Dux Britanniarum - The Wagon Train

The other week, I played a superb game of Dux Britanniarum against one of the many other 'Andys' at the war-games club. Andy and I are not yet playing a campaign, but we do occasionally play a scenario and that was the case this evening. We decided to play the wagon train scenario, simply because Andy had never played it and I had only played it once, being thoroughly mauled by Mike W in the process. This game was rather different!

In the first place, I began the game with 3 turns of movement for the wagons and for my escort and an extra point of force morale! This should have been fine, but a series of bungled dice rolls meant that the wagons crawled along the road and the escorting troops ended up bunched on one side of the train. Inevitably, the Saxons appeared in the very worst place, with every possibility of attacking the train in the rear and slaughtering my escort.

The pic above shows why I was a little concerned as we turned the cards for the first turn!! Anyway, I was luckily able to swing my forces to meet the Saxon threat, although I was not able to form into a shieldwall. So, Andy launched his first attack, aiming to hit my troops hard early on...unluckily for him, the dice let him down and he came up short.

At this point, I launched an attack of my own so the group of Saxons that was meant to be the attackers became the attacked. By virtue of a helpful 'Strong Arm' card for the warriors in the formation, the Saxons were forced back and fled off the table. Strike one to the British as the wagon train crawled onwards towards the fort, whose escort were by now on the way...

However, the Saxon elites now crashed into the victorious Britons, smashing them apart and driving them back in disarray. Only the fact that the British commanipulares and accompanying warriors were forming up safely and the fact that the wagon train was now actually beginning to motor along the road gave any cause for celebration in the British camp at the end of turn two...

At this point, the battle hung in the balance. The fort's garrison of levy was hurrying to the escort's aid, the wagons were moving like the proverbial greased lightning, but the Saxons severely outnumbered the escort and were in position to flank them, destroy them and then take the wagons at their leisure. However, getting the drop on the warriors opposing them, the British lord's formation launched a blistering assault that smashed the enemy apart, aided, if memory serves me, by a very effective 'Strong Arm' card.  However, this left them very vulnerable  to being flanked. It was vital that they activated before the Saxon lord in the next turn...

Fortunately, they did! This enabled the British lord to move out of the Saxons' line of sight and thus prevent the flank charge. Accordingly, Andy sent his elites on a long advance after the wagons, which continued to fairly gallop along the dirt track to the dubious safety of the fort. This advance also brought them up to within striking distance of the sally party of levy that had advanced from the fort to meet the train.

Andy was really going for it at this point. He had lost 60% of his force, the morale was getting low and the wagons were getting away, so he shot after them as fast as possible. However, the levy provided an important distraction. I had advanced them over there with the sole purpose of forcing Andy to fight them, as this would slow him down, hopefully just enough for me to get there with my elites and then it would be game over. Would the levy do their job? With 33% of my own force out of action, this was the key moment. The levy formed shield wall and waited, while the wagons hurtled onwards...

This combat was a monster! It lasted over two activations (The Saxon Lord and the British noble with the levy) and thanks to two 'shield wall braced' cards meant that the Saxons were only hitting at full throttle on two out of four rounds of combat. The end result was inevitable and the levy were sent flying back in disarray due to excess shock, but they did hold just long enough for the British lord to mount his assault on the rear of the Saxon elites. As this attack went in with a carpe diem hand (including 'Aggressive Charge') there was only one way that this would end...

The Saxon force morale dropped below zero as their last group lost its amphora and, to add insult to injury, the wagon train reached the fort, with the first of the three wagons getting through the gate at the end of the game! A resounding British win, albeit at the loss of 66% of the force.

If this had been a campaign game, we would have probably played it a bit differently, as Andy wouldn't have wanted to risk losing so many troops, but as a stand-alone bloodbath, it worked a treat. From my initial worry caused by the difficult deployment I ended up with a great victory in a closely contested and great fun encounter!