Dacian Warbands

So onwards and upwards with the Dacians and an opportunity to bring progress up to date with my Dacian Warbands recently outlined in my project update that stated boldly that I had six warbands done and planned to press on with the next six.

Romano Dacian Collection Update

It was on the completion of warband number seven that I realised that I hadn't taken any parade shots of warband number six completed back in the early autumn of 2018 before I started work on my Sarmatians and so when I went back to put links to the previous units in this post I suddenly realised my error; this despite the previous unit taking part in Will's and my Xmas game and appearing in that post - doh!

So here are the previous posts for those interested on looking back or seeing them for the first time and here I will feature units six and seven.

Dacian Warband One
Dacian Warband Two
Dacian Warband Three
Dacian Warband Four
Dacian Warband Five

Warbands six on the right and seven on the left

As will be seen from previous posts I have looked at the wargaming features of these large units that like most warband armies focus their hitting power in the initial charge and by using their size in manpower to hopefully overwhelm the smaller Roman units they are most likely to come up against.

In addition a Dacian force offers added extras in terms of slightly better protected and more enthusiastic warriors in the form of their Cap-Wearer elite units and the added punch of their falx wielding ones.

Illustration by G Embleton - Osprey - Rome's Enemies - Germanics and Dacians

What little information there is on the look of these units is based primarily on the visual references left from antiquity in the form of Trajan's column and the Adamclisi monument which gives tantalizing hints as to the look and dress of Dacian soldiers captured in the illustration above and which informs the look of my units.

Warband number six with its 'brave warriors' out front 

As for the way the Dacians organised their forces and how they operated on the battlefield it is left to the imagination and educated guesswork but based on more recent periods I have wargamed in I think units or groups of infantry anywhere between five hundred and a thousand warriors wouldn't have been unreasonable to have seen used; allowing for command and control issues with sizes greater than that, with these groups representing the upper end of that scale and twice the size of my Roman cohorts.

As a warband force the Dacians tend to get lumped alongside the Celts and Germans who engaged the Romans along the Rhine-Danube frontier particularly as the delineation between empire and barbarian tribal areas became more established.

However whilst showcasing these new additions to the collection I thought it might be interesting to look at the early clash between Rome and Dacia just prior to Trajan assuming the purple and describing the challenge that they posed to the empire.

Moesia, Pannonia and Dacia - 117AD
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RomanEmpire_117_-_Moesia_Superior_and_Moesia_Inferior.svg

The Dacians were a Thracian people, but Dacia was also occupied by Daco-Germans and Celto Dacians supported by allies such as the Roxolani Sarmatians as outlined in my post covering the Sarmatian units.

Emperor Titus Flavius Domitianus 51 - 96 AD - Domitian
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Domiziano_da_collezione_albani,_fine_del_I_sec._dc._02.JPG

In the winter of 85/86 AD Dacian forces attacked Roman defences in Moesia, ravaging the wider country and killing the Roman Governor, Oppius Sabinus, in a battle which is reported to have seen the loss of three thousand legionaries; which prompted Emperor Domitian to reorganize Moesia into two provinces before leading the operation to clear the provinces of the invaders.

The Dacian ruler at this time is thought to have been Diurapaneus (Durpaneus) who either forcibly or willingly yielded power to Decebalus.

The new king attempted to sue for peace but his approaches were contemptuously rejected by the Romans and Decebalus is reported to have sent a second messenger, mockingly advising Domitian to buy peace from him by forcing every Roman citizen to pay him two coins each year if they could not expect war and great misery - talk about nerve!

In the spring of 87 AD the jibe had its effect with Praetorian Prefect Cornelius Fuscus leading, what is described as, a large army built around Legio V Alaudae and many auxiliaries across the Danube via a floating bridge where the river narrows above the Iron Gates, an eighty-three mile long narrow gorge on the central Danube.

Little is known from the few surviving accounts of this campaign other than Fuscus' army was seemingly crushed by the Dacians to the extent that Fuscus was killed and Legio V lost standards and artillery pieces that were not recovered until fifteen years later in 102 AD by Trajan's troops.

The latest addition to the growing Dacian host, warband number seven, with plenty of flesh on show.

Rome renewed the offensive in the following year led by General Tettius Julianus (Iulianus) who already had considerable experience fighting tribes on the Lower Danube, leading a much more powerful force of four legions (III Sythica, V Macedonica, II Audiutrix and VII Claudia), again taking the direct route towards Sarmizegetuza via a pontoon bridge of boats and engaging the Dacian army in the narrow mountain valley at Tarpae, not for the last time.

The battle reported by Cassius Dio was described as fierce with countless Dacians killed and Vezina (Avezina) one of Decebalus' chief aides surviving by hiding among the dead to wait for darkness to make his escape.

Tapae erased the shame of Sabinus and Fuscus' defeats but victory was soon eclipsed with a rebellious uprising on the Rhine lead by Antonius Saturninus, Governor of Germania Superior, forcing Domitian to order a rapid withdrawal from Dacia to redeploy his forces in response.

If that were not the only issue Domitian was facing he was also attempting to prosecute a war against the Germanic tribes in Pannonia (Marcomanni and Quadi) and the Sarmatian Iazyges for not supporting Rome in its war with Dacia and thus indirectly supporting the latter.

However according to Dio the operation against Marcomanni ended in disaster, much to Dacia's benefit and to quote.

"Domitian, having been defeated by the Marcomanni, took to flight, and hastily sending messages to Decebalus, king of the Dacians, induced him to make a truce, though he himself had refused to grant one in response to the frequent requests of Decebalus. And so Decebalus accepted his overtures, for he had suffered grievous hardships; yet he did not wish to hold a conference with Domitian personally, but instead sent Diegis (his brother) with the men, to give him the arms and a few captives who, he pretended, were the only ones he had."

When Diegis arrived in Rome he went before the Senate and symbolically handed over the weapons and in an impressive ceremony was crowned with a gold diadem by Domitian himself, however Dio states that:

"the truce had cost (Domitian) something besides his losses, for he had given large sums of money to Decebalus on the spot, as well as artisans of every trade pertaining to both peace and war, and had promised to keep on giving large sums in future."

Dio then went on to describe the festivities that followed to celebrate his victory!

"He graced the festival that followed with many exhibits appropriate to a triumph, though they came from no booty that he had captured; ... The exhibits which he displayed really came from the store of imperial furniture."

The stage was set for what would be increasingly seen as Rome's humiliation at the hands of Decebalus and his Dacians.

 Following Domitian's assassination in September 96 AD and the following rebuke placed on his reign by the Senate 'damnatio memoriae' or condemnation after death, both Emperors Nerva and Trajan who followed him actively distanced themselves from his memory and in the case of the latter used his record to provide the 'casus belli' or justification for the war that followed in the winter of 100/101 AD.

Romano-Dacian Collection Update and Plans

With the new year well and truly under way I thought it would be of interest to outline where we are with the Romano-Dacian collection and my future plans for this year and on into 2020 as I develop the ancient collection as a whole going forward.

The last time I took time to take stock of where the collection had progressed to was back in September last year with my video clip looking at units added and some of the main reference sources I was using in that build process.

http://jjwargames.blogspot.com/2018/09/king-decebalus-warband-five-and-roman.html

In this update my video clip takes more of a look at the current state of the collection with the most recent additions of Sarmatian cavalry units and new sabot command bases and then mentioning the goals of what total numbers of units I have in mind that will see the collections completed.

I immediately here voices in my mind with the end of that last sentence.

'Completed!! A collection is never completed as you can always find an excuse for adding that particular new range of models or a peculiar unit that you always intended to get around to at some stage and well now seems as good a time as any."

By completed, I mean the planned collection will be done and will be wide and varied enough to allow for the games I have in mind to produce and be played.

The latest additions include two units of Sarmatian light cavalry and new command sabot bases

So at the time of writing the collection stands at the following position and equates to about a year's worth of work, not allowing for the fact that I am now able to devote far more time to my hobby that was the case in this previous period:

The new look table sporting new trees, hills and rivers

Alongside the figure collection, the terrain collection has been constructed consisting of new scatter terrain pieces with a new collection of trees, fortifications including city walls, a marching camp, river sections and roads and new modular hills.

City walls and breaches completed early this year

So the last twelve months has seen a good start to the project and a solid foundation of work to be built on in this year with three units already added since January with a unit of Sarmatian Cataphracts and two of light cavalry.

The scenarios from the Warlord Hail Caesar supplement will provide the
core of games that will inform the build project as we go

In addition this first stage has allowed the first couple of games to be played running the 'Hold the Pass' scenario from the Warlord Games Hail Caesar Dacian Campaign Book which is giving a focus to the build project in that I am adding units which will gradually allow more scenarios to be played from that collection whilst adding more units overall which will allow other games to be played going forward.

'Hold the Pass' played with Will for our Xmas game and second game using the new collection

OK then, what does the plan look like for this year and what will the collection look like when its done?

The Romans form the core of the collection as they will fight all my other factions as well as themselves hence I have acquired double the number of units to allow some civil war actions.

The Romans are also straight-forward to paint and assemble in that the small cohorts, only eighteen figures compared with a thirty-eight figure warband means I can turn them out fairly speedily in comparison to my barbarian armies.

Finally in addition to civil war you can play out the odd revolt, such as the Batavian uprising in the 1st century that allows those auxiliaries to team up with German warbands producing yet another variation on a theme.

All the units are assembled and ready to be painted and produced together with their shield decals and I have some heavy artillery units ready to stage the siege games with my wall sections that I have in mind.

The Dacian horde is at the halfway stage with work completed so far and the first half of this year will be focused on bringing this collection to a conclusion with the addition of several units from the Sarmatians detailed below.

The number of completed units shows the progress made here and the work planned is staged in such a way to allow an ever increasing choice of scenarios to be played s the collection grows, which aligns with my general philosophy to collection building in turning out units that facilitates that core principal.

Work commenced on the Sarmatian part of the collection in December last year and that experience has allowed me to gauge how long the rest of them will take to complete.

My experience in putting these few units together shows that these cavalry based forces, and I include a future plan to build Parthians in that description, are a relatively fast collection to put together because of the size of units, eights and sixes, needed to be constructed and I expect to have this collection nearing completion early next year after the Romans and Dacians.

The Germans will be my next big warband collection and with units such as some of the cavalry and light troops interchangeable with my Dacians and with a few German warbands planned to be built to allow for Foederati units to work alongside the Romans, plus some German allies cooperating with the Dacians I expect to start work on some of these units at the back end of this year, with the core of the collection coming together in 2020.

The figures are assembled and ready to be built into units as and when so the move from Dacian warbands to German ones should be fairly seamless and there should be a steady flow of these big figure groups coming off my desk in the foreseeable.

The final part of the ancient collection will not require much additional work other than perhaps some interesting command bases to capture the look of this rebel force combining my Roman and German collections, by which stage I will be very much turning my mind to the Britons, another twelve warband force, and Parthians, similar in scope to the Sarmatian force, where I intend to draw a line under the Principate but with six quite different factions put together to allow for games covering about two hundred years of the Imperial Empire - what fun!

This review then forms my painting and modelling focus for the best part of this and next year and I hope to produce some interesting games as it grows alongside other features that will look at additions to the terrain collection and other associated modelling ideas.

More anon.

Command Sabot Bases for Augustus to Aurelian

The new Command Sabot Bases together with the activation chits that identify which commander can act during a game of Augustus to Aurelian

The recent game of Augustus to Aurelian (AtoA) between Will and myself over the Xmas break, revealed my glaring need to get on and produce some specialised command bases to enable my respective commanders to be easily identified on the table as and when their respective command chits were drawn as well as allowing me to easily identify a particular commander possessing specific traits and the orders they were operating under at any given time.

The picture below shows part of the action from our Xmas game and the Roman commander in the bottom right corner can be seen with his command markers in tow and all rather scruffy and inefficient.

My 'jury-rig' solution for marking up my commanders in our game at Xmas seen bottom right

So following that game I made a mental note to start really looking for a better alternative and then remembered seeing some command sabot bases designed by Michael Scott at Supreme Littleness Designs and being used for a Sharp Practice II collection, a game that is similarly driven by a card or chit drawn method.

Supreme Littleness Designs - Command Bases

I however was after a larger design for my sabots to enable my 50mm, 60mm and 70mm diameter bases to be successfully accommodated and with the space offered at the back to succinctly contain all the game data and identification that I wanted them to hold.

Early work on the new bases with the smaller 50mm junior leader bases at the back of the cutting mat

The first part of the design was relatively simple and Michael confirmed that he could cut the same design to the sizes I required and once they arrived I then had to think about the method to include my game data.

As you can see in these two production pictures I settled on using the designs I produced for the number chits that are produced by Sally 4th as my base identities

Sally 4th Roman Chits
Sally 4th Barbarian Chits

On the other corner I simply placed a 1.5 cm square piece of steel paper that allows me to affix the commander portrait under which I can also affix the order chit he would be operating under during the game.

A bit of a proof of concept moment as I placed some markers and a command base on the new sabot

The final look to my Dacian Command bases with number IDs designed to match the draw chits and the magnetic character profiles which will also cover up the orders that commander is operating under at any given time

Once the marker numbers were printed I sprayed them with some matt varnish to protect the ink and once affixed on the bases gave them and added coat of gloss varnish to seal them.

To soften the overall look I decided to cover the marker areas with masking tape before terraining the sabots around the edges and in between the portraits and identity numbers, thus creating a clearly delineated space to allow the markers to stand out and be easily seen.

In the end these marked up bases are a bit of a compromise as you don't want  the eye drawn away from the figures but you do want to be able to see who is who when playing the game.

Similarly my Roman commanders are marked up and ready to go for the next game

I am happy that these new bases strike the balance for me and are the best solution I have come up with so far, complimenting the look of the game chits as well.

The commander portraits are also the same markers used in the campaign system that I am currently playtesting with Steve that will allow a simple transfer of commander identities from the map game to the tabletop, more on that later.

Also not shown in these pictures are my 50mm bases that I have in reserve for the junior commanders, Level I Magnus Viri, as they are called in AtoA, examples of these being leaders of warbands or primus pilus with the legionary eagle who offer a command bonus at the unit level and for which I will in time produce some bases to act as these junior commanders.

So that takes care of the commanders and next it will be back to the units with work commenced on Dacian Warband number seven.

Sarmatian Light Cavalry

With the completion of my first two units of Sarmatian cataphracts I decided to complete a small division of Sarmatian cavalry by adding two units of light cavalry, one with light bows and javelins and the other purely a horse archer unit.

Sarmatian Cataphracts

As covered in my last post looking at my second cataphtact unit I took time to describe the Sarmatian people that joined the Dacians in their war with Rome and the fact that they were a cavalry based army centred around their nomadic traditions of living on the Eurasian Steppe on horseback and moving their families with them in covered wagons.

The Sarmatian Light Cavalry stat card for Augustus to Aurelian

Alongside the heavily armoured and armed cataphracts the Sarmatian tribes could also call on multiple units of lightly armed horse archers and light cavalry, perfect troops for raiding and for adding their missilery in major battles.

The mounted archers gain the special rule of 'Parthian Shot' allowing them to make a full move and shoot with no penalty and then immediately make a second full move after shooting, effectively moving at charge speed whilst harassing the enemy.

These light units are based in groups of just six figures and so rate as small units but with their lack of armour are not designed for close combat with Attack Factors of '2' for the horse archers and '3' for the light cavalry, which cross referencing those factors on the combat table below against, for example, medium armoured heavier cavalry, such as Roman auxiliaries, sees them scoring hits on their two D10 with scores of three or less and four or less respectively, before any additional factors.

The strength of these units lies in their rapid mobility and sting offered by their shooting factors of '3' for the light cavalry and '4' for the archers as shown below on the stat card.

Thus the horse archers get to shoot with two D10 each time with a 50% chance of hitting, before additional factors, against medium armoured targets such as Roman cavalry or infantry and with relative impunity using the 'Parthian Shot' rule and getting the benefit of being skirmishers if shot back at.

The combined Shooting and Combat table from August to Aurelian

However the Sarmatians will have to be cautious operating in the close country that typifies Dacia which will offer the Romans terrain that could neutralise these cavalry units and with the use of Roman combined units, marrying their own archers in with their formed infantry and able to shoot overhead, enable some return shooting back at these lightly clad troops.

Both these units are composed of figures from the Warlord range using their Sarmatian Horse Archer and Sarmatian Light Cavalry packs. Interestingly the light cavalry although carrying bows are not modelled with the requisite bow and arrow quivers, but thanks to the the very nice team at Warlord Games I was able to rectify that with some extra parts.

These two units complete my first batch of Sarmatians and in the next unit post I am going back to complete the next six units of Dacian Warbands, starting with Warband number seven, that will compose the heavy punch for my Dacian forces.

Next up though I will be showing off my new Command Sabot Bases and putting together a YouTube presentation on the plans going into 2019 for the additions to my Romano-Dacian collection. Plus the final play-test of the Battle of Pinhoe, for Dux Bellorum, was played last night and, thanks to inputs from Bob and Steve M, I now have an interesting challenging scenario to take to the club this weekend; with an AAR to come on the DWG blog and a PDF of the scenario to be posted here on JJ's.