Sons of Mars - the Match!

 Just a brief post today because I didn't take many pictures and chronic insomnia has made my recollection of finer details fuzzy at the best of times.

Yesterday, I brought two teams of gladiators and a felt battle mat to my buddy Rick's house, and played my first in-person wargame against another player since February 2020. Between the pandemic, my wife becoming seriously ill, and my formerly-friendly local game store no longer being welcoming now that I need to mask in public to protect my immunocompromised spouse...it's been solo games only for the last four years. But Rick and the circle of friends he and I play D&D with are all taking precautions to protect immunocompromised loved ones, so while our wives went out for pedicures together, Rick and I opened up the ludi and met in the gladiatorial arena.

We played an initial 1 vs 1 match for Rick to learn the rules of the game and get a feel for it; taking the Blue team, he put a Murmillo in the arena; taking the Reds, I responded by selecting a Retiarius, armed with a trident and net, for a classic matchup. It was a close match for the first couple of rounds, with my Retiarius scoring some impressive hits against the heavily-armored Murmillo. But eventually he closed the gap and his gladius drank deeply of my gladiator's lifeblood. 

Following this, we decided to go for broke and do a 3 vs 3 match. Keeping his Murmillo, Rick selected the Unmitigated Gaul (a dual-wielding Dimachaerus) and Spartacus the Thracian for his team; I swapped out my Retiarius, and fielded a Provocatore (a heavily armored gladiator built for staying power), a Thracian, and a lightly-armored Velites.

This ended up being a brutal match; Sons of Mars matches have a time limit of eight rounds, and we went right to the bottom of the 8th. We had a long stretch where the two Thracians were clashing, while the other four gladiators were in one big knock-down brawl downfield; the Murmillo and Provocatore pressed each other, with the Velites and Dimachaerus bouncing off them.

At one point, the Provocatore had the entire blue team attacking him at once, and he not only held his own, but delivered some brutal and near-crippling blows to the Murmillo and Dimachaerus before finally succumbing to a million small cuts; my Thracian took down Spartacus, which caused the brawl to sort of begin to separate out; by the beginning of the 8th round my Thracian and Velites were both holding on with just a single point of Vitality each. It didn't take long for the Murmillo (who was himself at 1 point of Vitality) and the Unmitigated Gaul (at 3) to finish them off. 

This was no sterile chess match; Rick played the soundtrack to the Spartacus TV series, and there were a couple points where we were both on our feet cheering for our respective fighters. We'll definitely be doing another day of gladiatorial games some time soon, possibly introducing obstacles and animals into the arena. 

Sons of Mars - solo play

Over the past week, I've dug out the gladiators I painted back in 2018, glued some shields back on and refreshed some bases (the texture paste I applied back in 2018 never made me happy, so I flocked over it with some ochre-y fine grain flock) and started refreshing myself on Joe Veltre's "Sons of Mars," a game of Roman gladiators. I'd played it a bit back then, and painted a ton of gladiators with the idea I'd run some demo games and maybe get a league going at my local gaming store. That never worked out because the people at the store who would have gotten into this all bought into "Arena Rex" instead. C'est la vie. 

A buddy of mine was asking about getting a game of something going, and most of my terrain has already made the move to my future basement. Fortunately, Sons of Mars doesn't require much in the way of terrain, so I decided to refresh myself so I could get it going with him next week. I've played through a couple of 1 v 1 solo games, and today I decided to do something a little bit bigger.

I rolled up some obstacles for the arena - two walls and two braziers of fire - and set up a 2 v 2 game. On the Blue team, we have Spartacus, a Thraex or Thracian gladiator, and The Unmitigated Gaul, a red-haired Dimachaerus - a wielder of two swords. The Red team was represented by Ursus Major, a large Provocator (known for their staying power in the arena) and Curio, a Velites - a lighter class of gladiator typically armed with javelins or a gladius and a light shield. 

Spartacus charged Curio, and the Unmitigated Gaul charged Ursus Major. The fighting pushed back and forth, with Curio trying to get away from Spartacus and Ursus trying to shove the Gaul away from him. The fighters inflicted minor wounds on each other, but largely clashed swords without major effect. 

At the beginning of the third round of combat, the Emperor was getting bored of the shoving contests, and ordered a very large bear released into the arena to spice things up. 

The bear charged Curio, clawing ineffectively at the nimble gladiator. For a few moments, Curio and Spartacus struggled with each other, each man trying to put the other between himself and the bear. 

The Gaul and Ursus clashed dramatically, ignoring the bear and their fellow gladiators, but as the fight drew on, the Provocator in his heavier armor began to tire, and the more fatigued he got the faster the Gaul's swords seemed to swing. With a dramatic flourish of swordsmanship, the Gaul cut the Provocator down just as both Spartacus and Curio broke away from the bear. The bear, bloodied and enraged, charged the Gaul.

Man and bear roaring with fury, the Gaul and the bear wrestled back and forth, the Gaul sinking his blades again and again into the bear's powerful body. Finally, the beast slumped to the arena sands. The Unmitigated Gaul had won out!

While this was going on, Spartacus, playing to the crowd to increase his favor, cornered Curio against one of the walls, and tried to push him into the wall and knock him prone. The lighter Velite held his own however, his blade clashing dramatically with Spartacus', both men tiring as they struggled against one another. However Curio managed a few good hits on the Thracian, leaving Spartacus clinging to life as he tried to continue the fight.

Fistful of Lead wound tokens here representing Fatigue.

With the bear slain and Spartacus struggling with the barely-armored Curio, the Gaul charged into the fray. His charge crushed the Velite, providing a flawless victory to the Blue team.

The Blues have won every solo game I've played this week; Murmillo v. Retiarius, Secutor v. Thracian, and now this one. It was almost not such a clean-cut victory; Spartacus was 1 Vitality point away from dying. I like how dramatically the fortunes of the gladiators can swing. A gladiator can be getting beaten badly one round and rally and come out the victor in the next. On paper, the Velite should have been easy for a tougher gladiator like a Thracian to take down, but in practice it was a little more difficult. Different classes of gladiator thrive with different tactics, and you have options you can pursue to make it easier to fight a difficult opponent. It's got a nice beer and pretzels lightness to the system, while also rewarding smart tactical play. 

I'll probably play through a few more solo games this week, and then next weekend I'll bring them over to Rick's for my first actual game against another person since February 2020.