On Saturday I acquired my copy of Hail Caeser, the new pre-firearm set of rules from Warlord written by The Man hisself, Rick Priestly. I read them through on Saturday and played my first game with my long-suffering opponent Shaun. That tells you immediatelt that they are well laid out and easy to pick up. The physical production is excellent, hard backed, durable and with lots of wargaming full colour porn inside.
In some ways, this is Warmaster for 28mm figures and shows the development on Rick's design ideas.
The smallest subdivision is a unit, not a soldier as in Warhammer. Units have an Initial Clash and Sustained fight combat values, and short and long range firepower. Saving throws are based on morale, not directly on equipment. Casualties are only acumulative until a unit's Stamina is reached, above which additional casualties are non accumulative from phase to phase and turn to turn, but are used to determine who won the combat and to modify Break Tests. Units can be pushed back, disordered, or disintegrate completely.
Command control is critical, as it used for any sort of complicated or extended movement.
Hail Caser is astonishingly 'clean' and flexible as a system. It could be played in any scale and with any basing or number of troops per unit provided your opponent does likewise.
Basic troop types are provided, heavy infantry, medium cavalry, with a series of special rules that can be added to a troop type to 'characterise' its type of formation or weapons, e.g. phalanx or pilum.
Hail Caser assumes that the player has a reasonable knowledge of the military history involved. This is not a game for the tournament loons but for wargamers who want to have fun playing real or possible historical scenarios.
For our first learning-experience game we played only one division of units a side, instead of the usual three, as recommended in the rules, and did not use skirmishers. The scenario is set in Spain in the Second Punic War
The Roman Proconsul, Pompus Maximus, has been despatched with a single legion (plus Italian allies) to investigate rumours that the Carthaginians are 'raising taxes' from the natives in the Spanish interior. Pompus has two units of heavy infantry and two units of medium cavalry. We decided to give the Roman infantry the 'Pilum' rule: reduces morale saves on first turn of combat.
The rumours are, of course, true, and Pompus brings a Carthaginian army, commanded by General Kleptobaal, to battle. Kleptobaal has one unit of Carthaginian pikemen, heavy infantry, a unit of Spanish mercenaries, medium infantry, a unit of Celtic mercenaries (warband) and a unit of light cavalry. The Carthaginian heavy infantry were given the Phalanx rule (have to be beaten in hand to hand combat by at least three casualties before they have to take a break test). We gave the warband a high initial clash combat value to represent barbarian ferocity.
Kleptobaal won the toss and elected to go first. His army charged in gloriously to engage the Romans, with the exception of the Celtic warband who had a hangover and refused to move on the first turn. We used a blue marker to represent the cumaltive stamina casualties and red for transient casualties.
Battle was soon joined all across the front and casualties mounted. The Carthaginian pikemen were pushed back in disorder, i.e. lost the battle badly and failed the break test, but held on.
Disaster! The Celtic Warband was unable to match the Romans in sustained combat and broke, fleeing off the battlefield. Disturbingly, the right flank Carthaginian cavalry did likewise.
The Spanish infantry disengaged in good order. Pompus was unable to persuade the Roman cavalry to chase and pin them. The pikemen held out for two more turns but finally broke when charged in the flank by cavalry as well as fighting legionnaires to the front.
Kleptobaal mounted his horse and carried out a personal strategic move to the rear at the gallop, vowing never to pay Celts with booze in future, until after the battle.
Conclusion: great fun.
I can't wait to try a three division battle. I do not own any ancient armies at the moment but I have ordered boxes of Wargames Factory Amazons and Conquest Miniatures hoplites to make a Greek quasi-mythological army.
Highly recommended for scenario wargamers.
