Editors note, as a lover of Ancients I have added a few additional facts from S&T 25.

Dan and I had so little hope for this game that I didn’t even bother to do a Fat Greek. Mea Culpa.

Here’s the story: The time frame for this game was December/January. December is traditionally a horrible month for gaming due to the holiday commitments. In January, we were in Kaua’i for a week over two weekends. We also had a number of other gaming commitments.

But that’s all back seat. The fact is neither of us are all that interested in the Roman Empire, neither of us were that impressed with Renaissance of Infantry, and Centurion looked like RoI, but dumber. That said, we recognized our obligation to our adoring fans (“Hi, mom,) so we at least went through the trouble of cutting out counters, reading the rules, and desultorily playing a scenario.

We chose the first scenario, the Romans vs. the Numidians, because it seemed to have a decent mix of unit types. We didn’t even bother to make a new map–I recycled the RoI map I’d made for the Battle of Legnano.

Dan joked that, as the rules say the Romans set up first, and the Numidians have to set up eight spaces away in “front” of the Romans, he would set up the Romans in an inward-looking circle and then I’d have nowhere to set up. He then conceded that I could technically set up *anywhere* if he did that, but I pointed out that the Numidians would not be able to tell where the Roman fronts were for all the behinds in the way…

The stupid part of the game is that disrupted stacks defend with a strength of *one*, and archer fire disrupts an entire stack. So one lucky shot, and it’s autokill time. I destroyed two of his stacks at once, dropping the panic threshold 20 points.

“This game is stupid,” Dan muttered.

My attack had left a leader flankable, and Dan took advantage of that, knocking me down a stack.

A Roman Legion

Some cool Roman kit:

My counterattack resulted in several of my units becoming disrupted from his defensive fire, but I slaughtered one of his leadered stacks and brought him below his panic threshold. This might have been fatal, but as all his troops were in a nice line, and as the rules make it seem as if every stout-hearted unit can rally a nearby stack, and every rallied stack can rally its neighbors, very few of his units turned tail and ran.

On the other hand, he took advantage of my units’ disruptions and destroyed them sending my barbarians into a panic. Only one stack stayed stalwart.

…and then died.

We tallied up the points. Dan had lost 55 points of troops. I had lost 175. That would have been a strategic victory, but he had lost too much of his forces, so it was reduced to a tactical victory. Strategic victory was needed to win the scenario. So it was a draw.

“This game is stupid,” Dan muttered (again).