15 March 2010

Cold Wars - WAB Demos, Part Two


The second WAB demo was on Friday morning.



The Germans and Gauls deployed tight, in the center, with just one unit of cav on the far side of the woods in the distance. The Romans put most of their infantry in the center, but send their allied Gallic cav on the near flank, and the Numidian cav escorting a legion on the far flank, beyond the woods.

The battle in the foreground was the first, and most important of the game. The Gallic cav just barely beat the German cav, but sent them fleeing. Unfortunately this also set off a wave of panic, with the flank player's entire portion of the army fleeing, and unable to rally for the remainder of the game. (I felt bad about that, but I wasn't certain what I could do, since it was all down to a few bad dice rolls.)




Here's a later shot, from the opposite side of the table. The barbarians were able to crash into the Roman line before they could take advantage of the victory on the flank, or equalize the numbers, since one legion was running around the flank. They hit, but not quite as hard as they needed too. The second pivotal moment of the game was another odd dice moment, when two of the center warbands failed to do any wounds, but took a remarkable seven wounds from the legion they were double-teaming (that included two chieftains!) Even against lesser troops (Spanish auxiliaries) they failed to hit hard enough to win the combat. So the center broke, and once again set off a bit of panic, and the line retreated. Miraculously they all rallied, but the momentum was stopped, and it was the Romans turn to charge, stealing the initiative from the barbarians. In the last fight of the battle, the German cav on the flank smashed itself on the Roman legion, fled, and was run down by the Numidian cavalry.

Another Roman victory, this one more solid than the first.

3 comments:

  1. Nice report and battlefield.

    Cheers
    Christopher

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  2. Thanks. Due to carpooling, I had to trim down the amount of terrain I was bringing, so I was worried the battlefield would look too sparse.

    I may try to do a couple bigger events next year, using more elaborate terrain boards & such -- provided I'm up for driving out by myself with a carload of terrain.

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  3. I just stumbled across this blog after signing onto the WAB Yahoo list. I was actually one of the players in the second demo game (middle of the Roman line, I had the general). I really had a great time and you did a fantastic job of keeping things moving along and fun. After checking out some other games the rest of the day, it drove home how well your miniatures were painted, too.


    This was my first time at a con like COLD WARS, and marked my return to wargaming after a 20 or so year absence. Now I can't wait for HISTORICON. Thanks for all your hard work running the game and for making the effort to give us newbies a chance to experience WAB!

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