Saturday 14 January 2023

Lake Trasimene: The Largest Ambush in History

The Battle of Lake Trasimene was another crushing defeat for the Romans and was Hannibal's second major victory on the Italian peninsular. This Quick Strike, After Action Report, tells the whole story and reveals my recreation of the battle using 6mm Punic War miniatures and the To The Strongest! rules. 



TtS! is played on a Grid but for this game I marked out the grid in a fan, radiating out from the shoreline of the battlefield. This meant that I could move units as per the rules while accentuating the idea of the Romans being surrounded and attacked from all (landward) sides. As with previous games, the grid was marked with dots so it is barely perceptible - especially with the 'fog' overlaid. This is an idea I may use again in future games.

This battle report has been a long time coming, but now that it is done, I hope you enjoy it. Planning the game and work on the script began in the Summer of last year, with the game taking place in November! I continue to love the Quick Strike format, but editing a game to under ten minutes is a really tough challenge. It takes a lot longer to knock into shape than making a long-format battle report and kept letting myself get distracted!! 

5 comments:

  1. Excellent report Lee. Enjoyable and informative. You've struck a nice balance.

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    1. Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it. This spent so long on the cutting table I was glad to get it finished.

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  2. Fascinating, Lee. Great job!

    At the start, you were rolling one die and advancing three or four Carthaginian units rather than moving them singly, each with its own activation roll. Was this a group move of some type?

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    1. Yes, units can move as a group if their move does not begin or end in charge range of the enemy. Under normal conditions they can also march move one square faster, but because of the fog I decided to keep movement to one square per activation.

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