wargamesdiary   A diary of war games and board games

Preparations are in place now for the Battle of Ctesiphon in 363 AD.  Julian the sole Emperor of All Rome has prepared retribution for the Persians for years and has now reached sight of the walls of Ctesiphon.  However his cousin has failed to arrive with the expected reinforcements from Armenia.

Facing him is the Army defending the capital deployed for battle ready across the Tigris led by the Spahbod Merena.  Clearly a strong force has been left behind by Shapur II the King of Persia to defend his capital.  Elephants with Howdah’s and fearsome Cataphracts  cause the ground to tremble as they advance, supported by large amounts of the dreaded Persian Cavalrymen in full armour on half-barded horses.  Behind them the Citizen Levy arrayed en-masse with sundry archers add considerable numbers to the force.  Whilst all around clouds of dust and stinging arrows create confusion caused by hordes of light cavalrymen.  All this strikes fear into the hot,  hungry and thirsty Romans who have already fought a long campaign to get thus far only to be daunted by the sight of the high walls and strong defensive position of Ctesiphon.

Julian, fearless as ever realising he needs to seize the moment forces his Romans across the Tigris and gives battle aiming to strike before the King of Persia can arrive with even more  reinforcements.

The Battle is to be fought in 15mm using two strong 270 point armies using the To the Strongest Rules.  Both armies are equally strong.   Julian has the pride of the Imperial army with him including a unit of veteran legionaries.  The Spahbod has clearly received some advance reinforcements from the Royal Army in the form of strong cavalry units for our refight

The Roman Forces

The Persian Forces

Bruce hosted a night of post apocalyptic perils for Mikes DeaD of Winter.  Phil, Alex and Darryl joined in.  The first game finished before the second turn with a defeat for all players.  The team needed to get plenty of survivors for the VP.  So they did not hold back on playing survivors.  This would have been okay but each time a new character tried to move they rolled for exposure and got bitten.  Morale was low in the colony.  Then Phil drew the Prison guard and then tried to move safely using fuel.  However the secret event card said that if he moved a prison revolt occurred and he needed to roll 4 times or eight for exposure.  This of course caused more survivor characters to die and the team lost.  Phil wamost upset because Blue the Chimp had a flamethrower and a drone and was looking like an interesting new character.
Second game was better.  This time Alex had the chimp and turned him into a banana demanding vampiric demonic super weaponised search monkey.  He even bit Phils character and scared away bruce’s from the laboratory.

Together the team were able to get plenty of survivors especially using a secret tunnel to the grocery.  With so many mouths to feed they only had one starvation counter just in the penultimate turn.  Then quickly it was looking like the end and probably a solo win for Phil.  However DARRYL who in fact was the traitor tried to unsettle things on the final round of the final turn.  This allowed the other players to redraw their failing secret victory cards .  Alex drew one that allowed him to join in with phils victory.  But at least Mike and bruce were on the winning side.  Well done team colonists under the benign leadership of phils politician.   

We played the secret of sentinel hill scenario.  Phil, Mike, Darryl, Alex and Bruce.  

We played on extra hard settings with no clicks unless next to an icon and duke the dog requiring an action to be used.  Probably not the best idea as we are not very good at mansions but players were insistent.

We arrived too late to stop the ritual by one turn and then attacked the big monster.  Unfortunately by then most of the party were insane and Alex had turned traitor.  The big monster was badly wounded by the battling players surrounding it when Alex lobbed his dynamite into the fray.  This wiped out most of the party and those left standing were killed through double insanity or double wounds in the mythos phase except Phil’s ashcan Pete.  Even Alex was killed which robbed him of victory too being some satisfaction as ashcan fled the scene defeated.  So all the players lost and evil was defeated but Alex had the satisfaction of seeing his side win.  

A tough scenario but quite thematic and fun.  I think being allowed to click on the question marks to identify the requirements such as a silver key or holding two pieces of evidence personally is needed in these closely timed scenarios to save wasting time walking up to them and missing a valuable turn.  Especially as players are limited to completing their own turn before another player can aid them.