Southern Gaul, 147 BCE
Gauis Portius Carbo was beginning to regret volunteering for the 'special' assignment. Taking a small team so far from the safety of the Legion in such an uncivilised part of the world would have been bad enough, leave alone doing so in the face of threats of monsters to find a magical spear. Fortunately he and his party had seen off the monsters who had tried to take the spear for themselves without too much difficulty and they'd found what the spy had assured them was the relic they were interested in. Foolishly, as they group had made their way back to their camp, he'd assumed his task was complete and that acolades awaited him. Now he was taking the spy, carrying the spear which, despite it supposedly being able to slay any of the monsters with the slightest graze, he was forbidden to use with a small escort from the marching camp to the main base of operations in the area.He had this horrible feeling the enemy would not let such an opportunity to retrieve the weapon before it was unreachable pass.
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Garzan Thrice-Cut waited impatiently, perched upon a rock in the cursed dry-lands, under the burning glare of the sky fire. His scouts were due back soon, having been sent to find the group of mud crawlers with the spear that they were so convinced would be their secret weapon against his kind, which Sargessir had failed so spectacularly to capture. He had gathered a warband and was here to correct the mistake.
A scout arrived, bowed, and gave his report. "They'll be here by the time the sky fire reaches its peak." Garzan nodded and glanced around the area. It would do for his ambush.
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Following on from a previous game, we recently played a game of Dragon Rampant (using the Lion Rampant The Messenger scenario), with a Roman force escorting a spy carrying a magical spear with a Formorian warband ambushing them en route to a fortress.
The Roman force consisted of:
1 Unit of Picked Principii (Elite Foot) (Leader Unit)
2 Units of Principii (Heavy Foot with Offensive)
1 Unit of Syrian Archers (Light Missiles with Sharpshooter)
The Foromrian Warband consisted of:
1 Unit of Formorian Adults (Bellicose Foot with Mystical Armour and Terrifically Shiny Armour) (Leader Unit and Reduced Model Unit)
1 Unit of Formorian Adolescents with Spears (Light Foot)
1 Unit of Formorian Adolescents with Swords (Light Foot with Offensive)
1 Unit of Formorian Adolescents Scouts (Scouts)
1 Unit of Blood Raiders (Heavy Riders with Fear) (Reduced Model Unit)
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| The site chosen for the ambush |
The Romans chose to attach the spy to their archer unit, while the Formorians detached their scouts and spear armed adolescents to flank the Romans.
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| The Formorian flanking force |
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| The Formorian main body |
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| Roman troops march into battle |
Initially the Romans moved to attack the Formorian flanking force, hoping to use their archers to soften them up before hitting them with the principii.
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| The Roman advance begins |
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| Roman soldiers form into a battle line |
The Romans were also able to draw first blood, the Syrian archers shooting down some of the Adolescent Spears, causing the unit to go battered, preventing the Formorian's attacking the Principii unit at the head of the Roman advance.
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| The Syrian archers make their presence known |
At this point, the Romans began to suffer from a horribly familiar problem, a string of failed order rolls at the very beginning of the turn, which allowed the Formorian main force to arrive and begin to square off against the Roman line and the flanking force recovered from their battered state, the advantage they had hoped to gain by destroying the flanking force slipped away in the face of the stalled advance.
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| Indecision or fear paralyses the Roman advance, giving the Formorians the chance to close in |
Finally the Roman troops overcame their paralysis just as the Formorians closed in, the Syrians loosing off a volley at the Formorian spears, killing a further two and once again battering the unit, before the Roman principii failed an attack order. Wasting no time, the Formorians smashed their Blood Raiders into the principii, killing two and forcing the back, but the Roman troops managed to pass their Courage test.
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| Snarling monstrosities crash into the Romans |
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| Romans fall back in the face of the horrors |
The next turn, the Romans failed their first order again, and the Formorians attempted to exploit this, throwing the Blood Raiders against the damaged Principii unit. This time, however, the Romans were able to hold firm and threw back the attackers.
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| The monsters return |
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| Round 2 favours the Romans |
Being pushed back left the Blood Raiders exposed and the Syrian archers dutifully filled them with arrows, killing one and routing the other. The Roman leader and the undamaged Principii both attempted to attack the Formorian leader, both being driven back and losing a man in the process, the principii becoming battered in the process, but killing one of the Formorian adults in the process.
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| The Roman line buckles under pressure |
The Formorian Adults unleashed their Wild Charge on the demoralised Romans, killing more of them and pushing them back, leaving only three survivors, while the sword armed Adolescents charged into the other Principii unit. Unfortunately for them, the only result was a dead Formorian and them being forced back. In the Roman turn, they manged to rally the mauled Principii unit, but the Picked Principii failed to charge the Formorian adults, handing the initiative to the Formorians.
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| The line breaks and Formorians pour in |
Aiming to smash the somewhat isolated Principii unit, Garzan Thrice-Cut led his bodyguard in a Wild Charge into them, cutting down two of the Romans which would lead to them being driven back and becoming battered. A spectacular dice roll however, killed one of the Formorian bodyguards, in spite of the armour bonus and mystical save.
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| With a roar, Garzan leads his men in a savage charge into the desperate Romans |
And then Garzan Thrice-Cut, Champion of God of the Deep, Warlord of the Formorian people, failed his morale check and routed. In addition to depriving them of their leader, this loss took the Formorians to over 50% losses by points, leading to a pair of Courage checks, which led to the remaining spear armed Adolescents fleeing and the Scouts becoming battered.
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| Desperate resistance by the Roman infantry causes Garzan to flee |
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| Deserted by their leader, and with the fighting power of their warband halved, the Formorians begin to melt away |
Fast running out of options, the Formorian Adolescents charged the battered remnants of the principii unit in front of them, killing or routing all of them for no loss. In the mean time, the scouts rallied from their shock.
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| One Roman unit is cut apart and flees |
The remaining turns saw the Formorians withdraw back, aiming to lure the Romans in closer, while the Romans attempted to get into archery range and exploit their missile advantage. Eventually, the Formorian Adolescents saw an opportunity and rushed the Syrian archers, taking a few volleys on the way in. In the ensuing fight, terrible Formorian dice rolls killed one archer, while the archers impressed anyone and cut down two more of the monsters, leaving a single survivor who promptly routed.
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| A suicidal charge at the spy and his escort ends in defeat, the sole survivor flees. |
In a desperate move, the Formorian scouts moved into range and fired at the archers, causing no harm. One of their number was cut down by a retaliatory volley, before the three survivors were charged and cut down by the Roman centurion and his picked guards.
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| Gauis Portius Carbo leads his men to crush the last resistance on the field, cutting them down without mercy. |
Gauis Portius Carbo surveyed the carnage around him. More than half his men were down or had fled, although the odious spy had survived at least, his precious cargo unharmed. One of the terrifying mounts the enemy had used was bellowing in agony, thrashing about, while the archers were using it for target practise, laughing at each hit.
Carbo turned to his remaining legionaries, "I want all the bodies checked, theirs are to have their throats cut, make sure none of them get up again. Find any of ours who are still alive and get them as comfortable as possible, we'll move as soon as we can." The men dispersed to carry out their orders as the spy sauntered over, carefully picking his way over dead Romans and monsters alike.
Before Carbo could speak to the man, one of the creatures at his feet squirmed. He leapt back and raised his sword to finish the creature off, causing it to raise a hand and blurt out something. "Centurion, wait!" the spy cut in. "That was the local Gallic language."
"What?"
"That creature speaks a language we know. I want it alive. We've never been able to interrogate one of these things." Carbo spat and turned to his nearest soldier.
"Tie this thing up, then try and bind its wounds." He turned back to the spy. "This had better be worth it."
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The torture the priest was inflicting upon him was nothing compared to the pain the shame he felt was causing Garzan. His armour had been stripped from him, his flesh tearing as it was prised from him, and now he was being burnt and cut, shamed before he would be killed to appease the God he had failed by running.
This time the mud-crawlers had been willing to fight, fight with savagery and desperation of those possessed of madness, and in a mad, terrifying moment of madness he had run.
A wave of pain passed through him and the priest inflicted some fresh horror, and he felt his strength begin to fade.
Summoning every ounce of will and strength he had left, he screamed a curse upon the mud-crawlers as the blackness raced up to embrace him.
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In a first for this particular series of games, this one was actually close, with bad luck crippling the Roman plans, then crushing the Formorian's hopes when their leader broke and fled. Both sides did seem to have fun though, and the Dragon Rampant rules performed, as usual, very well. Once again we had implausibly unlikely order rolls, with multiple 5+ rolls being failed in a row. There was discussion of mitigating this somehow, or relaxing the rule about ending your turn on a failed order roll as a consequence.
With this game ending in a Roman victory, the spear is now safely ensconced within a Roman fort, and both sides will have to consider their options for the final game in the series.
The Roman figures are from Warlord Games and the Formorians from Brigade Models.
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