On Tuesday I finally managed to make it to the club for the first time in six weeks. We played the latest game in our Empire campaign: Rome invades southern Italy. The Italians deployed with their left flank anchored on some rough ground, and a long low ridge in their centre. To their left were some Samnites and Italians; the centre was the phalanx (Tarentine city militia); and the right was composed of some Italian foot, city militia cavalry and excellent quality Tarentine light horse. The Romans set up with the legions in their usual three lines in the centre. They had two units of poor quality Italian infantry on their right and all of their cavalry (again mediocre, but plenty of it) on their left on the open wing. Both sides had a goodly number of skirmish troops. Mark and I played the Tarentines and friends. He took the left and centre, and I took the right. Simon was opposite Mark, and William against me.
Our plan was to try to hold the legions as long as possible with the central phalanx and grind one or both flanks. Mark was able to do this on the left, as the combination of Samnites and Italians on the overlap destroyed the Italian militia facing them and seriously damaged the end legion. I failed miserably; the cavalry on both sides cancelled each other out, but my Italian foot ran away on morale, meaning we had no overlap there to even out the odds against the legions. The phalanx collapsed in the centre and it was all over.
Stupid quote of the night: "At least we are controlling the tempo of the skirmish fight" (me).
The Romans have now efficiently conquered central and southern Italy. They will in the near future have three options: Sicily; a seaborne attack on mainland Greece; or Northern Italy (Cisalpine Gaul).
After the battle we rolled for the next series of events. Carthage failed (again) with a seaborne attack on Sicily. The Macedonians, thwarted by the success of the Persian rival claimant to the throne in Syria, have decided to keep that as a buffer state. Instead, they are attacking into the area of Pontus along the southern Black Sea littoral, where they will face a loyalist Persian army in our next game. This should be played in two weeks' time.
This is the first full allied (Latin socii) legion for Zama. My old 4 MB digital camera really shows its age with these longer range shots. I'm hoping to get a nice small studio set for my birthday. Funnily enough, that's on the Ides of March!
Two sets of Principes, Latins and Romans. This is pretty much how they will look side by side on the field. I wanted a contrast between the Romans in red and the allies in white.
Nasty Latins, by the look of them. At least, that's what I was hoping to achieve.
On Tuesday I finally managed to make it to the club for the first time in six weeks. We played the latest game in our Empire campaign: Rome invades southern Italy. The Italians deployed with their left flank anchored on some rough ground, and a long low ridge in their centre. To their left were some Samnites and Italians; the centre was the phalanx (Tarentine city militia); and the right was composed of some Italian foot, city militia cavalry and excellent quality Tarentine light horse. The Romans set up with the legions in their usual three lines in the centre. They had two units of poor quality Italian infantry on their right and all of their cavalry (again mediocre, but plenty of it) on their left on the open wing. Both sides had a goodly number of skirmish troops. Mark and I played the Tarentines and friends. He took the left and centre, and I took the right. Simon was opposite Mark, and William against me.
These are revamped older figures I have managed to do in between batches of Roman heavy infantry. I've updated the paint job to bring it more into line with the way I paint nowadays, in the hope that they will look roughly the same as more recently painted units. They were then varnished and rebased. Figures by Essex.
Wading through the ice and snow with large 25mm armies hasn't been a safe option, so recently not much gaming has been gamed. But this has meant more painting time than usual, so in between batches of heavy troops I've managed to squeeze in these guys, the last of the velites for the Zama game. The only difference from the velites in the other allied legion is that this lot has green shield rims, to match with the Little Big Men designs I'll be using for the fourth and final legion.
I'm hoping that the contrast between the men in white and the men in red will make the legions look relatively interesting (for Romans, that is) on the tabletop, as well as grimly businesslike. I especially like these particular shield designs from Little Big Men; the boar is nicely archaic as well as being sufficiently different from the designs I used for the red-shielded Romans.
I'm doing the two socii legions with white shields and tunics to differentiate them from the Romans, although there is no difference in how they fight. I've enjoyed painting these guys - red, red and more red was beginning to become rather wearing to do after a couple of hundred figures!
The Velites I used for the two Roman legions were some Newline figures I picked up cheaply at Claymore a couple of years ago; these guys are by 1st Corps. 
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