More Thoughts on Roman Dux

First things first, welcome JP. He is the latest to join up here. He is a busy man with two blogs that are well worth looking at. The first is Herefordshire 1938. The second is The Very British Civil War Miniatures Guide. The Very British Civil War is something that keeps trying to tempt me but I have held firm on so far.

Roman Dux
I am getting closer to the point to getting miniatures for this. But I want some more things fleshed out. I am still attempting to decide if I am going to aim for a Hadrian's Wall based campaign or on one of the German Limes along the Rhine. The Rhine one is sorely tempting me. Those are fortifications I think I am capable of modeling. A long wooden palisade and a ditch with scattered watchtowers with signal pyres. Definitely doable. Then a fort further back to support troops. This rather than the Hadrian's wall model with two towers and a milecastle supported by a fort.

In either case, it would be the Auxiliaries that would handle most of the man power. So that led to a couple hours of Google time looking up Auxiliaries. The formation that caught my eye was the Cohors Equitatae. Since nothing is easy (Nil Facilis Est), this type of formation could have 2 different subtypes. Both offer possibilities. The first is the Cohors Quingenaria. A small force of around 500 men with 120 being mounted and the rest formed into six centuries of 80 men each. The second is the larger Cohors Millaria of around 1000 men featuring 240 cavalry and 10 centuries of infantry.

While looking into these I found an interesting sentence that I could not find anywhere else. There is a claim that these units fielded archers in addition to normal infantry. This would make one of these formations a true all arms force. Perfect for a skirmish game. I will take the smaller force as it neatly fits into the fort that would support a section of Hadrian's Wall - 6 centuries and 120 cavalry. Some sources point out that the cavalry would be more messengers and skirmishers than true fighting cavalry. But that is fine for the purposes here.

How to split this up? Well, I am determined to try the 8 man group size to base the troops on. Who would be the leaders. Well since the size of the force would be a cohort, the commander of the Cohort would be a senior centurion, the Pilus Primus. But we can't have lowly centurions being in charge of anything. This detachment will need some noble senator or the like hanging around to inspire the rabble...er...men to deeds of greatness. So that means we need s tribune who was given an independent command. (probably as a punishment for something said while in the cups at the officers mess to end up our in some backwater). Each century would have its centurion. In addition, an Optio would be present to support the centurion. Also a Tesserarius would be present in each century as a third in command. That gives us an officer pool to draw from for our games. The cavalry would be led by a Decurio. The senior Decurio commanded a turma of 30 cavalrymen.

A watchtower would be garrisoned by a 8 man tent party that would be rotated regularly. A foot patrol would be anything from 1 to 4 tent parties of infantry led by an Optio or Tesserarius (watch commander). A cavalry patrol would be lead by a Decurio and contain two groups of 4 men. (OK a Decurio would have had 10 men under his command but what can you do) Now this is too small a selection of forces for Dux B. So what we are interested in is not small patrols but what tribune would put in the field when the locals are acting up. The whole force of 500 is way too much. So what do we do?

Lets look at what our force has. Taking some liberties, lets assume that one century of our Cohors Quingenaria is sagitaria (archers). That gives us 5 centuries of infantry. Given that we are an Auxiliary unit, our forces would be entirely Warrior rated for Dux. (Maybe. We will see) Our Vexillation that we will send in the field will include: 1 tribune (has to cover himself in glory after all), a centurion, an Optio, 5 groups of 8 Auxiliary infantry, 2 groups of 4 archers and 2 groups of 4 cavalry. The cavalry would be counted as heavy and are armored with swords.

Opposing Forces
Now, the problem part is who do they fight? For the German Limes, we have Germanic tribes. Because I am fundamentally lazy here, they would look like... Saxons. But what troops would they have? Hmmm.... Well the best way to address this (remember I am lazy) is what miniatures are out there? Well Peter Pig (I am a big fan) has javelin armed troops, Sword armed men, archers and light cavalry. Essex has javelin armed, spear armed, axe armed, and heavily cavalry. Some are naked. Obviously those poor guys must have had Mussolini as their quartermaster.

My idea is to leave the less disciplined German or Celt tribes as 6 men per group. So our enemy would have a Chief, a hero, and two sub-chieftains. They would have 6 groups medium infantry that may not form a shieldwall. They are rated as warriors. They have an additional 2 groups of levy troops armed with shields and javelins plus some hand weapon. Again no shield wall. The javelin armed troops may throw their javelins before they charge. They have one group of skirmishers (4 men armed with with either bows or slings). They also have two groups of skirmish cavalry armed with shields and javelins.

Ideas, Frosting and other nonsense:
In order to reward the performance of our little lead troopers, lets look at the awards presented to Roman Troopers.

As a bravery medals, the Romans gave soldiers torcs (worn on the chest rather than neck), Armillae (arm bands), phalerae (early medals in the form of gold, silver or bronze discs worn over the armor. About 4" in diameter or so), hasta pura (a small silver spear awarded for saving a life), vexilium (a miniature silver replica of a infantry standard) and a cup (probably bronze/silver or Gold). Also several different crowns could be awarded for service. This gives us some trinkets that our Tribune could be awarded out to our lead troopers.

Wikipedia has a nice picture of some phalerae. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalera_%28military_decoration%29

A renactor site shows a centurion with some torcs above some phalerae. See: http://www.legionxxiv.org/centurionpage/

Also a unit could be awarded phalerae as well as individuals. So the signifier would add them to his standard. The greater the decoration, the larger the unit pride.

Anyway, this is just some random thoughts.

As CSIR nears completion....

Well, it seems like I have been saying that for a while. Just really one or two things left before I can release it.

In the mean time, I have had some friends put together pictures from their collections which came out beautifully. I wanted so share some of them with you. Most of these will be in the scenario book.

These all feature marvelous terrain from the very talented Mark Luther. He was king enough to make these for me using my poor in comparison Italian 6mm figures. I have to say of my 6mm stuff, those mules are actually some of my favorite miniatures.

Also coming to my rescue was Kevin Lowth (aka Fat Wally). He was kind enough to pitch in as well with some of his splendid 15mm miniatures.

Anyway, this is just a bit of what is there. Hopefully this will interest a few folks.

15mm Dux Britannarium Miniatures from Peter Pig

I was just stuck on a late night work call and decided to take a look at the latest offerings at Peter Pig. They have expanded their Viking range greatly and have released their first pack of late Saxons. There is lots of useful stuff in here now.

First up is the Longship. They are offering two separate boats for £9.50. These would not have been hugely different from the ships the early Saxons would have ventured over to land along the Saxon shore with. The differences are one has a mast raised and the other does not. The ships come with a choice of one of six figureheads. The one with mast raised has a steerman as well. The one without the mast comes with 14 men rowing. These fellows come with separate heads and Peter Pig is giving you 16 heads to choose from. I need to pick up one of these.

Picture taken from Peter Pig's Website.

Next up is pictures of all of the casualty packs. In a previous post, I had complained that the casualty packs did not have pictures. I ended up with the "A Bit Dead" figures and not having what I was looking for. Now all are nicely photographed so you can see what you are getting.

The two new packs that are on my must have list are the "27. Vikings carrying loot" and "14. High value plunder (gifts from God)". These would be great to include in a game where Saxons have successfully plundered a building and are trying to get away. They also have a set of male, child and female captives but I am less interested in those. There are also a pack of monks that could be interesting as civilians but they are also lower on my must have list.

The mounted vikings are another interesting pack and could work nicely as mounted Early Saxons. However, I am not sure how well they would mix with my existing Splintered Light Early Saxon Cavalry. Besides, you just do not need that much in the way of cavalry in Dux B.

Anyway, my Peter Pig shopping list just got longer with these new items. Or at least, new to me items.

Another Prize Draw - Nice books as prizes

Thoughts of a Depressive Diplomatist is having a prize draw for its year anniversary. He is offering some excellent books as prizes. There are at least 3 that interest me of the offerings that he has. Check this out.

Random Thoughts, Chain of Command, More Campaigns

First of all, welcome to András Szilvásy. He has two blogs. The first is "Prinzipalität des Schultze-Böhnstadt". With this one he had me at Cossacks. The second is "Random&Creative". Another great read with plenty of nicely painted miniatures. Welcome aboard.

So, with Chain of Command released by the TooFatLardies, I sit and patiently await a hard copy to be delivered. I also am awaiting the hard copy that Rich is sending to Terry Haney's wife. He was kind enough to dedicate the rules to Terry's memory. Terry was an early convert to the ways of Lard.

Now, what am I planning on doing with Chain of Command? Item 1, make a campaign. This is actually kind of fruitless as I rarely get to finish out my campaign ideas. I have a Sharp Practice campaign that is languishing and a Lebanon '82 campaign that is collecting dust at the moment. Why would I want to do another? Well, I find it fun.

With WWII, I have way too many interests. Almost all of which are early war. I have troops for a number of theaters. Specifically, East Africa, North Africa, France, Greece and the Eastern Front. I have some late war items for Normandy and the Eastern Front but for some reason I am just not as attracted to it on the game table. Granted the armor looks nicer and is definitely more effective but the early war stuff just captures my interest.

I am thinking of doing an August 1941 Operation Barbarossa campaign to start with. I have all the figures I need for the Soviets, Italians and Germans. Given that I have been working on my CSIR supplement for over 5 years now, I may have to go with Germans rather than Italians for a bit as I need a break from them.

One thing thrown about the TFL group has been the thought of all armor games. This is interesting. I am thinking about having a platoon of armor and one of infantry for both sides and running the campaign.

An old picture of some of my Early War German Panzer IIIs.

My favorite early war Soviet tank has to be the T-26. It has so many variants making it a swiss army knife of tanks. I still do not have any of the double turret models which I need to pick up at some point. They would likely be my opponents.

Once again, Platoon Forward will serve as the backdrop for the campaign. It is such a flexible system. I would replace the scenarios from PF with the ones offered by the Chain of Command rules. The terrain generator will probably get some exercise though.

One other project I may explore would be the Italian invasion of France in 1940. I have the French troops and the Italians ready to go. It would make for an interesting project. The only missing items are French VB gunners. That is something I hope to remedy in the next month or two.

For East Africa, I have a bunch of Italian Colonial troops that are collecting dust. These troops would be quite a challenge to lead as they lack light machine gun support. They press the attack with rifle and bayonet alone. In battles such as Mill Hill, their attacks resembles something out of a Great War nightmare with the poor colonials charging machine gun positions repeatedly. The Lancia IZM armored Car and other great early war vehicles really make this a fun period to model.

So how are you, dear reader, planning on using Chain of Command? Isolated scenarios or are you planning on a campaign of some sort?