Triumphant Celtiberians: the Battle Report

Despite the fact that they destroyed several Roman armies and gave the Ancient Borg a really hard time on and off for over 200 years, the Iberians don't seem to turn up on the wargames table as often as they deserve, except when fighting as mercenaries for someone else.  They are one of the forces I've always fancied getting, just because a whole army of them would be rather out of the ordinary.  So when Dougie said he had a load of the Companion Miniatures figures available, I went for it.

Our ongoing campaign has now reached the point where one of the major conflicts between the peoples of Iberia and the encroaching assimilators of all joy has erupted, and for the first time I was able to field the army in its own right.  Deployment map:

I don't have any photos of the battle itself, because I still don't have the lighting the way I want it, but here is a short series of Battle Chronicler maps.  The first one (above) shows the field and the relative deployments.  The Celtiberians, in blue at the top, have come out of their hills and encountered a Roman army in a relatively well watered area with some woods scattered around the place - probably the plantations of that most odious of species, the Roman Eques.  The Celtiberians have formed up with the mass of their infantry in the open area, flanked by contingents of cavalry and those nasty Caetrati for which they are so justifiably famous.  I chose and deployed the army, because I supplied it, but to be as umpirically fair (is that even a word?) I built the forces before rolling for terrain - hence the two loose formation warbands at both ends of the main line.  I also supplied the Romans and built their force for the game, but I left it to others to deploy this lot.  The guys in red are Romans, white are Socii Legions, and yellow denotes mercenary skirmishers.  The Romans basically have a proconsular legion minus the Triarii.  Simon set them up in alternating "cohorts" of Hastati and Principes, deployed in depth in the centre and with each end of the line held by troops in a more shallow formation, ably supported by the heavy cavalry.

After seeing the Roman set up, I thought they would hold back and let the Celtiberians come to them.  The Romans have superiority in skirmishers, and hold the field - all they need to do is hold for a draw in campaign terms.  However, they did that Roman aggression thing that got so many of them killed at Cannae:

I've zoomed in on the central action because I was playing the Spanish left wing and I couldn't really see what was happening on the other flank.  Also, the two sides seemed to settle into a bit of a stalemate over there, so the decision point would come, inevitably, in the middle of the field.The Warbands were held off quite easily by the Latin legions, who seemed rather unperturbed by supposedly wild charges, but the Roman legionaries had a worse time of it in the initial stages.  The Roman right had a bit of an overlap, and I held my contingent back as far as possible to prolong the time before contact.

However, the legionary line facing me came forward, allowing the Equites to go in at the oblique to help against the loose formation loons at this point.

Just as it looked as though the legions would win through, the leftmost (shallow) unit of Latins collapsed - well, it was outnumbered - but unfortunately for the Italians there was a cascade failure and the whole left of their line ran for it.  One of the Roman units disintegrated as well, but the rest of the boys in red didn't seem to mind too much.  The warband hit by the Roman cavalry routed at the same time, as did one of the closer formation warbands, disordering some of their friends and my Caetrati, but it wasn't enough.  And, just because I can, here's a picture I took of the Celtiberian victory when I managed to get some decent daylight:

Very little deters the juggernaut of Rome, however, and another army is already on its way...