end, the result had a lot of historical resonance. The Arab armies that swept up into the Roman Levant were more than a match for their Roman opponents, leading to the loss of what had formerly been the Diocese of the East (until abolished by the administrative reforms of Justinian the Great), followed by the loss of Egypt. 

With the loss of these regions, the empire went into a decline. The process of Hellenisation, which had been formalised under Heraclius gathered pace, leading to the end of the Roman Empire of Late Antiquity. The smaller empire that survived was weakened, but still wealthy and survived to expand again in later centuries. This is the empire that we know today as the Byzantine, although its inhabitants always considered themselves to be Romans and the emperor was referred to as Basileus and Autokrator, rather than Augustus Imperator.

The empire survived and prospered, being the most powerful state in Early Mediaeval Europe, but declined in the 11th century and suffered the ignominy of being sacked by Latin Crusaders in 1204, a blow from which it never recovered, although the capital Constantinople, the seat of the Basileus until the end was not finally lost to the Ottomans until 1453.