Eques Debut

I gave the new Eques gladiators a try this afternoon. I used these cards for them:

The mounted version is similar to the Hoplomachus, but I put a charge ability in as the GLORY ability. The foot version is basically a Murmillo with lower defence and higher speed. This will all be subject to amendment.

The gladiators will fight on horseback until one of them is defeated, or one of them is knocked down. In the latter case the turn immediately ends and both gladiators are replaced by their foot figures. The knocked down gladiator gets to stand up, whilst their opponent is placed in any adjacent space and receives one point of crowd favour. Both gladiators discard and draw cards to make their hand up to five. The fight then continues.

Here are the combatants - Habilis on the left in white and Maternus wearing red on the right.

The two horsemen charged each other, neither having any effect as they passed.

They turn for another pass.

Habilis attacked Maternus who deflected the blow with his shield.

Maternus attacked back, riding past his foe, who pursued ...

... and struck him down for a win.

So Habilis won the first bout in a couple of moves. 

I set them up again, and once more the fight opened with both gladiators charging each other.

Maternus wheeled and got onto Habilis's unshielded side ...

... knocking him from his saddle

Maternus dismounted as his foe got to his feet, then advanced, buoyed up by the cheers of the crowd.

An exchange of blows saw Habilis wounded.

Habilis backed off, looking for an opening.

Maternus rushed in again with a mighty attack, pushing back Habilis and knocking him down with another wound.

Amazingly Habilis got to his feet unmolested as Maternus failed to follow up his attack. Habilis charged, but his wounds slowed him, and Maternus easily avoided the attack.

Maternus countered. His blow was well-struck and very, very lucky - Fortuna smiled on him at this point - and he defeated Habilis.

So that was one win each for the gladiators. 

The dismounted fight seemed OK, although it might be more interesting to run them both as Secutors instead for more mobility. I wasn't sure about the mounted fight though. In both games the gladiators got single Glory cards and used them to make charge attacks which kind of felt right by didn't seem very interesting. One thought I had was to treat them as a Veles, but with the same stats as they currently have, assuming that they have multiple spears rather than just the one. This would possibly make for a more mobile fight. The other alternative is to simply give them both Hoplomachus abilities, so the single Glory ability is an attack with a push-back. This doesn't feel very mounted, somehow.