Dux Bellorum - article playtest

James came over yesterday with his family. In between cooing at the new baby we managed to fit in a game of Dux Bellorum in the garage. We used the opportunity to test a scenario I have written as part of a magazine article on the rules. The article will hopfully appear in Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy at the end of the summer to tie-in with the rules being released by Osprey Publishing.

Without giving too much away, the scenario involves a famous battle of the "Arthurian" age but did not specifically feature Arthur. A small, elite Romano-British army fought a larger Romano-British army with some Saxon allies.

I was very please with how the scenario played out and with a few minor tweaks I have been able to submit it to the magazine editor. The gae itself was great fun. I initially thought I had thrown it away, but managed to hang on and finally bring some rather unenthusiastic shieldwall infantry around James's flank. The final result was a narrow win but it was closer than I'd care to remember. Once James has a few more games under his belt I think the battles will be even more fun. The rules are simple enough but optimum use of leadership points is an art that needs to be developed with practice.

In the meantime I shall slowly plod on with some elements of Pictish/Irish "celtic fringe" and give more thought to the Caesarian Romans. Of the latter I still have plenty of metal to get through but the INTERESTING NEWS is that as Salute yesterday, Warlord Games presented 3-ups of some plastic Caesarians...what with these and some AWI plastics in the pipeline from Perry I might just have to expand some armies!

Cheers

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