Why don't they just settle it over a pint?

Rome vs Carthage again. Definitely new armies next time. But for now....

The terrain pre-game gave us this battlefield. Fairly open which favored Peter's Carthaginian cavalry and Numidian LH. I would need to make a real plan.

Peter chose a general with a command rating of 1 whilst my general had a rating of 4. Command ratings for generals are important. They don't use them for orders as commanders to, but the worse a general is compared to his opponent, the more of his army he has to deploy first: ⅓ if the difference is 1, ⅔ if the difference is 2, and the entire army if the difference is 3 or more - which was the case here.

That game me the opportunity to deploy in consequence of Peter's deployment, and that meant a big advantage. I massed the bulk of my army against Peter's left whilst my Auxilia took on the noble job of sacrificial lambs on my own left.

Peter deployed first so moved first.

Turn 1. Carthage.

Peter naturally advances on my vulnerable left.

Turn 1. Rome.

My Auxilia shake out a line whilst my Legions advance. They are screened by LI who will prevent them taking any missile damage until they are ready to charge the HI in front of them. My MC wait to see what the Carthaginian MC and Numidian LC decide to do.

Turn 2. Carthage.

Peter's MC move up and start a javelin exchange with my LI whilst his Poeni foot and Slingers move up. His Numidian LH are being very coy. What is he up to?

Turn 2. Rome.

Since Peter's MC are now engaged on my left, I waste no more time on my right, advancing my own MC towards Peter's Numidians. I try a new tactic, moving up one unit with the other staying back to counter any outflanking attempt by Peter's light horse.

The Legions meanwhile drive ahead with the Auxilia hanging back. They're there as a flank guard and must survive as long as possible. Notice how one legion advances into the square occuped by a LI - the LI cannot advance in step with the other units since it has Carthaginian MC in front of it. So it stays where it is and lets the Legion catch up with it.

Turn 3. Carthage.

Chaaarge! In go the Carthaginian cavalry, obliging a LI unit to evade straight through a Legion whilst the Auxilia unit must take it on the chin. Peter's general, leading the cavalry charge against the Legion, has a better combat rating than the commander of the legion, so breaks the tied combat and wins the charge combat, knocking a morale interval off the legion. But the commander of the Auxilia unit breaks the tie there and drops the cavalry by a morale interval.

The cavalry break off from the infantry right after the charge. They would not do well in melee combat if they hung around. Meanwhilst the Numidian LH decide to throw caution to the winds, form column and double-move into the Roman rear. Damn! I hadn't anticipated that.

Turn 3. Rome.

Thinking about it, I decide to keep pushing ahead with the Legions whilst my MC form column but stay a respectable distance from Peter's LH. Columns are extremely vulnerable if in the vicinity of enemy units that can attack them.

My Auxilia also advance. They're not going to let the Carthaginian MC sneak around the Legion's left flank into their rear.

The air is now thick with javelins.

Turn 4. Carthage.

Peter's MC charge again. This is how cavalry often operated against infantry: repeated charges and break-offs, never remaining motionless which would allow the infantry to pull the riders off their horses.

Meanwhile Peter's own infantry advance whilst the LH shake out a line and get ready to rear-end the Romans.

The cavalry break off after the charge, one unit passing through a unit of LI.

Turn 4. Rome.

In go the Legions. It's never a good idea to hold them back.

Turn 4. Melee.

Nobody routs.

Turn 5. Carthage.

The Warband close in on the Auxilia whilst the LH charge them in the rear, knocking off a morale interval. Meanwhile the general's MC unit charges a Legion unit, also winning the fight.

The MC break off....

....as do the LH.

Turn 5. Rome.

The Legions in the centre continue to drive ahead. One MC unit rear-ends the Poeni foot (ouch!) whilst another moves up to engage the Numidian LH.

Turn 5. Melee.

No rout yet.

Turn 6. Carthage.

In go the Warband and the LH, routing one Auxilia unit and seriously damaging the other. The Auxilia are doing their involuntary devotio just as planned. The bards will write a decent song in your honour chaps....

The Warband unit occupies the vacated square.

Turn 6. Rome.

The uncommitted MC unit leaves the Auxilia to their fate whilst the uncommanded LI see if they can get somewhere useful. One Legion executes much needed line relief, returning to its highest morale interval.

Turn 6. Melee.

The surviving Auxilia unit and one of the Poeni units fold.

Victorious units occupy the vacated squares.

Turn 7. Carthage.

The Numidian LH get active, one unit obliging some LI to evade (though they still get in their shot)

Turn 7. Rome.

The one Roman MC unit pulls back, ready to protect the Legions from the Numidians whilst the other comes up to see what mischief it can accomplish. Legions charge the Carthaginian MC and LI, driving them back.

Turn 7. Melee.

Nothing much.

Turn 8. Carthage.

MC rear-end a Legion, inflicting an all-grey modifier (firm morale intervals are treated as shaken) on it and winning the charge combat. Normally a unit charged in the rear becomes disordered with all morale intervals suffering a -2 modifier, but in the case of Legions the rear line is able to turn and face the threat, mitigating its effect.

A Numidian LH unit charges some LI, which evades back through Roman MC whilst the Warband, disordered from their about-face manoeuvre earlier (180 degree turns disorder unwieldy units) try to lumber back into the action.

The MC breaks off after the charge.

Turn 8. Rome.

One Legion charges a LI unit off the board. Roman MC move up on the flank of Carthaginian MC, ZOCing them and preventing them from charging the Legion again. The other Roman MC unit charges the Numidian LH who evade. Finally a Legion charges the last Poeni unit in the flank, disordering it.

Turn 8. Melee.

The Poeni unit routs....

....and its square is occupied by the victorious Legion.

At this point Peter called it. His Poeni were gone, his Warband too clumsy to get back into the fight in time and his MC pinned. He still had active Numidians but they weren't strong enough to make a real difference. Game over!

What's it like playing a diceless wargame?

I've got another battle report coming up, but for now a quickie on how it feels to play Optio. Is a diceless wargame pretty much the same as a dicey (😉) one?

Not much. Dice continue to dominate miniatures wargaming. I'm slowly coming to suspect that that is because they add to the drama of the movie production being created on the tabletop. Will my bow stop the MC before the MC reach them? [throws a die]....yes! MC destroyed! Well done chaps! It's less clinical than chanceless combat. You don't see chess players going "Woo! hoo!" when they capture the queen.

Optio on the other hand is a lot calmer than a chance-driven game but it nevertheless has an intensity of its own. Once you realise you are entirely in control and everything that happens depends on you and your opponent's decisions then you really focus on gameplay. You get a feel for the strengths and weaknesses of your army and paper, scissors, stone becomes important. Details matter since any advantage translates into a permanent gain - you don't lose it with a couple of unlucky 1's.

There's also the race for victory. You win by routing a percentage of your opponent's stands. I've played several games where both sides were one stand from defeat and victory depended on finding the right combination to take out that final unit. Incidentally, you can't calculate several moves ahead like in chess - there are far too many variables. You move your army following general tactical principles and look for combinations that sometimes become clear only in the turn itself. Lots of surprises. Bit like throwing dice, no?

There's also the question of granularity. Modern wargames are full of granularity. Even something purportedly as simple as Memoir '44 with originally just 3 troop types could not help but spawn dozens of other troop types each with their own characteristics. Advice to rules writers: wargames have to get more complex, not less (complex in granularity, not rules mechanisms).

One thing that is missing from modern wargaming however are high-granularity diceless games. There are a few diceless wargames around but they, like chess, tend to be fairly simple and abstract. I'm trying to fill this gap with Optio. I would suggest that Optio has more detail than comparable wargames. Each unit has variable morale intervals, various formations, tracked shooting hits, states of disorder, different thickness of lines with effects on combat, columns that work entirely differently from lines, and so on. Even ammunition as an optional rule (which players probably won't bother with). 

This granularity combined with lack of randomness in movement and combat outcomes obliges you to really get to know your troop types. It also means you are constantly looking for new deployments and tactics to pull a fast one on your opponent. A different kind of fun.

The Carthaginians reach their breakpoint.

Hills in Optio

Hills are a unique feature in Optio, but require a little preparation to implement.

Most wargame hills look like this, nice little neat round kopjies in the middle of a flat bushveld:

Problem is that most hills outside of Africa (and in Africa too come to think of it) don't look like kopjies and armies that used hills weren't constrained by the hill's narrow dimensions to deploy only a percentage of their forces on them.

Real hills are more like this. An entire army could deploy along the length of one.

So, how to replicate that on the gaming table? It means creating hills of any size and shape. In Optio I do it with a battlefield cloth, magnetic sheeting and hill segments.

The magnetic sheeting can be bought easily and cheaply. I got 4m x 60cm for a song at Maizey. Putting two strips side by side to give me my playing area of 80x160cm, I marked out a 10cm grid on the sheets, on the magnetic side.

Next, the hill segments. There are four of them: hilltops, hill sides, hill corners and hill inverted corners. Some of the hilltops are 20x20cm and cover four sheet squares. I made them from corrugated cardboard, but one could always 3D print them or make them from wood.

Hilltop:

Hill side:

Hill corner:

Hill inverted corner (its function will become clear further down):

With these hill segments on can create simple hills:

Or much larger ones  with more complex shapes, and multi-storeyed if you like. Now you can see how the inverted corner works:

To create hilly terrain one first sets up the hill segments on the magnetic sheeting, conforming them to the grid:

The battlefield cloth (printed quite cheaply at SG Branding) is then draped over them and positioned so its squares correspond to the square grid of the magnetic sheeting (more or less):

Terrain discs now come into play. They are made of pieces of battlefield cloth glued to magnetic sheeting and cut in a roundish shape that fits within a terrain square:

The discs are applied, magnetic side down, to the battlefield cloth. They snap strongly to the magnetic sheeting beneath. First, one fixes the corners of the sheet in place then puts discs around the hills to define them.

Et voila! You have hilly terrain. Now to put down trees, rivers, etc. and finally the armies.

Following on a post in the comments, here is the battlefield cloth as a free pdf. Getting the cloth printed is easy enough - just find a branding company that does tablecloths.