Huns versus Late Romans

I recently picked up a copy of Basic Impetus 2.0 and thought I'd give it a try with some of my 6mm scale ancient miniatures.

A few years ago I tried version 1 of these rules (they're from Italian publisher Dadi e Piombo) and really enjoyed them. Only the arrival of To The Strongest prevented me using them more often.

This time I set up a straightforward Romans vs Huns action.

The Roman army, furthest from the camera above, was centred on two units of legionaries backed up by attached archers. These were flanked to their right by a unit of auxilia palatina (light infantry with "point blank weapons"; presumably darts), comitatenses (more light infantry), and some lanciarii skirmishers. On the other flank was the Roman cavalry equites, equites Illyricani, and Alan mercenary horse archers. It was only later that I realised I'd missed out a unit of sling-armed skirmishers who should have been there.

The Huns had one unit of mounted nobles, seven of bow-armed light cavalry and one of bow-armed skirmishers on foot. As you can see they deployed with a small centre and widely-spread wings.

The advantage of playing this solo was that I could take a couple of days with breaks to check on rules I wasn't sure about and even to query things on the Facebook Group for the rules. This taught me a few things:

• Javelin-armed light infantry have a 45 degree shooting arc,
• Troops that try to evade but fail to do so aren't disordered, and
• Troops that do evade don't end their evade move facing away from the enemy.

I'd guessed the first of these but the other two surprised me.

Early Hun shooting against the legionaries 
was surprisingly effective

By the end of turn 2 both legionary units had taken permanent losses

But one Hun unit would be lost as it failed to evade
a legionary charge

On the Huns' right there was an exchange of shooting with the Roman cavalry. The Romans got the better of this and another Hun cavalry unit was lost.

Eventually the Hunnic cavalry managed to wear down the Roman General's unit to the point where it was worth sending in the nobles to try and finish them off. This didn't go well and the nobles were forced to pull out with a single remaining hit and I threw in another unit of horse archers to protect them.

The battle was in the balance when these fresh Huns finished off the Roman General's unit.

The end came, however, when the other legionary unit charged the weakened Huns in front of them. The latter evaded successfully but I'd failed to spot that this opened the way for the legionaries to hit the corner of the Hunnic nobles, triggering a melée that routed them and gave the Romans victory.

I'm reminded of why I enjoyed Basic Impetus back in the day. It's less anodyne than DBA and more capable of supporting interesting scenarios than To The Strongest. This second edition will certainly have a place among my ancient wargaming options.