First Test with Corner Woods

This isn't going to be a battle report, but we played Hail Caesar on Friday night at the club and gave my (as yet unfinished) terrain an outing. When playing games at the club, we're often quite relaxed about painted figures. We only have three hours or so to play on a Friday night and concentrate on having a good game after a full working week. Club nights also provide good opportunities to test new scenarios or new units and the like before playing in tournaments or hosting participation games at various events (like our recent Zulu SAGA game).

 

 

Dan's Romans are marching on my Celt village. Two heavy Roman infantry units have managed to cross the river and formed into Testudo to withstand missile fire as they slowly move forward... What will the outcome be? Will the rotten Romans burn the village or will the brave barbarians (or hairies, as Dan likes to call them), see off the invasion force? You'll have to wait and find out! We'll play this scenario again once my terrain is fully painted. In the meantime, here's a couple of shots showing the corner woods. Since we had limited time, we didn't put all of the trees on their bases (hence the open circles visible on most bases).

 

 

 

If we decide to take this scenario to a local convention, one issue that did emerge is the problem of trees at the edge of the board getting in the way as players lean over to move figures. This was also an issue I also noticed with the SAGA game at SELWG. In this game I placed a small number of full sized trees at the back of the Monastary as scenery (ie, no terrain effect and could be moved out of the way as required). The trees looked good, but did get knocked over a few times. This is an issue that gets more pronounced with more trees and something I'll keep in mind. For the corner woods, I've already tackled it to some extent by using smaller trees that are individually based. When grouped together they still look like woodland, but their smaller height helps to avoid them getting in the way too much. If any do become a problem, then individual trees can be removed and the holes filled with 'blank' bases on which I have prepared logs, stones etc to match the base.

Still waiting to get hold of the AP Leather Brown, so have more time to muse over these things!