Battle Report: Homer's Heroes - Hold the Shrine

[Easy E]

Today is a test run of my Work-in-Progress game; Homer's Heroes: Bronze Age Bad Boys. The game is a model vs model skirmish game to represent heroic retinue's fighting against each other in Homeric -inspired combat.  As such, the heroes are the main focus with a retinue of soldiers attracted by their fame.   

The hero Adonis and his faithful friend Butes and their retinue had been travelling near the Bosporus.  Along their journey, they encountered the famous Thracian hero Diomedes and his companion Euryales.  The two squabbled over a sacred spring, before Adonis drove the champion of Athena away. 

After his defeat, Diomedes was eager to repay Adonis and his patron Aphrodite back for their slights.  His troupe shadowed Adonis until his retinue settled in at a local shrine to Aphrodite.  Diomedes prayed to Athena, and decided to strike back at Adonis for his impudence.     

Forces:

In Homer's Heroes both sides always have 1 Hero, 1 Second, and then 8 soldiers of varying gear.  Some can be traded in for a chariot as well.  Then, each Hero also has a Patron Greek god or goddess that offers them special bonuses. 

Adonis and his retinue have the following composition:

Adonis- Hero
-Aphrodite
-Sneaky- The Hero can re-roll a single dice in an Opposed "Hide" test
-Armor, Shield, Hand Weapon

Butes- Second
-Two-Handed Weapon, Armor

4 Soldiers
-Spear and Shield

2 Soldiers
-Javelin, dagger, shield

2 Soldiers
-Bow, dagger

Diomedes of Thrace and his retinue looks like this:

Diomedes- Hero
-Athena
-Glare- The hero can use a "glare" action to freeze an enemy in place with an opposed roll.  The model loses any unused activations. 
-Spear, Shield, Armor

Euryales- Second
-Spear, armor, shield

Chariot
-Driver- Dagger
-Soldier- Spear, Shield

4 Soldiers
-Spear and Shield

Mission

Today, Diomedes is looking to settle his old score with Adonis and his patron.  He tracked him to a small shrine to Aphrodite and decided to attack it.  Diomedes intends to destroy the shrine as revenge. 

The shrine will have 8 structure points that Diomedes must remove in order to destroy it before his retinue is forced back or the game ends. 

We also rolled for complications and got the following:
-Bad Omens
-Delayed Troops
-Glare
That is a lot of complications! 

Set-up

Today's game will be played on a 36 x 36MU board.  1 MU will be 1 inch. 

The shrine is set up in the center of the board.  We divide the board into 4 sections and determine the following:
-Dangerous terrain
-Level 1 hill
-Linear difficult terrain
-Difficult terrain

This scenario also allows the defender to set-up a special piece of terrain as the shrine per the scenario rules.  It has 8 structure points.   

We then rolled up deployment and got the Scattered result.  In this case, we take turns placing models on the table, as long as they are no more than 8 MU from each other. However, the Delayed Troops complications means some troops may not be available at the start of this battle. 

Adonis has 3 spearmen and an archer delayed.  Diomedes has his second, Euryales; and 2 spear armed soldiers delayed.

When all was said and done, the table looked like this:



Well, with all the preamble out of the way.  It was time to get on to business!  Of course, you can see the full results and some post-game thoughts after the battle on the Blood and Spectacles blog here:

http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2023/01/battle-report-homers-heroes-hold-shrine.html

[Harry Faversham]

Great AAR! When will the rules be published, I'd buy them in a heartbeat?

[Easy E]

Thank you for the support.

The game will be out sometime in Q1.  I will post up here when it is ready for download.

   

[Harry Faversham]

Thanks E, look forward to sending my Heroes on their quests!

 

[Dubbya]

Fun report, count me as another interested in when it's released! Chariots, not enough games feature them, especially in any meaningful way.

[Easy E]

For those interested, the rules are now available on the Wargame's Vault here:

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/425627/Homers-Heroes-Bronze-Age-Bad-Boys?src=newest_since

[scotty]

Superb AAR, thanks for sharing

[Easy E]

For those interested, there is a break down of the design goals and how I solved some design challenges for Homer's Heroes" Bronze Age Bad Boys on the Blood and Spectacles blog here:

http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2023/03/wargame-design-homers-heroes-bronze-age.html