Numidian Infamy!

The son and heir came over on Sunday and we had another practice game of Infamy Infamy. Rather than setting up the Iron Hand of Mars terrain with its enormous number of trees, I decided we'd have another go at a scenario based on the Numidian Civil War of 118 BCE.

I played Adherbal, one of the rival Numidian kings. I had one unit of spearmen (Warriors in Infamy Infamy terms) and a few skirmishers and cavalry but all of my troops had to dice to emerge from their tents and might start the game with unfortunate amounts of Shock as a result of the surprise attack.

Jamie took on the role of fictional Jugurthine commander Arabio leading a mixed force of javelin-armed fort and cavalry skirmishers. 

Jugurthine cavalry chase off some of Adherbal's skirmishers

We used the Numidians I based some years ago for To The Strongest. They're on 12cm wide unit bases with so, with no figure removal possible, we used blue micro dice to mark losses. 

The game was fun, with lots of darting attacks but it pointed out a problem with the Infamy Infamy rules in this particular historical setting. With forces made up almost entirely of skirmishing troops, it was almost impossible for either side to lose Force Morale. This was because:

• You don't test for morale loss if Skirmish troops are forced to withdraw (only if they're completely wiped out),
• You don't test for morale loss if Warriors withdraw due to being shot at (rather than in melée) , and
• The wounding or death of Supra numerum Leaders (predominant on both sides) is ignored in the game.

In the end we called it a day with the attackers well on top but unable to force a result. We were nevertheless happy to have improved our familiarity with the rules.

I'm in two minds as to whether to pursue this scenario further. I could see it making an attractive participation game for an event like Hammerhead but I'd want to:

• Model the camp properly, perhaps with a rampart of thorn bushes defining the boundary of the broken ground,
• Model the walls of Cirta at the city end of the table,
• Think more clearly about the mechanisms around deploying surprised units onto the table,
• Revise the Loss of Force Morale table to capture the factors likely to cause a Numidian army to break, and
• Add more "character" Leaders to both sides.

I want to get to the point where my familiarity with Infamy Infamy is such that I can immediately see how I could use the rules to run a variety of small unit actions. I'm there with Sharp Practice but the varied nature of ancient armies makes this a bit more challenging.

Filling the Forest Floor

I have The Iron Hand of Mars, my scenario for Ebor Lard written (in two versions pending playtesting next weekend) so I'm working on improving the appearance of the game. Lardy Days always feature some fantastic terrain and I don't want to be left too far behind.

The entire table represents a portion of the dense German forest. There's no chance I could put down enough trees to represent that accurately, and if I did there'd be no room to deploy the units appearing in the game.

With spread-out singly based trees, there's a danger that the table resembles savannah with individual trees sprouting out of level grassland. I want some low-lying terrain pieces that tie together the trees into a coherent primeval forest.

I'm putting together a bag of "forest floor scatter" that will be strewn across the table but I've also taken the opportunity to make some generic small terrain pieces.

They're based on irregularly shaped "rafts" from my 3D printer. For some reason I find that I can only guarantee proper print-bed adhesion by selecting the Raft option when slicing stl files so I generate quite a few of these.

The ground surface is Bond It Dark Oak wood filler, the rocks are rocks and the vegetation is two grades of static grass over an initial layer of fine flock.

Revolting Batavians!

I've also been experimenting with a technique I picked up from a model railway magazine. This tree is made from a cheap, Chinese-made tree armature. I soaked it in hot water to get of the original fluorescent green foliage and then painted it with Modpodge before applying two shades of static grass using my applicator. 

After I'd left it to dry, the coverage of the original plastic wasn't complete so I sprayed the whole thing with WSS layering adhesive before applying a third lot of static grass. Finally a whizz of hairspray to try and lock it all in place. We'll just have to wait and see if this will have the longevity to withstand transporting and storage between games.

Infamous Events

The "learn Infamy Infamy in short order so I can run it at Ebor Lard" plan continues to make progress. On Saturday Jamie and Phil came over and we played a scenario I'd designed specifically as a learning exercise.

The idea for The Summer of 69 came from an episode from a podcast called The History of Cologne. Episode 7 on the Batavian Revolt depicted a time when the city (then called Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium) was at the heart of a region overrun by raiding Germanic tribes and revolting foederati. With Colonia's strong walls attracting refugees and a drought causing food shortages, it made sense to run a foraging mission into German territory across the Rhine.

The set up was randomised using the tables in the rules. Below we see the area of battle before the game began. Note (far right) a single tree knocked over - the only casualty of leaving the game set up from the night before with a cat in the kitchen!

I think the Geek Villain Rocky Grass mat works quite well for summer-parched Europe.

Needing three areas of habitation for the scenario, I made a new A-frame hut to supplement to two Jamie could provide. Materials were foam core, cardboard, wooden coffee-stirrers, and Milliput for the thatch.

Jamie entered from the west (left above) with his legionaries in column of march.

German slingers emerged on their left and were opposed by the Romans' own in the form of some Balearic allies.

Who were in turn attacked by German warriors.

The Roman commander was forced to split his legionaries to respond to attacks from two directions.

Eventually, we came to a fierce action near the centre of the battlefield.

With time moving on, with plenty of rules interpretation questions under our belt, and with the Romans outnumbered in the main fight, Jamie decided to concede the day. 

With some Roman-allied Gallic light cavalry in his rear and with one undamaged legionary Group to his front, Phil was relieved. He later said that he thought Jamie could still have won from that position.

-o0o-

On Tuesday evening, I decided to build on my familiarity with the rules by solo-gaming a small Numidian Civil War action. I knocked up a scenario based on a passage in Sallust. 

Following the death of King Micipsa, Numidia was divided between his sons Hiempsal and Adherbal and his far-more energetic nephew Jugurtha. 

Jugurtha quickly arranged for Hiempsal to be murdered and then took up arms against Adherbal. Armies led by the two men met near the city of Cirta (modern day Constantine in Algeria) but it was too late to form up for battle so both made camp. In the early hours of the morning Jugurtha's army attached the unprepared enemy and Adherbal only just escaped to be besieged in the city.

This was a fun exercise with both forces consisting almost entirely of skirmish cavalry and javelin-armed foot skirmishers.

I won't go into details here of what was a confused affair but suffice to say it was great fun. With a little adjustment (I should have imposed greater penalties for surprise on Adherbal's units) I think it could make a fun Saturday Afternoon Wargame.

My next step will probably be to set up a solo, alpha test of The Iron Hand of Mars scenario before introducing it to my Saturday Afternoon play-testers.