Parlay ?

The Romans decided to confront the barbarians at the stream side in order to bloody them as much as possible before falling back to the hill to hopefully finish the job. The Barbarians were going to just try to get across the stream as fast as possible with as much as possible in order to hopefully not get entangled in the stream.


The Romans were a bit slow getting to the stream, and could not keep all the barbarian troops from crossing. A wild melee at the stream occurred, which the Romans got the worst of thanks to good Barbarian rolls and atrocious Roman morale rolls. The Barbarians flooded across. On the verge of being overwhelmed, Claudius yells "ALAMO ! ALAMO ! ALAMO !" (yeah, I know its from the wrong age, but what the hell) and started the fighting withdrawal to the hill. One Roman cohort was almost surrounded and cut off, and things looked bleak for the guys speaking the dead language.

The Barbarians were pressing hard on the struggling Romans, when one of the leaders leading the main thrust took an arrow in the eye. The units around him fell back in shock, allowing the Romans to extricate themselves as the pressure lessened as the Barbarians regrouped.



The fighting withdrawal to the hill took longer than expected, as some units kept failing to disengage. However, the constant drain of losses inflicted on the Barbarians was thinning them out for the final engagement on the hill. There were constant pin-pricks from the Barbarian slingers and archers weakening the cohorts, but not enough to create gaps that were exploitable. On the other hand, Barbarian units started rolling bad MCs, weakening their attacks.



When the Romans got to the hill, the Barbarians had enough troops left for one concerted push. The last Babarian leader (they started with 2) lead an assault that cost him his life when he was struck down. The Barbarian hordes broke and ran, leaving the Romans with the field !


Below are the pictures of the battle at certain points:

Shall we gather at the River.. er I mean stream....










The Romans give way, allowing the Barbarian hordes to get across , fortunately for the Barbarians the stream wasn't choked with their dead. Cladius starts thinking maybe he should've called for "Parlay".










The fighting withdrawal to the hill.










The Romans finally get to the hill, after bloodying the Barbarians.










The final stand. The Barbarian attack runs out of steam (and manpower) against the thinned Roman line.