Romans at Cannae

 

This is my second Forged in Battle 15mm Legion for the Third Punic War.  With their comrades in the first legion, they will form the centre of my Roman Army.

Once again, I’ve gone with plain shields reflecting the current scholarly consensus. It is entirely possible that the shields were not painted a uniform colour. Mine are for the purposes of table top unit recognition.

In this period Roman Legions were never bad troops.  There were though shades of good.

At Cannae many Romans were newly come to the war.  They were enthusiastic, greedy for slaves and loot and probably anxious about the enemy.  They were also inexperienced.

The veteran Roman legions had plenty of experience.  If they had been walloped by the Carthaginians, they also knew it was possible to fight their way through to safety.

They were deployed at double depth and reduced distance between maniples at Cannae.  It seems to me that this robbed them of two of their assets.  Line relief probably could not work properly. The initial pila volley was likely reduced by throwing at an unfamiliar distance and fear of hitting their own front rankers.

The advantage of the formation was its simplicity.  The new troops simply had to keep advancing and fighting.  All Romans could understand such orders.  Here is the first Legion again, I'm wondering about shield colours for the third and fourth.

I’m keen to try the Cannae deployment on the table top by way of experiment.

You all know the story of the battle so I needn’t recap it here.  I will revisit aspects of Cannae in a future Carthaginian post.  I’m interested in the Gallic/Spanish holding action and how those troops were deployed.

Macedonian and Punic Wars in 15mm

 

I’m putting a bit of time in on the Macedonian and Punic wars, 15mm as usual.  The key ingredient is the Romans who were active against both Carthage and Hellenistic Greece.  I intend using Pulse of Battle and Civates Bellantes and contrasting how the two systems do.

Back to those Romans.  Two things to say about them, swordsmen and line relief.  Both of my chosen rule sets cater for line relief. 

It’s still a hotly debated topic and all we can say for sure is that Romans did it.  I’ll permit myself an observation on the subject.  The Roman infantry man, Hastati or Princeps, was a swordsman fighting on a six feet frontage. 

This implies a very active style of fighting with much movement.  It also explains how line relief could be readily accomplished; sufficient space existed for the second line soldiers to take the lead in the front line.   

 

With our second line man now thrusting blocking and parrying our initial combatant can disengage and step back.  Handy enough, but a demanding system all the same.  Maybe that’s why they needed line relief in the first place?

Accordingly, I’ve based my Hastati and Princeps three to a base.  I’m happy with this both in terms of appearance and concept.

Beyond the swift swordsmen was something more solid and traditional as a last reserve.  These were the spear armed Triari.  

 

These were older lads, wealthier and better armoured. I’d note lining up in close order was less physically demanding than the semi-acrobatics of the Hastati and Princeps.  The Triari were also more experienced men, hard to shift, and able to act as a rallying point if the wheel came off.

The final element of Roman infantry was the Velites. These were young men too poor to enlist as Hastati and Princeps.  For light infantry they were well equipped with a good shield, helmet and sword as well as javelins. I suspect they were the equivalent of other people’s Peltasts.  With this in mind I toyed with the idea of going 3 to a base but, ultimately rejected it in favour of 2.

 

The toys here are all from Forged in Battle and there is much to commend them to the discerning gamer.