Campaign Battle: The Ligurian Revolt

It is Spring in the year 123 BC, and a Roman army has arrived in Liguria to put down the revolt there.  En route, the Romans destroyed the Latin city of Fregellae that also rose up in revolt, but which was betrayed from within when a Roman citizen opened the gates.  I forgot the camera this time, which was a real shame because Graham got to put his new legionaries on the table for the first time.  I've used Battle Chronicler to draw maps:

First up is the deployment, with the defending Ligurians at the top in blue.  Romans are in red, Socii in white and Spanish auxiliaries in yellow.  The terrain confronting the Roma army is rather nasty.  I drew the Roman setup beforehand to save time.  I anticipated that the locals would mass on one section of the field - the trouble was, I didn't know which.  So to cover as many eventualities as possible, I placed the Latin legions on the left facing a town, and the Romans in the centre - both locations are at least reasonably open.  I put some Caetrati opposite the woods on the left, and more ready to go into the marshy areas at the foot of the hills.  I massed all of the cavalry on the right.  As it turned out, I was to command the Latins on the left while Billy took the Romans and the majority of the Caetrati, and Graham ran the right.  Simon chose the Ligurians, and he and Gordon deployed them.  They chose to mass in the centre and on their left, trusting to the town to slow down any Roman types on that part of the field.

To keep things simple, I've removed most of my command from the maps, because they had a happy time looting the town.  The only unit of mine that really played any part in the game was the lead Hastati element of one of the Socii legions.

Both sides advanced for the first couple of turns, and we soon had contact in the centre as two huge warbands with more support behind them bore down on the Roman legions and accomplished precisely nothing.  The Ligurians couldn't hit very much at all while the Romans got on with their massed mincing technique.  Oh well, at least the Socii didn't take the brunt of it for a change.

More manoeuvring on other parts of the field while the warriors in the centre were grimly massacred by the Roman legionaries.

At our left centre, the Ligurian foot on the hill crashed into the Caetrati, who quickly did an impression of the central Ligurian warriors.  At our right, Graham threw in the Roman Equites to slow down the enemy advance here.  The Roman legionaries in the centre continued to cut great swathes through their opponents.

On our left, my Hastati finally made it out of the town and up the hill, where they met the reserve Ligurian horse.  The Caetrati to my right disintegrated, but the Ligurian foot here were taking terrible casualties from the Spanish javelinmen and the Velites of the Roman legions.  In the centre, the Romans destroyed one of the large warbands and disordered the other on morale.  Towards our right, more Ligurian foot assaulted the Caetrati in the marshy ground, and Graham got lucky with his Latin cavalry.  The Warband here went a bit loopy after killing the Roman Equites and started looting the bodies in a frenzy of hatred, forcing the small unit of Ligurian horse to charge the Latins to pin them in place.  The latter then emulated their Roman legionary compatriots by killing loads of the enemy.

The second wave of warbands started to get into the action in the centre, and the other large warband finally got their wits together and crashed into the Latin horsemen.

The battle ended as I destroyed the cavalry fighting my Hastati; the skirmishers annihilated the Ligurian foot to my right;  the second large central warband routed; and Graham finished off the Ligurian cavalry on his wing.  Successes for the Ligurians cam a bit too late as their other foot unit destroyed the Caetrati.

But that was it, all over.  The Ligurian Revolt has been comprehensively defeated.  Next up will be an unusual one: the Indians have attacked the Parthians in Bactria.