Dux Britanniarum Campaign - March 565 AD

Last week saw our Dux Britannarium campaign kicking off.

With this being my first game of the campaign and also my first game of Dux B things were going to be a bit dicey or so I thought.

Luckily (or not) it was Ian's (the other Scotti Player) only second game, so we were both beginners.

For the first turn (March 565 AD) Ian had stolen the march on me (as I was about to raid into Flotla), and with no regard for his brethren raided into his fellow Scotti realm of Cenel Gabhrain forcing me to defend the homestead.

The scenario we rolled was the Wagon Train one, which turned out to be the most complicated (for Dux B novices anyway) and provided a few problems from the outset, mainly with the scenario written for the Saxon/British bands, it doesn't translate well into the Raiders band units, so a bit of improv was required. With both forces being Scotti, we had identical forces.

My task was, with roughly half my force, to escort three wagons from one end of the table to an opposite corner where the gates of my holding were, and the rest of my force were hold up. Ian threw for his deployment and ended up right in the middle as close to my train as was possible.

Ian launched his assault on my wagon train pretty quickly and moved into position and lobbed a few missiles at my troops, while his cavalry moved around the front of my train to position himself for attack and block my route.

My re-enforcements exited the steading and started to make their way to the action.

Ian's cavalry and lord charged into the flank of two of my spear who had managed to form up with my Lord and 2nd in the line up and bounced the cavalry with minor casualties but inflicted a few shock points on both sides.

Now muddling through and still with the cards dealt at the beginning, which turned out to be pretty good (Carpe Diem and a couple of other good ones) my now three spear ranked up and charged the bounced and shaken cavalry and inflicted more shock and five casualties breaking them and carrying on into Ian's skirmishers and automatically scattering them.

Ian, with half his force gone and really only his untouched spear on the field and my skirmishers and cavalry fast approaching decided to leg it. I didn't contest his departure deciding not to push my beginners luck.

Good first game and once we got the hang of things it went fairly easily, helped along by some sage advice from Andy who is organising the campaign and who was playing Kev on the adjacent table.

Casualties were light on both sides, so we are both available for raiding next month.

Need to get a move on and get the Children of Gabran painted up for the next outing.