Pharsalus (48 BC) with Warmaster Revolution: Caesar vs Pompey

I'm not posting very much on the blog at the moment, largely because I've been incredibly busy with work. June always seems to be a very busy time of year for me. 

This post looks both at the fan-made Warmaster Revolution game, plus a play test using a battle of Pharsalus scenario of my own concoction, plus concurrent thoughts on both.

For Warmaster, it is a game I've been wanting to try out for some time, and it was good to see that in fact the latest fan-based iteration is currently free online, and Games Workshop seems to have largely lost interest in it. Warmaster Revolution should be, I hope, a newer version of the rules that has had the creases ironed out via thousands of hours of playing.

I was really after some rules that could allow me to play a full, epic battle in an evening, in about four hours. These are the sorts of slots available to me at the moment in what has become an anarchically  busy schedule. As a rule of thumb, 1500 point armies seem to be about right, until we get more familiar with the rules.

Secondly, I wanted to either have a system that could cover both historical (up to 1500AD) and fantasy battles. Warmaster, with its Ancients expansion, seemed able to do this. Some of the other ancients rules I have either don't have the capability to cover fantasy battles, or if they have a magic system, it feels less than satisfactory.  Having said that, we've yet to try out the Warmaster magic system, so we'll see how we get on there.

The Battle of Pharsalus

Moving onto the scenario, rather than go with something generic, I chose Pharsalus, a battle I'm not that familiar with, but which features as a scenario of sorts in the Donald Featherstone book, Battle Notes For Wargamers, which I recently picked up. The scenario as it stood needed a bit of work to make it Warmaster ready (Featherstone is fairly light on OOBs in his scenarios, requiring further research). In the end, I gave Pompey a bit of a points advantage to reflect his numerical superiority on the day, and hoped Caesar's command 'edge' might be reflected in the Dictator special ability (in the end I never used the latter, as Caesar hardly missed a command roll). 

In retrospect, the best way to do this would have been to reduce Pompey's overall Command ability to 8, or to just make it an even points game, but provide Caesar with more veteran legions (I only used one in the game, Legio X).

Pharsalus represents the epic clash at the height of the Third Civil War, with Julius Caesar and Pompey manouvring in the Balkans. Caesar had abandoned the siege of Dyrrachium - now Durres in modern Albania - and retreated into Greece to receive reinforcements. Pompey followed up from the coast, also with reinforcements catching up with him. Pompey was reluctant to engage Caesar, but was persuaded to do so by optimistic sub-commanders (including Titus Labienus, one of Caesar's most successful and trusted lieutenants in his Gallic wars, who had defected to Pompey).

Above: Julius Caesar himself, with Legio X (red). Ahead of him are seasoned legions (pink) then skirmishers (light blue). Greek auxiliaries to the rear (orange). The classic three line Roman deployment, which both sides used at Pharsalus in the real battle.

I suspect Pharsalus does not get played that often because few miniature wargamers collect enough Roman troops for it. Most wargamed battles of the first century BC period feature Romans against Gauls, for instance. Here we have the bulk of Rome's military manpower being pitted against itself in a single bloody day in 48 BC. Many empires would not have survived this. Rome's nearly didn't.

We used our coloured blocks system with some additional pieces from GMT's Commands and Colors Ancients to help to identify units. 

How the game played

By my estimation it took roughly five hours all in, including set up. We omitted the command penalty for close proximity to enemy troops by mistake!

I also felt the Roman skirmishers - both mounted and infantry - were horrendously deadly for what they were - playing as Caesar, my armoured legionaries had some difficulty charging skirmishers directly, although if they came to grips with them, the enemy did suffer heavy losses. Skirmish horse also seemed extremely effective. 

I'd like to know what the rationale was for this, as the losses amongst exposed skirmish troops mounted up quickly and contributed to break levels.

Above: a better picture of Caesar's army early in the battle; on the right Sulla and Caesar's cavalry can be seen charging forwards.  Pompey's skirmishers in yellow. 

It IS possible that the intention is for skirmishers to do damage fairly early on: I found once they were countered, skirmishers took losses quickly and I pulled them back behind my legionary line to avoid losing the units entirely. With a break point of 9 units for Caesar (11 for Pompey), losing all the skirmishers early on would not have given my legions much of a chance to get into the battle. So perhaps one is meant to use them early on, then protect the survivors, which would encourage historical tactics.

Other than that, I think the scenario played rather well. I made the tactical error of only posting a raw legion with some auxiliaries on my left under Mark Anthony. All my cavalry was deployed on the right under Sulla and did some fair damage there. But Pompey, who won the initial scouting roll, came at me heavy on the left with his cavalry, under Labienus. Mark Anthony went down fighting and I was forced to redeploy my Greek auxiliaries to defend against Labienus. I was also saved by some poor command rolling on the other side.

Above: later in the battle, Caesar's legions have advanced to contact but are taking losses from the enemy skirmish line (in yellow). Legio X (red) is engaged and flanked by a legion loyal to Pompey (green). Several depleted units visible on both sides.

I pushed my skirmish infantry forward in the centre, took some losses there, then dropped them behind the legionary line, as mentioned. Then I tried pushing forward into Pompey's centre with seasoned legions. By this time however, losses were mounting on both sides and there were a lot of fragile units on the field looking for a reason to leave the carnage. I probably should have attacked in the centre earlier. My advancing legions took some heavy losses from skirmishers, but then got in among Pompey's troops.

However at that point I hit my break point. It was well past midnight and into the sixth hour of the battle. It was a good learning process. We did not pause to tot up the points losses, but I'm fairly confident this would have been a victory for Pompey regardless.

We are currently planning an outing with the magic rules with a 1500 point battle between the Tomb Kings and the Orcs. More on that when it happens.

Below: Caesar's legions in pink crash into Pompey's skirmish line (yellow). I believe the dark green units in the rear were four more enemy legions, which says all you need to know.