412 Lugdunum (197 AD)

Historical BackgroundThe civil war that began with the...

412 Lugdunum (197 AD)

Great fun. After a hard struggle, my friend, who was Septimius Severus, was victorious 9:7 trophies

Our group will play this next week.  Battle report to follow.

Until I entered the results of our battles last night, the stats above suggested that Albinus was the favourite side. Not in our experience - Severus won 4 of 5 games. Most were close, although one was a 9-3 banner victory. The cavalry on Severus' right flank overwhelmed Albinus' left and overran the camps. The Albinus victory arose because Severus was unable to get his right flank moving and Albinus overran Severus' left. In all our playings the Praetorian Guard got shot to pieces by missile fire and rarely was able to close in melee. Overall, a good scenario, and with 9 banners, quite a meaty one.

Played this today and had a wild time.

My opponent was Severus and started by attacking with his Cav against my Cav on the right side. This devolved into a bloody mess with him killing 5 of my units (decimating my right) in exchange for losing 2 units and a leader. More importantly, he had 2 Cav units near my camps.

Then he and I marched our center units forward where he caught me with a perfectly timed Double March using his Praetorian Guard and a Heavy with Severus. Then his luck started going bad but the result still badly damaged my line. Score was 6-3 in his favor and he had scored 27 hits to my 13.

At this point luck basically abandoned him. I killed his Praetorian Guard and Heavy Cav in exchange for my right side Heavy. He got one of my Medium's but lost a full strength Aux while attacking in a nasty exchange. The score is 8-6 but the hit ratio had evened up to 29 to 21.

I activated 2 units in the center (a 2 hit Aux and a 1 hit Heavy), the Aux attacked his 1 hit Medium and destroyed it. My Heavy hit his 1 hit Heavy with Severus and destroyed it then killed Severus for the win.

I was deeply demoralized in the middle of the game but hung in there to see if I could salvage the game. My opponent started playing a little more carelessly than normal just to keep my morale up and was shocked when I won.

He never drew a right side activation that would have easily won the game for him by allowing his two Cav to occupy my camp.