Dux Britanniarum first look

So, myself and the worthy Mr Andy Hawes had our first go at Dux Britanniarum last Monday.

The fate and activation decks

Dux Britanniarum is a set of Dark Ages skirmish rules, using the Lardies' trademark card activation system (though slightly differently from I Ain't Been Shot Mum). The presentation values of the cards and rulebook are superb, and they've also (like IABSM3) produced a tablet-friendly version of the rules (which I now own).

So - we decided to go for a raid scenario, with my Saxons (cue boos and hisses from Andy) entering on one short edge of the table with some ill-gotten cattle, while his Romano-British intercepted from part of one long edge. You can find Andy's account of this battle on his blog.

Simples! The hearthguard move
in to engage Andy's main force.

As this was a raid, we skipped some of the more juicy bits of the pre-game stuff, which we'll go for next time, and got straight into the fun. I rolled to see how many turns worth of drop I got on the Brits, and wound up with a 3, which meant that by the time Andy's forces entered, I was a fair way towards Getting Away With It.

My warriors, leading some stolen
cattle, get intercepted by some of
Andy's levies.

The plan was simple - send my hearthguard to head off his forces, and sneak past with the warriors leading a bunch of cattle while he was distracted. And it .. pretty much... worked.

The two lots of heavies met with an almighty crash and much playing of Fate cards - basically these give you slight edges in combat, among other things. My hearthguard took a pretty fearful pounding, as you can see in the picture, but just managed to hold out long enough for the warriors to get past. They did get intercepted by a bunch of levies, which they disposed of in pretty short order.

The last turn was amusing - the shuffle of the activation deck meant all Andy's leaders activated before mine, and it was, for a moment or two, touch and go whether I'd managed to keep his hearthguard off the flank of my warriors for long enough. As it was, I did, and this gave me all three activation cards for my leaders to head off with much-needed, illicitly-gained, meat on the hoof.

Not sure what the hearthguard would have made of being left on their own to explain it to the British, though :D

All in all? Great fun. The system kicks butt, the peripheral rules and cards add to the atmosphere, and in general I had a great time :D