Romans at the Dyke

Welcome to the first post of my intermittent wargaming blog! My first few posts will deal with the projects I am working on starting with this, my preparations for my Romans vs British game at Cangames.

When I say my preparations, I am perhaps using the term loosely as all the actual work so far has been done by my friend Ed. I was assembling Bolt Action Germans (more about which in a later post) while he was building the dyke.


My original plan was to have a game of Romans vs Ancient Germans at a dyke based on a battle that took place about a year after the ambush in Teutoburg Forest but decided to keep the battle similar but move it to Britain since that matches the figures I have better. The premise is that the Romans are trying to capture the dyke before the onset of winter so that it will be harder for the British to conduct raids during the winter and so they will be positioned for a final assault in the spring.

The dyke turned out a bit more imposing than I first expected but given the fact that the ditch is much shallower than it really would be the height of the scarp is actually probably quite close to reality (though it was probably a little less vertical).

My next steps are to set up the table with the dike and my (Ed's) British forces and figure out how many of my (really mine this time) Romans will be needed to make a good game. I am expecting I will have to paint at least 2 more units of Legion since I want the Romans to be mostly Heavy and Medium infantry with only a few light units.

My next post will likely be about my Saga Saracens but maybe I will get carried away and do the setup for this first