Monday, June 27, 2011

Romans and Dacians Completed for Historicon

 Both the Roman and Dacian armies for my game at Historicon are ready to go.  I was about to repeat the term "complete" but is any wargaming army ever really complete?  The first shot shows an overall view of the table.  The Romans need to get the Emperor (in the lower left) to the fort.  The Dacians need to prevent that event from occurring. The game is being sponsored by Architects of War and appears to be the only Hail Caesar game at Historicon.   I know the scenery looks sparse, this is just a test game and we'll be adding a lot more flavor.

 The Roman field force consists of two commands, a force of battle hardened Legionaires (5 cohorts) with two command stands, one being the Emperor.


 The second Roman command consists of 2 units of Auxiliary calvary and 2 units of Auxiliary Infantry.  All of the Roman figures are from Warlord and have been painted by me.  The commander of the Roman Auxiliary group will have a difficult choice - turn to his/her left and face the oncoming Dacian light cavalry or turn to the right and support the main column against the Dacian main force.  Oh decisions, decisions...


 Lastly, there is a unit of Roman allied Gallic infantry holding the fort plus some artillery units.  I may add a 5th player to the game to command this group.



The Dacian main force consists of 6, 32 figure units of infantry, armed with the Legionnaire splitting Falx and a unit of Sarmatian heavy cavalry.  While the force looks like it could quickly overwhelm the Legionaires it has one drawback - only one command stand.  Since this game is a demo game, I wanted to showcase the command dynamics that are built into the "Hail Caesar" ruleset.

The second Dacian command consists of four units of light cavalry.  I still need to finish painting two of the figures but will get that done in the next day or so.

Here's a Legionnaires eye view of an onrushing Dacian infantry unit.  Those two handed falx's must have been terrifying.  The figures are from Warlord and were a lot of fun to paint up.  Barbarians allow for lots of color choices which is a nice relief from Roman red.


The Sarmatian heavy cavalry.  These figures are from Old Glory.  I'm looking forward to the new Sarmatians from Warlord and will likely be buying another 2 units worth to flesh out the force.

I still have a bit of play testing to balance out the rules and a lot of work to flesh out the table top scenery.

13 comments:

DeanM said...

Wow, awesome amount of beautifully painted and based figures. Should be an impressive game. Don't recall anyone running HC at our local con last month. I got into a fairly large Teutoberg game that used a "dumbed-down" version of Armati. Best wished on the game. Dean

Ben Gilmour said...

Looking at your's and other's blogs makes me very tempted to expand my horizons beyond the Napoleonic era!

Great looking armies. I'm sure you'll have a great day at Historicon.

Christopher(aka Axebreaker) said...

Awesome looking board!!

Christopher

Beccas said...

Well done, a huge painting effort.

Doc Smith said...

Well done Miles - thats a truck load of painting work in a record time. Wouldn't be uber-confident about them thar Gaul-friends tho!
Those f-f-f-fiends with the falx are fearsome too!

Cheers,
Doc

Paul O'G said...

A very impressive rate of effort at a delightful standard - you should be proud of yourself Miles!

The Angry Lurker said...

Really beautiful stuff and should be a show and crowd pleaser.

jmilesr said...

Thanks for the nice compliments. I should point out that a good amount of the Dacians were painted by a firm in the UK, AW Miniatures and they did a great job.

I need to work on some rule summary cards for each player and a bit of Terrain and we should be good to go

Miles

Paul´s Bods said...

Impressive!!!! Those sarmatians...very nice!!
Cheers
paul

MiniMike said...

Very impressive project with great results! Makes me want to open my boxes of Romans again for some games.
Michael

Jacko said...

Excellent pictures, I don't play Ancients at all but seeing a table like that get my mouth watering ! Thanks for posting it. Paul

Curt said...

Congratulations for being 'on time and on target' - have a great time at Historicon!

Rodney Anonymous said...

See ya' at Historicon. I've very much looking forward to catching the Demo game on Friday.