Hail Caesar - Hoplite Greeks and Qin Chinese - A clash of cultures

Bowmen vs Hoplites, never going to turn out well

Yesterday evening Quint and I arranged a last minute game of Hail Caesar. He wanted to pit his Greeks against my Republican Romans, but as the Romans are currently on eBay I took along my Han Chinese instead.

We had quite a late start as Quint did not arrive until about 20:00 but we both picked a couple of 500pt forces, which looked quite lost on the 6ft x 4ft table I had set up.

I used:

• Commander in Chief
• Commander with 4 Veteran Heavy Infantry Spearmen, 2 Medium Infantry Fanatics, 1 Skirmishing Bow
• Commander with 4 Heavy Infantry Spearmen, 2 Light Infantry Bow
• Commander with 1 Chariots, 1 Medium Cavalry, 4 Wu Hu horse archers

Quint used

Prepare to engage

• Commander in Chief
• Commander with 5 Heavy Infantry Hoplites, 1 Skirmishing Slings, 1 Skirmishing Javelins, 1 Skirmishing Bow
• Commander with 5 Heavy Infantry Hoplites, 1 Skirmishing Slings, 1 Skirmishing Javelins, 1 Skirmishing Cretan Bow
• Commander with 2 Medium Cavalry, 1 Light Cavalry.

We quickly deployed and set to. Quint was advancing as quickly as he could towards me while I initially advanced and then started falling back  but keeping with the 12" effective bow range and trying to flank them with the cavalry. Eventually the crunch came, and as would be expected the Greeks gained the upper hand and had soon despatched a unit of Heavy Infantry Spear and Light infantry bow, but Quint did not press his advantage and my Veteran Heavy infantry were soon in among him and I by some twist of fate managed to kill three of the Hoplite units in one command breaking that command.

A clash of cultures

My fanatics were obviously distracted, on the first turn they moved once, did not move on the second turn, by the third turn my Commander in Chief decided to take control of them, on his first attempt to motivate them he rolled a 9, followed by his CinC re-roll and again threw a 9. The next turn it got worse, he threw an 11 and re-rolled an 11. On turn five he started off with an 11 again but eventually re-rolled and got them to shift. Fanatic about what!

A great game despite the pathetic fanatics.

All my Chinese are from Curteys miniatures and were painted by me, Quints Greeks are from various manufacturers and were painted by various people although Quint has done a great job on the basing to bring them all together.

Adie looks on

The Greek line thins