More Games

By games, I mean Gladiatorial games, two of which I managed to play over the bank holiday. The first game against my #1 son was an interesting game, with me, again playing a Thraex versus his Murmillo. I played most of this first game with just 5 action dice against his 6 dice but careful management of my attacks came through in the end. The second game I played against my eight year old #1 grandson (with aid from his dad) . 

Again I was able to hit my opponent, but unable to hurt him significantly. The photograph on the right shows the final turn of the combat, I'm bleeding heavily and both of us have lost an action die.

My gladiator (on the left) is a Murmillo, my opponent being a Hoplomachus who has already lost his shield.

The last two turns were very tense, I'd managed to make him lose his spear (my gladiator is standing on it) and to knock him down, against the wall of the arena. He was weapon-less and shield-less, but refused to give up. knowing that I was about to become exhausted and would lose the match. 

So with everything resting on the last turn, I had to win the initiative, hit the prone gladiator and more importantly wound him sufficiently to win the match before the loss of  fatigue  phase.  With +1 intiative as one of my traits, I won the intiative, hit him (fairly easily given he was prone) and then rolled two dice adding four to the dice roll to wound him (I was looking for a good head wound. I had to roll high as there was a -3 adjustment to my roll for his helmet. The roll was successful by a score of just one pip. we never got to the fatigue phase as the match was over immediately when he was hit. I can just imagine my gladiator falling to his knees, exhausted immediately after the final blow was made. Both games, once more, took about an hour each and were highly entertaining, especially given that we were all new to the rules. Mistakes were undoubtedly made but imo there was nothing of consequence missed.

My Murmillo's sheet at game end, two bleed tokens, two favour tokens and just two fatigue left !

My opponent's sheet with the last head wound marked.

The game went a lot quicker with my rough and read, homemade, quick reference sheets for general use and Gladiator type specific cards, showing all the common special attacks and their gladitor type specific special attacks. I had some two sided counters for the favour/disfavour counters and used some draughts as favour tokens. The bleed tokens were those I used as casualty markers for my zombie games. 

Some of the various sheets we used.

I've also dug out some columns I was  given a few years ago as the game also allows forobstacles to be placed in the arena. I don't know how practical these will be, but they are solid, heavy porcelain and might survive being used.

My arena with columns.

My feedback with the author continues apace, with me asking a myriad of questions about the rules and giving my two-penn'orth, hopefully I've been some help, even if just in aiding with the proof-reading.

 

In aother news, I've managed to find and package all the requests I 've had re Bryan's collection and I'll be visiting the post office to get rates for sending everything off, and I'll be contacting everyone involved later in the week with final details.

 

That's it then for this week, hopefully there was soemthing here of interest and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

 Now, where's my Retiarii and secutors ?