I hosted a Hail Caesar game – The Battle of Metaurus, at the Little Wars Convention.   The facility was bright and quiet enough to have a good conversation.  The vender hall was part of the ballroom and easy to get to. Parking was readily available by the main doors.  A contrast to the crowds at Adepticon when I visited last month.

In this Punic Wars battle, Hasdrubal, younger brother of Hannibal, marches a fresh army of Iberian Mercenaries and Elephants into northern Italy.  Rome is desperate to intercept the army and prevent the brothers from joining up.  The commander of the southern forces force marches half of his army to the north, and together they confront Hasdrubal at the Metaurus river.   During the battle, the Roman right flank is blocked by an impassable ravine, and so the Roman commander takes half of his forces and marches behind the battle lines to attack the left flank.  Ultimately, the Romans roll the Punic flank, and it ends rather badly for Hasdrubal.  Did history repeat itself?

I said a game, but it was actually, two battles.  Game 1 with 4 players and Game 2 with 7 players.  Both games played to the time limit of 3 hours and 4 turns.  Game 1 was a strong victory for the Punic forces with both mission goals accomplished and a strong position on the battle field.  Game 2 was a marginal victory for the Punic forces with one goal accomplished and no clear winner on the battle line.

The games were rather exhausting.  I was hoping to attract a few veteran players to ease the flow of the game, but the best we had were a few Black Powder players.  Needing to supervise every move and every battle over the 6 hours wore me out.  I certain that more than a few rules errors were made, but every attempt was made to keep the game flowing.  In retrospect, much of the playtesting for the game was versus my experienced opponent.  However, our methods and tactics did not apply to a group of rookies.  Changes made to the Roman forces (Hastati played as medium) to improve balance were not needed.  The flanking force of Romans did not appear until turn 3 and did not participate in the battle, leaving the Romans short handed.  As a take away, I want to take a second look at To The Strongest and see if it will be a faster/easier convention system in the place of Hail Caesar.

The battlefield in the morning quiet.

Looking down the Punic lines.

A view across the battlefield.

Battle in progress

Four Punic Divisions

Five divisions of Romans

Metaurus-Rules      Metaurus Army List 2    Metaurus-objectives