Eight students and a fellow teacher appeared at my classroom door after school today to play an ancients game with the Hail Caesar rules. Four players took charge of five Roman battle groups while five others commanded six Gallic ones. The Romans were charged with protecting their camp while at the same time trying to take either a sacred grove of trees or the barbarian village.
As is usually the case with novice players, the Romans set put immediately to attack the numerically superior Gauls. As can happen with these rules, their formations became rather loose as they drew closer to the enemy line with disastrous results.
The Gauls, on their part, were a bit wiser. They let the well-drilled legionaries draw closer and then ganged up on isolated cohorts. The disparity in the amount of dice thrown was daunting to say the least. A small unit of scorpions was overwhelmed over on the Roman left flank when a medium cavalry unit got three moves on its first turn.
It didn't all go the barbarians' way, however. On the very first command roll of the game an eleven was tossed, forcing a blunder. The result was that an untouched unit of Gallic cavalry left the table without doing a thing.
We played for about two hours and got through four complete turns. I was pleased,with this as we were all very new to the rules. It was clear that the Romans had been severely defeated. I'll post some pictures in the next day or two.
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