The Battle of Chalons

Thursday December 29th witnessed the much anticipated re-fight of Chalons (or Catalaunian Fields") from 451AD, fought between the forces of civilisation ( Roman & Visigothic) and the forces of barbarity ( Huns and their Germanic allies).

Miraculously everyone made it to the club by roughly the agreed start time despite some very late nights/early mornings.

The Roman line up saw Fred K as Aetius, assisted by Dave B as King Theodoric and Chris B as Prince Thorismund (these are the very happy chaps in the first picture!). Attila was appropriately played by Tony M with Greg H as Valarmir, King of the Ostrogoths and Eileen B as Ardaric, King of the Gepids (certain members of this line-up were too horrific to photograph!).

 

The battle saw Chris' Visigoths facing Eileen's Gepids on the Roman left flank. True to form the Romans let their allies bear the brunt of the fighting, as Chris laid into his wife (simulated on the table, of course!). This was never going to end well domestically, particularly as Chris was truly exultant every time he killed a unit of his wife's army! After an hour of solid beating it looked as if the Gepid flank would collapse, yet somehow it held.

 

That meant the Romans would have to fight after all; not in Fred's plan. Tony's Huns behaved in a truly Hunnic fashion but in reality made little impact on Dave's Roman/Visigothic command. Fred led his veteran Romans into an attritional battle in the centre and eventually the Romans ground-out a hard-fought victory.

 

The actual fighting took close to four hours so it was well worth making use of the all-day club game facility.

I think everyone enjoyed it to some extent, and once again "To the Strongest" game a very enjoyable game. There is no news yet of the post battle Visigoth /Gepid relations!

 

Simon.