Hail Caesar Playtest Report

Sorry no pictures of the game (I forgot to take any!).  Overall the scenario worked well, with the Romans barely eeking out a victory by getting the emperor to the fort (that was the objective).  Both sides saw a division broken after a good bit of fighting.  Hail Caesar does a great job portraying see-saw fighting and many melee engagements went for multiple turns with each side gaining then loosing the advantage.  The Dacian Infantry force eventually chased the Legionnaires from the field.  The Roman Auxiliaries did the same to the Dacian calvary.  Unfortunately for the Dacians, the Emperor managed to slip through during the fighting.

I got a lot of great suggestions from my players (Bob, Dick, Les and Mike) on how to improve the scenario for Historicon including:

- Open up the terrain to create more room for maneuver.  The forrest sections I borrowed from Ernie are very impressive but they created narrow channels that essentially dictated play and nullified some of the advantages the light calvary has.  I plan on replacing them with the superb Architects of War forrest plates, which will also be much easier to transport.  

- Add a Sarmatian heavy calvary unit to the calvary force to provide it a bit of punch

- I'll also be tweaking the Roman forces and may add an extra cohort and an unit of Auxiliary archers

Many thanks to the guys for agreeing to test the scenario and help me learn the rules (they did get a kabob dinner out of this shindig).  A special thanks to Dick and Les who also showed up with a painted Dacian infantry unit each.  I've got three done (including their two units) and it looks like I'll get all the required painting done by my game at Historicon.

Back to painting Dacians....