Heretical Gaming is my blog about my gaming life, featuring small skirmishes and big battles from many historical periods (and some in the mythic past or the far future too). The focus is on battle reports using a wide variety of rules, with the occasional rules review, book review and odd musing about the gaming and history. Most of the battles use 6mm-sized figures and vehicles, but occasionally 15mm and 28mm figures appear too.

Monday 4 May 2020

Gallic War Battle 2

Gallic War Battle 2:

The next battle in this Gallic War campaign test run featured the Helvetii attacking a Roman-affiliated tribe, the Allobroges.  Again, this one was done with DBA.



The Allobroges picked quite a big built-up area, so I assumed that this would be one of their major settlements they were defending, so they get a base of Denizens (i.e. a base of newly-painted Baccus 6mm Amazon spearwomen) to defend it.  I think the odds were supposed to be 3 Helvetii strength points against 2 Allobroges, but the campaign map is telling me I am wrong...I will need to check that.  Anyway, assuming it was 3 vs 2 that translated into a 15-base army for the Helvetii and a 10-base army for the Allobroges.  There was no difference in quality in this game.

The Allobroges:
3 x Cavalry (including General)
6 x Warband (4Wb)
1 x Psiloi
1 x Denizens (in the settlement)

The Helvetii:
5 x Cavalry (including General)
9 x Warband (4Wb)
1 x Psiloi

The Set-Up:

The main Allobroges' strength is in and around their settlement

But they have a sizeable detachment of foot warriors guarding the hill to the right


The Helvetii approach from the bottom, with their main strength to the left

Another view
The Battle:
The Helvetii move directly to attack: foot warriors towards the Allobroges' settlement, their Cavalry towards the gap between the hills (centre-right)

The Allobroges, finding their left unopposed, move a portion of their warriors and youths into the woods towards the Helvetii's right flank.

The Helvetii get ready to assault the hill settlement...

And it begins!  The Helvetii warriors get a foothold onto the hill


The Allobroges' contingent gets ready to put in its' flank attack

The Helvetii begina second assault



It breaks in to the settlement!  The Allobroges fled at this point...
Game Notes: I apologize, I can't totally remember the ending, but I think after the last Gallic element was evicted from the settlement, the Allobroges collapsed.  I think that I messed up the built-up area rules possibly - I can't tell whether garrisons are limited to a single base or not.  No matter, I don't think anything in the game did too much violence to reality.  The Helvetii were particularly lucky however, most of their combat rolls seemed really high.  Sometimes, it is just your day...

As in all this series of battles, figures by Baccus 6mm and buildings by Timecast.

4 comments:

  1. An interesting situation. I note that Amazon Kindle has DBA v2.2 and I wondered why, when V3 is the latest standard?

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  2. Hi Norm. I think it is 'because' v3 is the latest standard. Because v2.2 isn't, then the authors are happy for v2.2. to be sold on Kindle through the History of Wargaming project. Although the lite-version of v3 is available for Kindle, the full version never has been.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks. Interesting about a ‘lite’ v3 as I would have put full DBA as lite, unless it became more encompassing with v3.

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    2. Hi Norm, I think the rules are the same, it just has less army lists in it but has a sample game added to make it easier for new players to understand.

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