Help with lake trasimene refight

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Roundie
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Help with lake trasimene refight

Post by Roundie » Wed Feb 07, 2024 7:50 am

After reading some of the great posts on historical re-fights here, I thought I'd have a crack at re-fighting Lake Trasimene. I spent today messing around with lists and the table set up so I could jump into it tomorrow. I've attached a picture of the table (with army lists and wondered if anyone out there had some helpful advice.
I'm using Grand Triumph (3 commands) on a 16/6-foot table. The Romans are deployed on the road in groups of two 1MU apart. Each of their commands is 4MU apart. The idea here is that it will take them some time to sort themselves out from march order to line of battle.
All enemy commands start 16MU apart. I can tweak the lists a little if anyone has a better idea (Romans are pretty maxed out collection-wise)
cheers
Wayne
Lake Trasimene.jpg
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RogerCooper
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Re: Help with lake trasimene refight

Post by RogerCooper » Thu Feb 15, 2024 1:42 am

Maybe limit the number of command points the Romans get to being no more than the turn#, given the total surprise achieved.

For a historical scenario (as opposed to a tournament game) you may want increase the number of points required to break a command from 16 to 24. Most ancient battles were fought until one side had no formed troops left.
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David Kuijt
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Re: Help with lake trasimene refight

Post by David Kuijt » Thu Feb 15, 2024 12:34 pm

RogerCooper wrote:
Thu Feb 15, 2024 1:42 am
For a historical scenario (as opposed to a tournament game) you may want increase the number of points required to break a command from 16 to 24. Most ancient battles were fought until one side had no formed troops left.
Hey Roger,

I don't think this is correct. My reading is quite the opposite -- most ancient battles ended when the number of casualties were really quite small. c.f. Keegan "The Face of Battle" as one authority.
DK
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Roundie
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Re: Help with lake trasimene refight

Post by Roundie » Sun Feb 18, 2024 8:19 am

Hi thanks for your input
I did a solo run of the scenario on the table pictured above. The table turned out to be way too long. I ended up moving to a 12/4 foot table, of which the lake took up about a foot and a half of the width.
The victory conditions were per Grand Triumph's rules (destroy 50% of your opponent's army). However, Any Roman units that managed to move off ( cut their way out) the right-hand side of the table added double their points valve to the Carthaginian losses.
The lads came over today and we ran it as a four-player game.
The Romans broke the Carthaginian central command but couldn't cut their way to freedom and thus lost the battle.
We had a great time but all agreed that the odds were stacked against the Romans (historically as it should be I guess).
Here is a link to the final table layout, lists and special rules. (I ended up changing the western Carthaginian list to 9 warriors and 5 Jav cav for our game)

https://miniatureaddiction.info/lake-tr ... -scenario/
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