Crusader Battle of Ascalon using Hail Caesar

From left, Joel, Allen, Andy, and Brett listen as Steve explains the special rules for the Battle of Ascalon, 1099 A.D.

Steve V has decided that his Spring convention game will use Hail Caesar rules to refight the Battle of Ascalon, 1099 A.D. This Crusader victory is considered the final battle of the First Crusade, and takes place after their capture of Jerusalem. According to reports, the Crusaders caught the Fatimid Egyptian army unprepared, and this is what Steve has simulated with his special rules.

Keith's center of Christian pilgrims, dismounted knights, and crossbowmen advance aggressively towards the Muslim camp

One of the deciding features of a game of Hail Caesar are the morale tests that units must take -- generally when they lose a round of combat. Steve instituted a sliding scale with Fatimid units receiving a substantial negative modifier in early rounds, but getting progressively less words as the battle moves on. Our battle plan was to advance as quickly as possible -- even charging on the first turn of the game, if possible.

Across the battlefield from me, Tim's emir orders his Saracen cavalry forward to try to hold up my advance

We won the Initiative, and chose to go first. Another key feature of Hail Caesar is that players are in control of a commands composed of a number of units (mine had two mounted knight units, one heavy infantry spear and one heavy infantry crossbow). One of my knights could actually reach one of Tim's Bedouin cavalry units, if I rolled well. I immediately set out to even the playing field for the Fatimids by failing on my first command roll -- which ended my turn prematurely. No advance. On the opposite left flank, Mike W followed suit. Hmm, now them's some bad omens!

One of Tim's cavalry units charge into my Crusader spearmen, but their crossbowmen and knightly comrades close up to add support (in Hail Caesar, flank and rear support give bonus combat dice)

Steve's modifiers for the Fatimids also extended to bonuses to the Crusader's command rolls early in the game, and negative modifiers for the Muslims. My opponent Tim failed his rolls, as well, and no advances were made -- we must have all been praying, we decided. Elsewhere, our center Keith was pushing forward quickly, opposed by Allen (who was rolling very well) and Andy. My command eventually got moving and we began to take the battle to the Fatimids. There is a substantial random factor with Hail Caesar with the command die rolls and loads of dice for combat, as well. Surprisingly, my rolling wasn't ALL terrible. I had my usual challenges, but never actually lost a unit while putting a number of Tim's units to flight.

Andy demonstrates how the Fatimids should hammer the Christian lines, while Joel watches on and Allen quaffs some of the beverage forbidden by the Prophet

In fact, we ended up winning the game despite our slow start and despite Keith's center mostly disappearing. It was shored up by the charge of his last remaining knight unit. Not a lot of maneuver, but like most Hail Caesar games, a definite slugfest. If you like historical refights that involve pushing lead and rolling lots of dice, look for Steve's game at Cincycon and Daycon in 2018.

Though it looked like they'd prevail when Keith's center nearly collapsed, the Fatimid Egyptians were doomed to repeat their historical loss to Godfrey de Bouillon's crusaders

Rerun, but with Hail Caesar rules

Allen then Mike S on the left, opposed by the Moorish commanders, Joel, Brett, Andy, and GM Steve V

 After Steve V read my blog entry about not being particularly thrilled with Art de la Guerre, he suggested we run the same scenario using Hail Caesar. Once again, I was a Spanish flank command taking the battle to the Moors (or "Moops," if you're a Seinfeld fan...). My opponent was Andy, who also had a mostly mounted command like me. In the center, or two infantry blocks were faced off against one another (Allen commanding for our side). On the opposite flank, Mike S commanded our left against Joel, while Brett was the Moorish center commander.

It seemed like a good idea at the time -- Allen commits his Spanish infantry into a clash with Brett's Moors

The command and control for Hail Caesar is highly variable -- much like the morale rules, which tend to make games go very quickly. Depending on what your roll vs. your commander's rating, you could end up not moving at all, moving one movement distance, all the way up to 3x distance. Andy and I galloped into battle with one another quickly. He had an unfortunate command failure, which allowed me to choose the matchups. This was counter-balanced by Andy's good rolling for armor saves against my abysmal ones.

Allen's center begins to splinter - why all my pics are of the infantry fight and not my command I don't know!

However, all was not lost. Andy's rolling began to spiral downward. More command failures meant he could not reinforce his units in battle while I was able to keep up the pressure. I started rolling better for saves vs. the hits his units scored against me, and I begin to win the melees, instead. In Hail Caesar, you roll lots of dice for melee. One after another of his light cavalry units began to flee the battlefield, as Andy proved just as bad at rolling morale checks as he was with command rolls. I've found in Hail Caesar, this is a make or break aspect of the game. If one wing folds under a series of poor morale checks, it will not be long for the battlefield.

Joel maneuvers to hold off Mike S (with ubiquitous McDonalds cup), managing to avert defeat, buying time for the Moorish center to steamroll

This was the case with Andy, but he did inflict casualties and disrupt my command. Following up into their infantry's flank was going to take a couple turns of reorganization and rallying off some hits. Or so I thought! Steve V decided to create his own Impetuous rule which stated that any unit which fails a command roll will go the full 3x distance and hurl themselves onto the nearest enemy. One of my knight units went bonkers, screamed 1/4 of the way across the table, and slammed into the front of a Moorish foot unit that had turned to face us against this eventual possibility. They must have been as surprised as we were, because the knights actually won the combat, forcing them to give ground. I had wildly outrolled Brett. My guess is that it would not happen again. My exhausted knights declined to follow up.

The bitter end as Allen's troops are forced back. You can see my impetuous (but exhausted) knights in the upper right

At this point, we took stock of the game. After two hours, Andy's command was completely wiped out. Joel had suffered one or two losses, but it would take several turns before Mike S felt he could turn that flank, too. However, our center had completely collapsed. Last game in Art de la Guerre, the Spanish foot bested the Moors. In this game, they got their solid revenge and sent one after another of Allen's units reeling from the field. Although honors were about even, we decided that the Spanish would withdraw the field with its center broken.

Hail Caesar is a game that is best for one-off scenario games with a group of players. It is not intended to be a tournament game at all (which endears it to me, though puts off tourney players like Andy). There are wild swings in melee and especially morale, so if you don't like a dash of randomness to your Ancient games (provided by the dice), then you may be disappointed with these rules. For me, though, they're my favorite Ancients set, now. My friends all shake their head every time we play and my dice begin to fail me. They give me that knowing, "You asked for it!" look, as I have a reputation as being a subpar roller of dice. Not this evening, though! I would say Andy wore my mantle, allowing my Spanish right flank to score our side's biggest successes. A fun, quick game -- exactly what the rules were designed for!

Battle of Manzikert

    My center Turkish command after the heavy cavalry passed through the skirmisher screen, with the Byzantine center force in the background

Steve V is running his Battle of Manzikert game using Hail Caesar rules in a few weeks at Advance the Colors 2014, in Springfield, OH. So, though we'd play tested it before, he wanted to get it out again and blow the dust off of it and make sure it was ready to go. Hail Caesar seems to be the rules of choice for big battle Ancients games, lately -- ever since we tired of De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA). There is a lot of dice rolling, so games are fairly fluid and units can be fragile. The morale tests seem to be what causes most units to disappear, which seems to be fairly accurate, in my opinion.

    Mike S commanded the left and overran Joel's Byzantine flank command

Mike S and Keith made me play Alp Arslan, the Turkish commander. Opposite Mike on my left was Joel, while Allen was ranged across from Keith. I was tackling Steve V, and I was a bit worried in the first turn when his dice were hot and mine were not. However, he went cold quickly, and my dice picked up and remained fairly steady throughout the game. The battle is meant to be more of a historical refight and less of a complex scenario. Steve deploys the troops for the players (which I am not a big fan of, by the way), and there is no terrain on the tabletop. Players make grand tactical moves and then tactical ones to decide when to shoot, charge, etc. So, it is a straight-forward game.

    Keith's Turkish command on the left had twice as many horse archers as the Byzantines did in their skirmish screen

There were some hesitant moments on our side, but we pretty much bowled over the Byzantines across from us. All three of us ended up breaking the opponent's command (or were about to), with the loss of only one unit on our side. The Turks outnumber the Byzantines if you don't count their reserve command, which may not enter the game at all, depending on the events of the game and some random chance. I wouldn't say the Byzantines have no chance in the game, just they will have to have some pretty interesting tactics and some pretty spectacular die rolling to change history. As it was, our game pretty much repeated history with the Turks smashing the Byzantine army in what was pretty much its most disastrous defeat in the empire's thousand year history.

Tukish Delight? The Battle of Manzikert, 1071 A.D.

    Our Byzantine opponents, Joel and Keith

So, one of our regular Sunday night gamers, Steve, is a big fans of staging refights of historical battles. He'll playtest them with us and then takes them to area conventions to run. The latest battle that caught his eye was the Battle of Manzikert -- a pivotal encounter that probably did the Byzantine Empire as much long-term damage as any other in their history. Because of this disaster, the empire lost is vital agricultural and recruiting lands in Asia Minor. Through the centuries, the Byzantines had relied on this area for manpower, horses, crops, and other goods. Its loss to the Turks was one of the nails in the empire's coffins, though Constantinople did not actually fall for 400 more years.

A couple weeks earlier, he and Keith had tested out the game using Might of Arms rules. Steve wanted to give the battle a whirl using Hail Caesar rules, which our group had played a number of times. I enjoy Hail Caesar, though I often end up getting hammered by its abundant dice rolling! It plays quickly and is easy to learn its mechanics. There is a bare minimum of modifiers -- all of which makes sense. 

    The centers advance towards each other...or would be, if my light horse would move! Allen's heavy cavalry behind are getting impatient and would ride through as we stalled for a third consecutive turn.

In this game, Allen and I would take on the role of Arp-Aslan and his Turkish emirs, while Keith and Joel would be Emperor Diogenes and his subordinates. Both Allen and I like to play fairly aggressively, so we planned an immediate advance all along our front. One problem, though. My dice rolling was its usual suck. I needed to roll an 8 or less on 2d6 to activate my troops. In the first three turns, I failed on that 5 of 6 times (I had two commands). Considering that rolling an 8 or less is a 72+% chance, you can see how poorly I was rolling!!! Whenever one unit in a command fails to activate, you are done for that command. So, our Turkish advance stalled. In fact, it stalled so badly, Allen's heavy cavalry in the center advanced through my motionless, screening light cavalry.

By turn four, I was starting to succeed on activation rolls. I began to envelop Keith's left wing, spreading out my more numerous horse archers out to concentrate fire on him. Eventually, this wore his command down, along with a couple charges that went my way. His broken left wing ended up being the only command broken in the entire battle. We were really surprised at how much horse archery could wear down an opposing battleline. It taught me that you need to have reserve troops to punch through once the enemy is wavering.

    With my slacker light cavalry out of the way, Allen was able to close with the Byzantine center and soften it up with archery fire before charging in.

Allen and Keith did get to grips in the center, with honors about even -- maybe with a slight edge to us. I couldn't follow the action on our left so well, but from the sound of it, Allen and his brother Joel were battering each other about the same amount. In the end, it was likely a minor victory for the Turks -- unlike the overwhelming disaster it was for the Byzantines historically. The thing I took away from the battle is how different a horse archery duel plays out from the usual Roman vs. Carthaginian foot slogs we'd done before. That is a good thing, of course. Those two types of battles should feel different.

    Late in the battle, my right wing starts to turn inward on the Byzantine center

Next week, I believe we will be doing board games. I'll post a report following the evening's gaming.