Gladiators

Peter and I were both looking for a game last night, but I'd packed my gladiators and 'Blood, Sweat & Cheers' to play with someone else who couldn't make it, so we got that out. Peter hadn't played before but picked it up pretty quickly.

We selected gladiators randomly (subject to my personal preference for certain groups not facing each other). I got a dimacherius (Philus) vs the heavily armoured crupellarius Victor. I'm not sure if the crupellarius is a good gladiator for a novice player, but Peter handled him pretty well.

I couldn't get through Victor's defences and in keeping up the attack I suddenly found myself the victim of a counter-attack and wounded!

I was then driven back and knocked down by the blundering behemoth.

But from that point Peter couldn't get what he need to finish me off. I managed to stand up and get back into the fight, then finally get a useful combination of moves together to finish off Victor with a single strike. 

In teh second bout I had the archer Toxaris whilst Peter used the thraex Hilarus.

I got in one shot before Hilarus basically spent the whole game drawing Glory cards. This was the first lacerating cut that Toxaris took.

Peter held off cashing in the combat effect of my wounds until right at the end,  using the accumulated four wounds I'd taken to improve the chance of his final slash hitting and finishing off Toxaris.

The bout had actually gone of for a long time; Peter had so many Glory cards that he couldn't close with me to use them a lot of the time, and I wisely kept my distance. At one stage we considered calling it a draw, but played for just one more run through the deck, and that was all it took.

So with one win apiece we played for best of three.

Peter used teh hoplomachus Helena, whilst I had the veles Ostorius.

Getting knocked down wasn't a great way to start the bout, but a lucky attack on my part saw Helena knocked down as well, much to the crowd's amusement.

We both got up and I used my agility to keep away from Helena. She managed to throw her spear but I was lucky and was only knocked back by it (a result I could very much use to my advantage). Once again I got the right combination of cards, and used Glory to do a mighty javelin throw, backed up by the crowd's support. It was enough to defeat Helena.

Two of the games were pretty close, with only the middle one being a frustrating disaster for me.

Thanks to Peter for giving these rules a try.