The Brawl

On Sunday Gus, Andy, Ron and Phil came over for a first go at Gangs of Rome.

I set the terrain up using most of my current Roman terrain on my Deepcut Studio mat. 

The horrea are warehouses, one of them newly built from a Warbases MDF kit and the other scratchbuilt, originally as a Late Roman church!

The foricae is a block of public toilets. I propped a ladder up against it and scattered some tools about. The aim was to encourage someone to climb up but also as a clue that the roof constituted dangerous terrain.

The Temple of Minerva and the "town house" are also Warbases kits, the latter a villa repurposed by means of some walls (part Hovels, part scratch built). The "temple under repair" is an old resin model I've had for years. Don't know the manufacturer or why I bought it but it was a good excuse to deploy my homemade scaffolding. 

I used a variation on the rulebook scenario called The Brawl. This struck me as a good way to introduce new players to the rules. Two street gangs were to fight each other with points being scored for putting enemies out of action. Double points were awarded for style, something achieved by taking out an enemy in a single activation by two or more means (e.g. missile combat and melee).

I departed from the published scenario in a few ways. Firstly I created 11 pre-generated Gang Fighters and allowed the opposing sides to choose from them. Two of the fighters (Junius the Thief and Molendinarius the Brawler) had additional abilities. If one side had ended up with both of these, the other side would have received the eleventh model. As it was both sides ended up with five members.

Molendinarius the Brawler
(who ended up in the Blue gang
despite his green cloak)

Junius the Thief

Both sides then picked a Leader, Scaevola for the Blue Gang and Lucretius for the Greens.

Scaevola - leader of the Blues

Lucretius - leader of the Greens

My final departure from the scenario-as-written was to allow deployment anywhere on the board. Not sure why I did that but it got the action sorted quickly!

Januarius and Lucretius fighting on the roof
of the small house

The action began with a fierce fight on and around the small house. Januarius of the Blues was put out of action almost immediately. As he took damage in melee and was then thrown off the roof by Lucretius, his demise was considered to have been achieved with style and two points were scored for the Greens. 

As the fighting continued, Lucretius was then attacked by Scaevola and Aerugo (he dodged Aerugo's pilum) before both he and Scaevola were in turn attacked by angry mobs!

At the end of the first turn all three Mobs (I only have three) were angry and the Disturbance Counter was down to six.

Game turn 2 began with Molendinarius being menaced by a Mob. Some childish amusement was had from the fact that the Mob in question was represented by a shepherd and his sheep.

Further amusement came from Rufinus and Parum Icarus throwing sacks at each other and missing.

The continued fight between the two Leaders, Scaevola and Lucretius, culminated in the latter being taken out. This gave the Blues three points (they missed out on doubling this as the crucial activation involved only a melee attack). 

Having just taken out Lucretius, Scaevola is attacked from
behind by an angry mob. Aerugo is still on the roof
of the small house.

The fight left Scaevola badly wounded but fortunately he'd brought with him a vial of Miraculous Ointment so after taking refuge in the walled garden of the townhouse he was able to recover.

Another mob had by now become scared...

The third turn saw mostly the two gangs throwing rocks at each other. The only point scoring coming when Molendinarius hit Musca with his gladius before throwing him bodily into one of the columns of the old temple. Two more points to the Blues!

Keep chucking the rocks boys!

Turn 4 saw more of the same; lots of brawling but no points scored. The shepherd and his sheep were now scared and the Disturbance Counter came down to 4 but that was as low as it would get in the game.

As the last turn started the Blues were well ahead on points but with a little more luck the whole action might have swung in the final moments. Although Blue leader Scaevola had made good use of his Miraculous Ointment, he had continued to take damage, not least from being attacked by the one remaining angry mob.

In almost the final action of the game Parum Icarus ran past Scaevola and onto the manicured lawn of the town house garden. In doing so he inflicted a point of damage using his Subtle Dagger. Reaching down he prized a rock from the sward and threw it a the head of Scaevola. 

Sadly for the Greens the rock missed and Scaevola would live to brawl another day. The Greens had just missed out on a potential six victory points!

The final action saw Rufinus take down Junius for a final point to the Blues.

Rufinus (right) attacks Junius while Molendarius (rear) assists

In the end, then, the removal of Leader Lucretius and Junius the Thief, along with the very cinematic fate of Musca saw the Blues finish with 6 victory points. Their opponents managed only to dispatch Januarius (albeit with style) and scored just two points.

Gangs of Rome proved popular with the players and we're seriously considering a campaign going forward. More on that and my thoughts so far on the rules to follow in a future post.