A Warhammer Ancient Battles Site

Romans against the Slaves

About 75 people entered the WAB weekend at Warhammer world in Nottingham. For us , coming from the Netherlands, it was worth travelling nearly 1000 KM too be let down, betrayed and backstabbed in the "Rome in turmoil" event !

We had been preparing for nearly 6 months and expectations were high. We could never have expected that things would work out as well as we hoped. We have been enjoying every minute of it.

The map (top) and the emerging battles (bottom)

8 Roman players took on the roll of the heads of the big powerful Roman families like the Claudians and Julians that helped shape the empire. Though theoretically fighting for the glory of Rome each of the Roman players played a separate faction out for them selves only and happily waged war with each other. 7 Barbarian (Non Roman) players represented the King/chief of one of the peoples fringing the Roman Empire (Carthaginians, Celts, Germans, Macedonians, Greeks, Seleucids and Ptolemeans) and one slave player played the leader of the various servile revolts that occurred in the Roman Empire during this period.

Playing Pieces
• Money: Every Roman and Barbarian player started with a certain amount of money.
• Influence cards: All Romans started with influence cards; the number of votes that player has in the Senate. But after an assassination of all Roman generals in Italy by one of the invading Roman (!) armies, this changed dramatically.
• Map and Province Cards: We were using a historical map of the Roman Empire. Each Barbarian leader and the Roman Consuls looked after cards representing each of the provinces in their civilisation/culture.

Outline Of Play
There were 5 battles over the weekend 3 on the first day and 2 on the second. There were a series of phases to go through in the run up to each battle (see below). All through the day during all phases players were encouraged to enter into diplomacy with each other, plan scheme and back stab – in a gentlemanly fashion of course!

Warhammer World has about 100 tables to play at.

1. Senate Phase
 In character debate (Award Triumphs)
 Vote for Consuls
 Assign provinces
2. Orders Phase
 Pay for extra troops
 Submit Orders
3. Battle Phase
 Fight Battles
 Receive payment
 Hand over lost Provinces

A much smaller Greek army is getting surrounded by Carthaginians and Romans.

Every single battle was great fun to play. We had very friendly partners in the backstabbing part, but also our opponents had the right attitude and made pleasant games possible. It was possible that more fractions attacked the same province, so very often battles were unequal. But that never was something that stopped Alexander the great or Julius Caesar from fighting!

There even were battles where the loyalty shifted to the other party during the battle...

Many thanx to the organisation (Rob Broom, Ewan Lamont).

We will be back, and greetings to all players, especially to Phil Freer and his wife (and spy) who formed the Carthaginian empire with me.