Hail Caesar Playtest - The Sack of Troy VII

I finally got to playtest a Hail Caesar game using troops I specifically wanted to use with these rules. Thanks to Pat Lowinger and Mike Butcher - two veteran WAB types, the game went off quite smoothly and enjoyably. Mike has been working on Fort Lewis for a few weeks while supporting the annual ROTC camp. He actually drove out here all the way from Wisconsin! It's been tough on him since the government is only paying him enough money to eat chow in the mess hall!  Anyway, on to the game - Mike has never played Hail Caesar before and Pat has played it before but always tries to include rules from all the other game he's played. Still, I had a great time GMing the game with these two seasoned gamers. Here are a few shots I managed to snap as I was living up to the Iliad and partaking of wine. In fact, I only started to take pictures midway through the game when Pat reminded me about it.

The rules are close enough to Black Powder for familiarity, but there are many nuances to make them different. For one, shooting isn't as big a deal as it is in Black Powder. Supporting units for Hand to Hand Combat are very important in Hail Caesar. In fact, even small units of skirmishers made significant impact on some rounds of combat as supports. As with Black Powder, the flow of the game is not only fast, but very smooth. We called the game after enough troops had been broken off the table. I think it was a Greek victory, but I'm not really too sure. Anyway, here are the two generals, Pat on the left who ran the Trojans and Mike on the right who ran the Greeks.