Hail Caesar: Carthaginians versus Gauls AAR

After months of not being able to get our gaming group's schedules aligned, Eric and I were able to meet up for a 1 on 1 game of Hail Caesar at one of our local shops.  This battle on a 4' x 8' table put my invading Carthaginians and allies against the Gallic chiefs of the area.  

The Carthaginians arrived first and placed their cavalry on the right flank.  This consisted of elite Liby-Phoenicians, Gallic traitors, and small units of Numidians and Ligurians.

The center division was composed of the heavy Libyan formations, with supporting Numidians and Ligurians, and an elephant.

The left flank was composed of traitorous Gauls, with a few Samnites in support. 

The Gallic chiefs  packed their ranks with warbands for the left and center comments, withe the most elite units opposite the Carthaginian heavy infantry.

In addition to warbands, the Gallic right flank included their cavalry,  strategically placed as far away from the Carthaginian elephant as possible.  

The Gauls began an advance with their center and right flank, but the left flank refused to budge.

Carthage sent forth their Gallic and Samnite allies, along with part of the heavy infantry, and the melee commenced.  

Enraged at their countrymen's treachery, the Gauls managed to destroy and push back many of the warbands on Carthage's left flank.

While some of the Samnites and Numidians also lost ground, Carthage's heavy infantry managed to hold.

The rest of Carthage's heavy infantry and cavalry finally began their advance.

Carthage's left flank continued to struggle against the Gallic onslaught and risked collapse as the warriors were either killed or fled the battlefield.   

Carthage's center did much better, pushing back some of the Gauls and killing their general.

The Gallic warbands attempted to charge the Carthaginian cavalry, but failed to close the distance.  The Carthaginians then slammed into them and expected to crush the Gauls.

However, the supposedly elite Liby-Phoenician cavalry lost the round and fled the battlefield like cowards.

With their light cavalry pressed into heavy combat, it was questionable on if Carthage's right flank would survive or collapse. 

At this stage, the battleline was a mess and uncoordinated melees covered the battlefield.

Carthage's left flank finally collapsed and the surviving units started to retreat, often picked off by the Gauls before they could escape.

Meanwhile the heavy Libyan formations and elephant found success in pushing back many of the Gallic warbands, eventually breaking the Gallic center.

The Gallic cavalry began a flanking maneuver on the Carthaginian center.

Unexpectedly, the Numidian and Ligurian light cavalry fought fiercely enough against the Gallic warbands to crush their resolve and the Gallic left flank collapsed, causing their entire army to flee the battle. 

Despite significant shortcomings at the start of the battle and a real belief that I was done for, the Carthaginians managed to hang on by the skin of their teeth and survive for another day. 

Punic Wars: Gallic and Italian Cavalry

 The refurbishment of my old Carthaginian army is starting to wind down, with just a few units remaining. I obtained some second hand cavalry years ago that has just been sitting in bags, and thought it was time to finally paint them up and get the on the table.

First up are some Gallic cavalry that look to be from Foundry. I didn't have shields for all the figures, so had to use some from the bits box.  They are really well sculpted and I think they'll look great on the table.

Next up are some Italian cavalry from Old Glory. These were mixed in with a lot of other figures, but I believe they are the Ligurian pack, with perhaps some hill tribe figures included as well (half the figures had sculpted saddle blankets while the other did not, so it makes me suspicious that they aren't a single pack).  The horses supplied also seemed to be a mix of sculpting styles, so I'm not sure they are all the correct ones for these riders. But I got these for free as part of another deal, so am not going to complain and I think the end result looks good enough.

At this stage, I've been working almost exclusively on Punic Wars for the last year (300+ figures either refurbished or newly painted) and am feeling a bit burnt out.  Since I now have more than enough done for a good size game of Hail Caesar, I've decide to pause work on this for a bit and focus on another army refurbishment project that I'll be starting this month.  

Punic Wars: Commanders and Gallic Warbands

The work on expanding my Carthaginian army continues. As Hail Caesar uses more command stands than WAB, I’ve created two more from some Crusader Miniatures infantry command stands. They are very well sculpted and cast, and fit nicely with the A&A figures I have in my army (which isn’t a huge surprise since it’s the same sculptor).  Since the Carthaginian army was a mix of peoples, I’ve opted to go with one Carthaginian commander and one Apulian Italian commander. While I don’t have any Apulian units in my army, my hope is that they look generically Italian enough that won’t look out of placing leading a mix of Oscans, Ligurians, and Italian hill tribes. The shields were done using transfers from Little Big Man Studios.

My initial Gallic warband from 20 years ago was made from Foundry figures, with Black Tree command, and a lone 1st Corps figure (known as ‘Shorty Bob” due to his stature when compared to the other lines).  I bought the Foundry figures second hand and they came without shields, so I had to order replacements from Old Glory. Since then, I went on to pick up some Renegade and Gripping Beast over the years. There are some size differences between the various brands (The Renegades are big guys with swords the size of cricket bats), but I’ve done my best to mix everything together.  Overall, I think the dynamic poses help hide the differences in a warband, so I don’t think it’s too glaring. For the shields, I’ve mixed everything up and replaced some with additional Old Glory shields, allowing me to use LBM transfers in additional to the original decals from Veni Vidi Vici.

Warband 1:

Warband 2:

Hail Caesar: First Game

We're still finishing our armies, but we had enough to try our first test game of Hail Caesar (we're still using 1st Ed.): Two divisions of Punic War Carthaginians vs three divisions of Early Imperial Romans, for a total of around 330 pts per side. Overall we enjoyed the rules, though we made a lot of mistakes around disorder, stamina, and break tests. I'm not sure how much our errors impacted the final results (Roman victory), but it will be interesting to retry this battle in the future. 

Th initial battle lines after the Carthaginians moved first. The hit and run tactics of the Numidian cavalry worked well, especially when attacking in the flank.

On the far end of the board, I made the mistake of letting my cavalry get in front of my infantry.  While they hit hard the first round, their sustained attack was weak and it really impacted the back and forth of the battle. I think the smarter move would have been for them to swing into the flank after the infantry made contact.

Though loosing the round of combat (I forgot about the Wild Fighter rerolls), the large Gallic Warband held up fairly well against the Romans.

Very quickly we learned that supporting units and flank attacks were critical to winning the encounters, particularly when light or medium infantry were going up against heavy infantry. 

I was originally concerned the variation in unit frontages (my army was based for Warhammer Ancients) was going to cause problems, but it ended up not being an issue. However, that may be to us taking the game casually; more competitive players might have had cause to raise a stink about how we lined things up.

I originally used my skirmishers as screens to protect my infantry formations as they moved up, but later found them more useful as flank attackers to weaken the Roman attacks on my heavy infantry.

The elephant wasn't as effective of a terror weapon as I had hoped for, at least how I deployed him.  I'll have to toy around with new strategies moving forward.

A lot of people have recommended moving to the 2nd Ed. rules, as the organization is supposedly clearer, but I think we'll keep muddling through the original rules before shelling out another $56 to upgrade. As we continue to finish our armies, it will also be interesting to see how many units can practically be deployed on a 4'x6' table. We should both be at approximately 3-4 divisions of 4+ units per army when done.