Legion: Chaeronea with Phil Sabin

A couple of months ago I was fortunate enough to have Phil Sabin offer me another game using his Legion II rules. The battle was Chaeronea, and the victory was Phil's - playing the Greek coalition! 

Yes, I managed to charge Alexander into danger, get him killed almost immediately, and then attack in uncoordinated fashion with my phalanx until, being put to the sword, I was forced to retreat what I could of the army. Phil won the battle convincingly, and a rather rueful Prufrock was left to absorb the lessons of the day!

It was a great experience, and an excellent opportunity to try out Legion using the VASSAL module that has been put together to allow online and distance play.

For those interested, the module is downloadable here from the vassalengine.org site. You need the Legion rules to play, and they are available from the Society of Ancients. 

Here are some screenshots from the game.

My Macedonians, with Alex on the left, full of confidence.

Phil's Greeks, waiting for us.

My initial attack didn't look too bad to my untutored eye...

But the Greek response showed me what a mess I'd made!

The place where Alexander was killed.

And here we are, getting in our own way, while the Greeks create superior attacks.

And our battle line only degenerated from there as Phil pressed on. 

As I hope readers can see, the VASSAL module makes Legion easily playable, even for people on opposite sides of the globe.

Highly recommended. 

  

Battling Phil Sabin

A couple of weeks ago Phil Sabin of (amongst other things) Lost Battles, Simulating War, and The Face of Roman Battle fame, got in touch to ask if I would be interested in trying out a battle remotely. Phil is now retired and living in Chile, which was greatly to our advantage in terms of timezones. His afternoon would be my morning, so we set up a time and date. 

The Battle would be Cannae and the rules Legion II, his revised hex-based grand tactical ancients rules published by the Society of Ancients.

Not having played Legion before, I was a little apprehensive about taking on the designer himself. Thankfully, Phil directed me to a video playthrough 

that gives a good example of the rules in action, and talked me through the main elements of the gameplay before we began.

Being a Lost Battles fan (or bore, depending on how tired people have got of my blabbing on about it!), it was interesting to compare Phil's vision of ancient battle across the two sets of rules. Legion is more granular, but there are quite a few rules that are mirrored in both sets (skirmishers requiring the support of heavier infantry to be effective; the primacy of human factors such as experience and command ability; the inclusion of rules for marching your armies onto the field, and so on). 

Legion may have been new to me but it was, in a word, recognisable. 

Generously, Phil gave me the more interesting side to play, and it was with some excitement that I poured myself a cup of coffee and watched Phil, genius of the Roman Republic, direct his legions onto the field.

He has put up a report of the action on Boardgamegeek, which can be seen here, and is titled Cannae Across the South Pacific.