The Hammer of Thor

‘You cannot order me about.’

‘Why not? I am the Roman governor and you are an invading tribe. I order you, in the name of the Emperor, to leave Roman territory or face the consequences.’

‘And I’m the Emperor of Of Nowhereland and I order myself to settle my homeless people in this place, before our children starve and our womenfolk start telling us off.’

‘It would seem that we are in a bit of a difficult place here, diplomatically.’

‘The Emperor of Rome is a long way away. We wouldn’t need to tell him, and by the time he found out I’m sure we’d all be good Roman citizens.’

‘I cannot allow that. You must return whence you came.’

‘Nah. I’d have to fight my way past the Dacians again and that’d be boring.’

‘Then I have no choice by to expel you by force.’

‘You have no choice but to face the full wrath of the Hammer of Thor, then.’

*

As the above might suggest, there has been an outbreak of wargaming hereabouts. I am due to be at the Battleground show in Middlesbrough at the end of next month, and the Estimable Mrs P. told me ‘I can’t let you go if you’re not a practicing wargamer.’ So I thought I’d better get some toys out and put them on the table.

The only two outstanding questions were ‘what’ and ‘how’. I’d quite enjoyed the Sarmatians against Sarmatians clash, the latest episode in the Sarmation Nation campaign, so I felt that something in the same storyline, but different, might be called for. The previous battle had seen a German tribe break through the Dacians to enter the Roman Empire, so it was fairly obvious that a Germans vs Romans clash should be next.

The 'how' was not that difficult, really. I had two armies, after all, and I rolled up the terrain in my usual manner, discarding an unfordable river diagonally bisecting the battlefield, which I felt would have somewhat cramped operations. Wishing to avoid a simple line them up and have at them, however tempting it may be with a tribal army, I decided to roll for the deployments as described by Featherstone in Solo Wargaming, based on the formations Jomini he had derived from Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century battles. If you are interested you can find Jomini’s book on Project Gutenburg, together with a discussion of the limitations. Anyway, some simple dice rolls established that the Romans would deploy linearly, while the Germans had a reinforced right.

I had a bit of a hiccough after deployment, when I noticed that the Romans had 25 bases on the table, against the Germans 20. This was easily rectified by the addition of three bases of German foot and two of horse. I suppose I could have removed the extra five legionary bases, but decided to go with it. These sorts of things happen – my eye had drifted to the late Republic Roman army list, which has 12 legionary bases (for a 20 base army) as opposed to the Early Imperial Romans which have 7.

The initial dispositions are in the picture, Germans to the left. The hammer bit is the two base widths of four deep tribal foot nearest the camera. The handle, as it were, of the hammer is simply to face off the Roman legions and auxilia while he head strikes home. We hope. The Romans intended to turn both flanks of the German line. On the near side, the light cavalry and the archers were to harass the hammerhead. In previous actions a weak point of the Roman army has been these archers – they seem quite hard to use effectively, and I was determined to try again and get it right. On the far side the Roman advantage in cavalry was hoped to tell against the Germans, even though the latter are backed up by skirmishers (in the wood on the very distant left of the photo).

The plans worked out quite nicely, really. The German hammer closed in, although the extreme right of the hammerhead was very disrupted by the Roman archers and light horse, so much so that one base of tribal foot was detached to see them off I had, unwisely, forgotten to move them back out of charge range). The archers also inflicted damage, and so the hammer was not quite as forceful as it could have been when it struck.

On the other flank, the German cavalry got the drop on the Romans and charged home. This was less successful than could have been hoped, really. The Germans managed two wins and two losses from the combats, although they did kill the Roman sub-general. This hampered future Roman cavalry operations, which possibly saved the German bacon.

The game saw the debut of some new markers that I made after the last wargame. I got fed up trying to recall who had charged and who was routing. So I created some other colours apart from green and brown. The shot of the cavalry combat above shows them in action – brick red for chargers, yellow ochre for routers. I need the markers to be distinctive but not to stand out too much and spoil the overall ambience of the game. I think they, at least, worked quite nicely.

The crunch came when the German hammer hit home. Essentially, those Germans who did charge managed a fluky dice roll and routed four legionary bases straight off. The rest refused to engage, which I suppose was the original idea.

The picture shows the carnage on the Roman left centre.

What it does not show is that the German and Roman cavalry on the Roman right have both rallied and are threatening both each other and the foot. You can also see the thinner lines of German foot masking the legionaries – the line extends to mask the auxilia as well.

At this point both sides had some thinking to do. The Romans had far higher casualties (seven bases and a sub-general against two) but were in a better position on the right. The Germans had the advantage on the Roman left but needed to rally the hammerhead before proceeding, which was taking some time. After some pondering, a draw was offered and accepted – the Romans were slightly on the losing side but had not lost.

*

‘So, now, will you let us settle here?’

‘Well, you will have to buy your land.’

‘Buy?’

‘Yes, with money. Do you know what that is?’

‘I’ve heard of it, but we are proud, free, tribes. We do not do this slavery to cash.’

‘Well, you need to find some to become Romans.’

‘Where can we do that? Will you give us some?’

‘No. That would be silly. But I can tell you where you can find some…...’