Impetus Romanus

We had an invitation to join the ANF in a game of Impetus yesterday so Mark B, Stephen N and myself journeyed to York to join James and Mark.  It was only a loosely based historical game around a Roman civil war battle in North Africa.  Since my last game I have at least purchased the rules, but not yet read them.  That didn't matter as they are relatively easy to pick up and to refer to.

I had the left flank of the righteous Romans, James took the right of the righteous Romans.

I was facing Mark B who had Numidian light cavalry and some ragtag pretend legions.

Mark had what turned out to be real legions in the enemy centre and Stephen had the enemy left including a few Elephants.

I used my German cavalry to chase away the Numidians,

I advanced the rest of my lines to try and get some benefit from my strength in skirmishers.

On the right James decided to neutralise the elephants first.

The Numidians started to get the better of my cavalry and so I reinforced them with some Auxlia.  My skirmishers were also finding it hard going.

I'm still learning - angling my skirmishers was a bad thing to do and failure to make best use of march moves was also to cause me trouble.

By this stage my left was in trouble so I decided it was now or never.

The (almost) clash of legions.  If I had waited to charge on my second move (march move) things might have gone better...

As it was the Numidians shoot one of my stalled legions to death.

James is doing a lot better, but has had his share of trouble.  He is about to sweep the enemy off the hill, but that was the high water mark for us.

Things go from bad to worse...

I am left with only a few skirmishers and some Auxlia who are busy fighting to the death (or till who can throw a six first).

Our army was demoralised, but it was a close run thing as the opposition were just one or two off being demoralised.

The rules worked well and I've already started to see what I can do with my Saga Vikings (probably need to double the force in order to get to 300 points) and my Burgundians.  With my Hellenistic troops I am sure I can make up a good number of armies for Impetus.

Big thanks to the ANF for the invite and hospitality as well as providing some spectacular weather.