Pro Victoria Baldinus

Today saw the first outing for my third century Romans and Goths, a hard fought victory over the forces of Bikkagern. We used Neil Thomas Ancient and Medieval rules with modifications we thought applicable, the Goths made a bold move around the right flank of the Roman forces with cavalry, with the Goth warbands to the front Baldinus's only real option was to continue the advance forward and endeavour to out distance the Goth cavalry led by Bikkagern himself. Himself being so far from his men must have had an effect on them as they proceeded to get atrocious dice throws most of the game, the dice gods however were in favour of Baldinus and his troops with resulting, better than average dice throws. By the time Bikkagern and his cavalry got into contact, Baldinus was on the way to victory, but catching the Triani legion in the rear while engaged frontally would surely tip the balance, double dice, eight goes, result, two hits. Which the Triani, adding to ignominy, saved whilst also seeing off the warband engaged to the front, it was then able to turn its attention to the cavalry next turn. A similar attack by Gothic gentry cavalry and foot archers on the Cohors Pannoniorum Vetrana also came to a sticky end, it may sound a one sided encounter but the Romans suffered also, their training, armour and shields getting the better of the Gothic steel was all that stopped it going the other way at times.

Neil Thomas rules have four base standard units, my figures are on Impetus style bases so the dice you see on the bases indicate the number of bases remaining, individual figure casualty markers are used, when four is reached the dice on the figure base is changed to reflect the base loss.

The mat is from Deep Cut Studios, marked out with a grid for future games using To The Strongest rules, I didn't want to try these today as I think you need at least twelve units a side to get the best out of the rules and I have only played one game while Dave has not played at all.

TTFN