Playing in the Sand

Revisiting games of yore - Approximately Maiden Castle

44 years ago while serving in Germany I ran the regimental wargame club. We used to play mostly ancients and cold war modern (no surprise there I suppose!). 

One day we noticed that there was some building work going on, with a pile of sand waiting to be mixed into cement. This got the collective brains of the club thinking, could we make a sand table to fight games on? Well thought leads to action; sand was liberated and the board was created.

We used it for a number of modern games, but the culmination of the use of the sand table was to build an Iron Age Hill Fort. 

For the game we used WRG 5th edition rules, and collectively pooled our barbarians to defend against the might of the Roman Army. The following are the original pictures we took and which I recently scanned in to share with you all. The quality isn't the best but it gives you a good feel for the game we had.

The Romans battering ram has reached the gate, along with two cohorts supporting the attack each side of the gate. To the right the Assyrian archer cohort is providing supporting fire.

The cohort to the right of the gate has set fire to the palisade and in doing so forced the defenders back.

The battering ram has penetrated the gate, while the cohort attacking through the burnt palisade has now breached it and seized the rampart. Meanwhile another section of the palisade has been set alight, and in the foreground on the Roman right flank the Barbarian light troops are defending against two auxilia cohorts.

The reverse angle

As the lead cohort behind the battering room enters the hill fort, the Barbarians have manned their second line of defences. In the foreground the far left flank Auxilia cohort has driven the defenders away from the palisade. 

The right hand Auxilia cohorts have now breached the palisade and started to push the defenders back.

The Barbarians light troops on the left have rallied and thrown the Auxila cohorts back over the palisade. The Assyrian archers have moved up in support of the Auxilia. However, in the centre all is not going well for the Barbarians. The Roman General has released the Moorish Light Cavalry into the hill fort to destroy the defenders streaming back from the outer rampart.

The Barbarians' heart and will has broken (with some pretty poor morale dice). The Moors have penetrated to the heart of the Hill Fort. Meanwhile a Roman cohort has breached the inner defences as well. Elsewhere the Romans are pursuing the routing defenders around the defences. A crushing victory for the might of the Roman Army.