Keeping on with our attempts to try out as many of our existing ancient armies with Midgard, Colin brough over his Punic Wars Carthaginian and Roman 10mm armies last week.
We roll a die for the armies and I ended up with the Romans. This era army is quite limited in troop types, with only a handful of cavalry. Reading the list it seemed perfectly suited to fight historically and set up three ranks deep. Apart from the fact that the Carthaginians would have then easily outflanked me and attacked from both sides (and probably the rear!). My other change would be how to counter the Carthaginian elephants, a unit which had proven decisive in all our Sassanid/Roman games.
The Roman army advancing in turn one.
Whilst the Carthaginians wait6 in a nice straight line!
With those nasty elephants, flanked by Numidian light cavalry.
In the Carthaginian turn, Colin started by having his priest read the Omens, which were not good and immediately reduced his Reputation scare! The Carthaginians advance along their line, the only action being an exchange of missiles between skirmishers on the flanks.
In turn two the Roman velites got more aggressive, charging into the slingers opposing them and destroying the unit.
On the other flank they ganged up on the Numidian horsemen, inflicted casualties.
In an attempt to gain the upper hand on this flank, Colin charged his cavalry into the Roman line and the Numidians into one of the velites. Having pinned the skirmishers in place, he then charged his elephants in as a secondary unit in the melee. He knew that if he had gone in first with the elephants, I would have evaded the charge, sneaky!
Unfortunately, his dice rolling did not match his planning and my velites won the melee, destroying the Numidians. As the elephants were a secondary unit in the melee, they also were forced back...
,,,into the spearmen behind them and failing their command test so they took a wound from disorder. Normally the nearby general could have used one of his mighty Deeds to allow a reroll of the test, but elephants have the Aloof trait, so cannot be influenced in this way. In the nearby cavalry melee the Carthaginians lost and were forced back, pursued by the Romans.
In turn three the Roman cavalry kept up the pressure, whilst the unengaged Roman cavalry swung around behind the melee, to start to move up on the elephants' (now open) flank. The Roman velites moved closer to the elephants and bombarded them with missile, trying to force another retreat.
In the melee the remaining Carthaginian cavalry fell to the Roman onslaught, with inflicting any more casualties on the Romans.
In the Carthaginian phase the Gauls rushed forward but the attempt to restore their flank was only partially successful. The spearmen behind the elephants managed to move across to block the left hook from the Roman cavalry, but the elephants failed to move. Now they had taken casualties they need to pass a 3+ command test to move, they rolled a 1! At the end of turn three things were looking a bit dodgy for the Carthaginian player, not only were both flanks threatened, he was down to 4 Reputation to the Roman score of 10.
In turn four I just went for it, with an all-out attack along the Roman line.
The Carthaginian centre was forced back, despite Colin throwing just about every general and champion into the fray. Elsewhere the Gaul's lack of armour was telling, even when they held the Roman charge, they took wounds at a much faster rate than their opponents.
The melee round in the Carthaginian phase just completed things, with half the Carthaginian army just melting away!
At the end of turn 4 it was game over, the Carthaginians now had zero Reputation to the Roman 11. An overwhelming victory to Rome.
A lot of laughter and fun in this game, despite the result. We also learned that the counter to elephants was to hit them with skirmishers - historical tactics do really work with these rules.
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