The Punic Wars trial run 1
I have wanted to game the Punic Wars for a long time and a
few years back stupidly sold my 15mm armies as no one locally was all that keen
on the smaller scale historical miniatures I preferred to play with.
28mm was out of the question initially as I had to buy,
build, paint and base 2 whole armies. I just did not have the cash or time.
Well skip a couple of years and some astute purchases (some not so astute) and
a couple of school holidays to knock over the bulk of the painting and lo and
behold I am the proud owner of a small Republican Roman Army and its counterpart a
small Carthaginian army in 28mm.
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| Carthaginian Right Wing |
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| Carthaginian Centre and Left Wing |
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| Republican Romans |
Would anyone at the club want to give it a go? Hmmm the
rules, what to use? With the demise of Warhammer Fantasy I felt that the
Historical version, WAB, was not going to work. Many rules like Impetus (have
not played this one yet myself) and FOG are just a little hard to introduce to
club members on a normal games night. But we have discussed swapping the
Warhammer armies over to Kings of War (KOW). Thus a plan hatched. Could I get 2
equal points armies up and get someone into it?
The Hours Of Wolves website by Neldoreth (see link on the
side of this blog) has some great historical army lists for utilising KOW rules
with historical armies. He has even kindly updated them to the 2nd
edition of KOW. A Punic War list exists. You can of course use the KOW army
lists as they are and build two forces using the Kingdoms of Men lists but I really
like what Neldoreth has done with the “special rules”. These additions lend a more historical feel to
the forces than the original Kings of War rules allow.
So on with the game. I was just going to turn up with two
matched forces and hope one of the regulars would see shiny new toys set up on
a table and say “Gee that looks fun, can I have a game?”
A little over a thousand points a side, which is small by
Kings of War standard but it should still give us an hour long game or so, I hoped.
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| Ready to roll |
Que images of elephants and triarii and cavalry and spearmen
marching to certain victory or doom which ever your prefer.
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| First couple of turns sees the forces move rapidly towards one another with march moves of anywhere between 10 inches and 18 inches. My, light horse move fast! |
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| Elephants and Cavalry attempt to outflank the Romans |
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| Roman Ally troops intercept the elephant and the Triarii turn to face the cavalry |
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| Carthaginian left flank sees the Celtic allies heading through bad terrain to attack the Roman Hastati and Principes |
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| Italian Allies take a pasting from the elephant but not before dishing out a couple of wounds in return |
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| Centre combat, Spanish allies and Lights move in on the Numidian Light horse of the Romans | | | | |
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| Roman general faces off alone against the veteran spear men. This is a nice heroic quirk of the KOW rules even if not very historical |
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| Grinding combat of warband and spear men |
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| Centre combat goes badly for the Romans |
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| Ouch, flank attack by an elephant has got to hurt |
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| Shortly after this a lone Numidian Light horse hits the veterans in the rear and "pop" no more spear |
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| By now the Carthaginians have the best of the Romans but they have still been hit hard |
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| The final combats between the heroes of the ancient world, Carthage is victorious this time. |
Overall my opponent and I gamed for an hour and a half. With only 3 other KOW games under my belt I was no great expert but it all felt rather fun. To the purest there are elements of the system that may not suit, like the heroes actually being able to take on a unit on their own. The movement seems more flexible than what I feel ancient armies could move like. Yet it was a lot of fun and was the first time for these minis to see service at the games club. Will I use the system again, definitely and I will give the historical armies another run too, as well as a few fantasy battles. But the paint brush calls. At least another 500 points per side I am after. Lets hope that another two years does not pass until they see the table again.
