Chronica Iohannes: April 550 AD

Action Report

Turn 1: North to the right and east in the farground. The farm lies to the left.  The Angles have a good headstart, the Britons are still far to the west.

The Angle duguth with Alaric their leader to the right.

Alaric has advanced his elite gedridht to the west. His strategy appears to be to advance  with his warriors to loot the village and to send his shock troops to protect his right flank.

The Tribune Antoninus, has advanced with the noble Cadfael as well as Uther with two groups of his combrogi as well as some slingers to scout ahead and harry the enemy. 

Alaric, is that severed heads in has in his hand?

Turn 2: The slingers cause some preliminary damage on the Angle gedridht and the combrogi bravely advance to engage them with some success, the nobles stay out of the fight for now. 

The Angle advance to the village is somewhat slow, but still no Britons to be seen. Was it wise  for  Antoninus to advance to engage the Angle elite, rather then rushing to the farm?

A very bloody combat is re-engaged and Cadfael has had to advance to fight with the combrogi.  He is wounded and the ferocity of the Angle elite troops now is evident, as the Britons suffer heavy losses.

Finally we see some of the British pagenses advancing to the farm with the Lord Cadog. Antoninus  holds back his  teuli to support his weakened combrogi.

Well it seems that it is too late for the British farmers, they are all massacred and three groups of  Angle warriors start their search for loot. Alaric looks on with satisfaction and avarice.

Maybe a little late, Cadog!

Turn 3: A seesaw combat between the Angle gedridht and the British combrogi continues.

The pagenses are finally approaching the village, but the duguth really now have had lots of time to look for loot and have had success, the outcome really now is in the hands of the gods (well the cards that is).

Turn 4: The Britons get a break and are able to advance quickly to the  farm to attempt to prevent the Angles leaving with their loot. Antoninus can now see first hand that he has been a little tardy in his advance. 

The British teuli join the combrogi in a shieldwall and finally the Angle elite are starting to crumble,  the slingers have moved off to the flank to add to the Angle misery.

Turn 5: Seems like a few snaps are missing, but it appears that one group of Angles has lost both their  Amphora as well as their loot. The card gods have favoured the British. Morale is at 8 aside now.

More British success to the west, the Angle elite have been driven back.

It seems like the Angles are going to have to fight their way out of the village,  Alaric and his Adeligs all seem to like a fight and rush in to help their the Duguth. More loot lying on the ground.

The British levy though are no match for the Angles they are massacred, Alaric and his warriors  continue their flight.

The Angle elite are now also withdrawing with their Adelig, the British levy now appear to be caught in a pincer  between the Angle gedridht and the duguth. Maybe not so clever.

Turn 6: The Angle elite demolish the British levy, and we now can see their true cunning,  Alaric  has sent his warriors  to the northwest rather then directly to the north. Here they have only some isolated levy to oppose their flight with the loot. Alaric himself with his champion, heads north west and leaves one of his Adeligs  to lead his weakened Gedridth to cover their retreat and to confront the advancing Britons.

Yes the two groups of Angle warriors appear to have a nice clear path, they are both carrying loot.

Turn 7: Well it appears that all the Angles are now on their way to the north. The Britons are in close pursuit.

The brave slingers cause so shock on the retreating Angles, but they are forced to withdraw.

Lots of Loot!

Turn 8: The final confrontation, the Angles have got away with the loot but Antoninus wants to teach them a lesson they will not forget. He plays Carpe Diem and thus takes the Angles from behind (sounds odd does it not). He has a massive advantage as he also plays Strong Arm, he throws 21 die to 2 die for the Angles. Four of the Six remaining Angles die and they rout off the board. 

So a +1 Angle win, with heavy losses on the Angle side and moderate losses for the Britons, see you in July.

Some thoughts on Dux Britanniarum

Well, I suppose it is obvious that I have not only really enjoyed these rules, but also loved the process. This is the first campaign I have started, and it is absolutely fascinating. I knew very little about the Dark Ages before I started and have enjoyed the research associated with it. I also had to pull out my old latin grammar from middle school and that was almost 50 years ago, talk about the dark ages.

The ruleset is nicely laid out and generally are presented in a logical manner. The illustrations are helpful. The writing at times can be somewhat contradictory and it is enormously helpful to have a look at the Player Notes on the Lard Island News blog. The yahoo site is also helpful, but I have to say that I think it is time for Too Fat Lardies to have their own forum which has sections devoted to each of their rulesets. The Yahoo site is just too crowded and the search function is not that helpful.

I have only started to delve into the campaign section, but the character generation is certainly interesting, and I think I will have a lot of fun fleshing out the characters. The career paths, the accumulation of wealth and the process to add to your war band all appear to be quite logical.

The rules play well, I still need to work on the movement of groups around terrain, I am sure I made many mistakes in the above game. I also will need to get a better grip on the Fate cards, a little difficult to use in a solo game, but really do add a fun element to the game. Combat is easily resolved and the whole game flows quickly. Card driven games are just much more fun then IGO/UGO. Each turn was completely unpredictable and the outcome appeared to be dependent on which card came up first. I know some gamers dislike this, as they like their carefully laid plans not to be upset. Really, I just have to bite my tongue when I hear this. War and combat is not predictable, that is just the way it is.

Finally, the bells and whistles of the game. I have a lot of terrain but really had few Dark Age structures. Well there is a lot out there, you will see some 4-Ground and Sarissa Precision buildings in my action reports in the near future. I found the Warbases movement trays very useful. I will though have to figure out some way to show that the Britons are in a shieldwall rather then just in a formation of groups. Need to finish painting some more shock markers, the ones developed for SAGA from Gripping Beast are quite nice. It will be fun adding a few figures at a time as needed for the campaign. First up of course will be the priest Iohannes.

Well to summarize: Highly Recommended. Get on board....I need some opponents!