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Tuesday 27 September 2022

Their Goose Was Cooked

Dave came over earlier today for our weekly game to once again take command of the Goth forces. We were revisiting Hail Caesar rules as our games using Neil Thomas rules were getting to be a bit samey despite our in house modifications. Being an off shoot of Black Powder we both have a good grasp of the mechanics it was just a case of re learning the shooting, melee and morale differences.

The game would be a straight forward head on clash with a slight nod to our on going fictional encounters between Bikka the Goth and Rome.
The Romans had deployed for battle in front of their encampment ready to receive the Goth attack. Bikka wasted no time ordering an all out assault across the front.

I had beforehand knocked out Excel spreadsheets with all the stats for each army, armed with these and the playsheets the only real recourse for referring to the rule book was to make sure we had not lapsed into Hail Powder with some of the combat effects, ie. Shaken, disorder and things like that.

The game rattled along well despite the odd reference to the rule book, how did it go? Well let's just say that apart from not getting my legionary units into battle line the Gothic victory was down 50% to the dreaded dice gods has much as the 50% of the lightening strike of the Goth cavalry. Some game shots follow.
I think some decimation may be in order.
We both enjoyed our return to Hail Caesar and will definitely be playing with the rules again in the near future.

TTFN & KBO

23 comments:

  1. A splendid day all round! Not that I'm influenced by the result, oh no! That last picture is priceless!

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    1. Glad you enjoyed the game and visit. Thought the last picture would amuse folk.

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  2. Lovely looking game and I'm thinking about trying HCII when it comes out, as it is easier to learn being similar to BPII. Love the last photo BTW!

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    1. Thank you Steve, not many changes in V2 it appears to be a tidy up, although it seems pretty tidy to me, more so than Black Powder, and changes to command, added siege assaults and suggestions for 1 to 1 games. Later medieval additions.

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  3. I feel your pain Phil. Great looking game.

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    1. Thank you George. What can you do when your dice hate you?

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  4. Beautiful troops. No Before and After photos of the dice and hammer?

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    1. Thank you Jonathan, if I did an after I would spend more in dice than figures🙂

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  5. Good period, good figures, good game [at least for the Goths] and good photos - thanks
    Stephen

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  6. Lovely armies (of course). Interesting post and comment re NT experience. I am being increasingly drawn to having a go with HC, especially as V2 is going to include WotR.

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    1. Are you playing 1 base is one unit?

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    2. Thank you Norm, they worked really well, I am struggling to find why I took a dislike to them🤔

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    3. Yes one base per unit, if it represents a small unit I will reduce the amount of figures per base 3/4 cavalry and 8/10 infantry are my thoughts at the moment. With a 6x4 table I think having large units would be a bit overpowering so will stick to small and standard size units.

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    4. That is pretty much what I did with my Wars of the Roses with 80mm frontages and 40mm deep for missile and 50mm deep for melee.

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  7. A jolly nice looking game Phil. Although we've found that HC and BP although they appear similar are actually quite different animals. Hopefully HCv2 will explain some of the strange anomalies in v1 currently covered by the "you can do whatever you want with 'em" caveat .

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    1. Thank you Jon, I don't think we slipped into Hail Powder mode. Mr. Priestley days he has made the Proximity Rule clearer😂😂

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  8. A lovely looking game Phil…
    I think by the 3rd Century a lot of Roman soldiers were of German birth… so maybe they didn’t understand your Latin dice.

    All the best. Aly

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  9. Thank you Aly. Does anyone make runic dice🤔

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  10. Beautiful game Phil with or without the dice gods favour !

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    1. Thank you Matt, maybe they will look kindly on me next week.

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  11. I really like your Dark Age collections on the table and this is no exception!

    Christopher

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