Thursday, August 11, 2011

THIS IS CARTHAGE!!

Last week we played Hail Caesar at the club and while it was not a particularly enjoyable game it did present me with the opportunity to field ALL my Carthaginian troops. And then some, since Evert brought his as well.
 Here are the impressive battle lines.
And our line of 8(!) elephants!

It did also make me realize that Hail Caesar is either not for me or must be played with a significantly lower number of players. It took us over 2 hours of playing time to just get into some serious contact with the enemy.  

Noteably a Carthaginian army under the Hail Caesar rules, like in WAB, is also an army not to play against out-of-period opponents. It did not stand a single chance against the outnumbering EIR army consisting of heavy infantry, archers, artillery and heavy and superheavy cavalry we encountered instead of the Republicans I more or less expected.

2 comments:

  1. I see, what a pitty!

    But why is it not a game for you? I would say its a planning mistake? I mean, Outnumbered by an all heavy infantry army and a 150 cm to cross is well.. a fairly predictable result, I would say at least?

    One could also take a look at the list I made for point values. Medium inf 2 points, heavy 3. And maybe we should count republican Hestati as medium inf? Shield, chest plate pilum isn't the same as drilled legionaires I think. Out of period would certainly prove difficult if the quality is that different.

    I am also going to experiment with the deployment in depth. Where armies must write down the divisions and their deployment on table positions. And indeed, if the armies are that large, there should be combat from the beginning, so I would go for the foremost units (a select few, say 25% of the army, within 8" of the centre line of the table) The rest reserves with different objectives.. The game is good for that kind of scenario's.

    Well of course, one can make his own mind :) there are enough other systems that are to like. But to be honest it would be a shame to lose a great player like you in our HC games.

    The pics looks awesome though.

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