Optio game: Rome vs Seleucia

[Justin Swanton]

I've just started an Optio game using a completely revamped way of indicating morale, missile hits and disorder. Everything is now counters.



One figure base of a command group (group of bases in a single battlefield square) has an underbase which accommodates a morale counter (left), missile hits counter (centre) and order/disorder counter (right). The morale counter is rotated to indicate decreasing morale until the command group routs.  The missile hits counter is rotated to indicate increasing missile hits: it starts with the red indicator pointing forwards and rotates through green, yellow and orange. When it reaches red again the command group loses 1 morale.  The order/disorder counter is flipped over when the command group is disordered, with the '4' facing forwards, and then gradually rotated around to '1' as the command group restores order over subsequent turns, finally getting flipped back to the green side to show it is back in order. The counters are easy to make (the whole idea) and are stable in use - they don't fly off when the base is being moved.



The Seleucids (right) have an 8,000-man pike phalanx fronted by some skirmisher foot, some Auxilia on the left of the phalanx, and Companion cavalry on the right, medium cav on the left and LH on both wings. The Romans (left) have 2 legions (one Roman one Allied) and - for Romans - a lot of cavalry. This to offset the superiority of the phalanx against the legion. I'll post a complete battle report here when the game is done.

The battlecloth enables to me to insert hill segments underneath and create hills pretty much of any size I please. It works well.

[Justin Swanton]

Here is the promised battle report. Rome was thoroughly thrashed. Enjoy!

[Erpingham]

I like with these , with the new cloth and the top down counters, you've paralleled the look of the online version.

[Justin Swanton]

I like with these , with the new cloth and the top down counters, you've paralleled the look of the online version.

Actually the artwork for the cloth is the same as for the Vassal module. The counters work fine and are meant to be easy to make up. I'll be offering them as free downloadable pdfs on the Optio website. Everything in fact is free except the ruleset (and that's free for playtesters).

The game went well as a playtest though I feel the Roman player would have resigned once his cavalry were dispatched as the legions had no chance after that point. But I wanted to see how it ended -and it did with a bang.