Meales Onwheals takes the fight to the Romans

Meales Onwheals, buoyed-up by his successful burning of the Roman watchtower and having interrogated a captured legionary, has found out that the Cohort pay is being brought into the local fort. So he has decided to venture into Roman territory, to mount a daring snatch of the cohort’s pay wagon and hence demoralise the garrison.

With only a single ambush/deployment point apiece the Romans placed theirs on the hill in D5 and Meales Onwheals placed his in the village in J4.

At the end of the first turn most of the Romans had turned up, but Meales Onwheals was waiting for the Romans to commit themselves to which way they were heading around the village before deploying any troops.

As the Roman column marched on some barbarian slingers appeared in the marsh and shocked the legion recruits into running for cover behind the hill.

Meales Onwheals started skirmishing with the legion recruits, helped with some skirmish cavalry. Sticks were thrown but not many Romans went down. There seemed to be something wrong with the barbarian dice. Meanwhile the Roman column continued its advance whilst the barbarians kept themselves hidden.

The legion recruits desperately tried to catch up with the column but were attacked by Meales Onwheals and eventually forced to flee. The Roman column looked nervously on as a large mob appeared infront of them.

The Romans turned to face this new threat.

From out of the mob came a howling mass of fanatics which charged into the Romans. Things were not looking good as they had just raised shields to fend off the sticks the mob had thrown at them. The barbarians threw a bucket of dice and the Romans rolled a few. Romans died and were pushed back. On the other flank, having routed the legion recruits, Meales Onwheals now picked on the Roman archers and caused them to break and run away. The Roman plan was starting to fall apart.

The barbarian mob now charged the Roman line and Meales Onwheals helped out by charging into the rear. The Romans were now fighting to survive and not doing a very good job of it.

The fanatics finally routed the Romans and the game was called at this point as the fanatics next target was the pay cart.

Some truly abysmal dice rolling was seen on the part of the barbarians but their numbers counted.