I have always been fascinated by the battle of Alesia. While there’s no doubt that Caesar had one eye on his political ambitions when writing Comentarii de Bello Gallico, it is a unique first hand and plain language account of an ancient soldier’s experience on campaign, even if that soldier turned out to be one of the most celebrated military minds the world has known. Even allowing for the element of propaganda in his account of the siege, Alesia was a remarkable victory. Looked at in hindsight it doesn’t seem possible that Caesar could have even contemplated undertaking the siege or that he could have succeeded, but he did. Pharsalus may have been his defining moment but Alesia was surely the jewel in Caesar’s military crown and the most impressive example of Roman discipline, engineering and military vision.
When I first cracked Expansion 2, I was disappointed not to see Alesia featured among the scenarios, but not too surprised. The double circumvallation seemed to be beyond the scope and scale of C&C:A’s three section layout, designed for open field battles. Ancient sieges were also usually static exercises in containment and starvation, not exactly the ideal subject for a high action tactical game. Of course the truth is that Alesia was anything but static and was a highly dynamic and exciting battle, worthy of game time. I’ve come to love C&C:A and really wanted to have a go at using it to play my favourite ancient battle when I had enough experience with the system to do it justice.
Figuring out how to do it was the first problem. I obviously wasn’t going to be able to include the whole double contravallation on the board, even an Epic one, in a way that was going to be realistic or playable. The quick and easy answer was to go with the C&C:A system’s strengths and design a series of smaller scale scenarios that focused on individual events of the siege. Caesar made this easy for me by describing the action in a series of separate engagements, ideal for scenarios, five of which I chose to go with. I did briefly consider a Para Bellum setup to link them but there was such a wide variation in the conflicts, from cavalry skirmishes to open field battles to infantry assaults against fixed fortifications, that I could never draw up a common unit roster suitable for a Para Bellum campaign.
In designing the scenarios I set myself the goal of trying to represent the conflicts faithfully while avoiding the temptation to overelaborate. Another of C&C:A’s strengths is its simplicity and how much it achieves with so little rule overhead. Keeping special rules to a minimum for these scenarios was a particular challenge in a siege where complex military engineering was the true star of the battle. I set an aim of being less complicated than Gergovia from Expansion 3, easily the most rule heavy official scenario designed for C&C:A, and think I achieved it (just), even in the fourth scenario assault on the contravallation. Where able I have tried to follow precedent with familiar mechanics from special rules in official scenarios. I also wanted to give the historical winner the edge in each battle but also give the historical loser a fighting chance. This is much harder than it looks and I have a new appreciation for how much thought and playtesting goes into the official scenarios.
Thanks to Mark McGilchrist for his excellent advice, which was a great help in tidying up these scenarios.