Hot Lead: Magnesia

On March 22nd I attended Hot Lead. The signup sheets were far less crowded this year (or I was able to get to them quickly) but there were a lot more attendees in the convention. The bring and buy had a lot of stuff and there seemed to be more dealers too.

My first game was the battle of Magnesia using Impetus. I've played these rules a couple of times before and really like them (though I've not actually won playing them). Anyway, I ended up with the Roman left flank facing a mixed force of pikes, cavalry, and a warband of some sort. I've highlighted my forces here. Not shown are two stands that I would get a bit later.

My plan was to advance to about the bend in the river and try to engage the enemy there.

Rather than let my only cavalry unit be whittled down by the opposing light horse, I took the opportunity to chase them off and engage some medium cavalry lurking behind it.

Good plan but, it what would become a theme, the dice let me down. I rolled lots of 1s and 2s on the attack and 5s and 6s for morale checks. If you know Impetus, you know this is not a good thing. My cavalry disappeared and the opposing horse barely broke a sweat. I tried to follow up and engage that horse with my Romans while they were disordered but we ended up an inconclusive melee. Meanwhile my reinforcement spear arrived on the left,

The enemy pike moved and I engaged them. Meanwhile, the warband advanced. Remember those spears I received? Well, one stand proved be even less of a speed bump than my cavalry were. I couldn't even put a disorder on the enemy cavalry.

But things did start to look up for me. The warband disintegrated under a hail of pilums (pila?). I finally killed the horse I'd been sparing with. But it was not completely sunshine for me because it cost me two units of Romans.

My forces were slowly being ground down however. I was saved from complete and utter defeat by the onset of darkness (AKA reaching the end of the allotted time). You can see the ugliness of my position. The white markers are one hit, yellow are two hits, and red are 3.