Dux Bellorum - A successful defence of Rheged

I had an enjoyably quiet night of gaming over the weekend, getting Dan Mersey's Dux Bellorum back out on the table for another run. It really is a smashingly well thought out little game that does a great job at recreating the bloody struggles of the Early Medieval period.

Although other forces are being slowly (oh so slowly) assembled by other gents in our gaming circle, at the moment, my Romano-British of Rheged and Ulaid Irish are the only armies, so they met once more. To date, the Irish have been undefeated. Their wild charges led by noble warriors proving unstoppable for the British riders and shieldwalls.

We allocated armies randomly and I ended up with the crazy, hound-loving, saffron-wearing, rough nuts. JB, the British player was the repeller (defender) and placed a village right in the centre of the table. Even though my warriors fair better in terrain than any of the Britons, I seemed to have ignored the fact and split my forces into two separate forces. My warlord's companions accompanied by two other noble warrior warbands were on the left and more noble warriors, riders with wardogs on the right with a unit of skirmishers in the center. JB faced my warlord with his shieldwalls, riders and a unit of archers, while he sent his companions and noble riders after my right flank.

In the photo above you can see my skirmishers occupying the village while his cavalry thunder towards my riders.

The British nobility crunch into the Irish right. I threw as many Leadership Points (LP) at my right as I could, trying to buff up the units there to hold off the Brtish warlord while I crushed his other flank.

On my left, an irrationally place unit of British riders taunted my noble warriors off a hill resulting in a cheering horde of Irishmen and a mound of horse flesh.

However, back on my right, an unbelievable roll by JB's companions (outflanked now by my skirmishers) shattered my Irish riders. While my warriors defeated the single unit of noble riders who attacked them, my poor hounds were also defeated.

On my left, the combat hotted up as the shieldwalls engaged my warriors, using LPs to soak up hits and repelling my assaults time after time. 

Each time my warriors on the far left fell back, they were peppered with arrows from the British bowmen. Soon all my noble warriors had fled on this flank with the exception of the warlord's companions.

Turmoil on the right! Shrugging off my skirmishers, the British cavalry round up the last of my noble warriors.

... and proving that the Romano-British should not be discounted, nor should the Irish be over-feared, the shieldwall of Rheged march into town to start the clean up.

I'm delighted that I was able to show how the Irish could be defeated, its just a shame I was commanding them at the time.

To finish up the evening we had a 'quick' game of Galleys & Galleons using ancient fleets for a Rome vs Carthage splash about death match. I assisted my wife to lead the poo brown Romans to victory against their almost-as-unpainted grey Carthaginians. Using double sized fleets (400 points), the game works rather well for ancients if I do say so myself.