Wednesday 26 May 2010

Carthage hangs on in Sicily

Just a short report about the latest battle in our Empire campaign.  Gordon brought the figures back this evening and filled me in on what happened.  Essentially, it seems as though as consul of the day he placed the attacking Roman army slightly offset to one side.  Rather than deploy symmetrically, they put all of their cavalry on the flank nearest the mass of the legions, and all the Italian auxiliaries on the other flank to fend off attacking Carthaginian horse for as long as possible.  He also reduced the Italians to Militia Grade and uprated the Latin Principes to heavy infantry.  Apparently, the assault almost worked. Indeed, the Romans broke the Carthaginians just before their own army reached its breakpoint in the same turn.

So the result is the same as last time: a draw, although in mirror image to what happened in Magna Graecia.  Next week is the first club meeting of the month, so the usual multi-player extravaganza takes precedence.  We will resume the campaign the week after, as the Macedonians crunch their way into Persia itself. Will Persepolis burn again?

4 comments:

  1. A close-run thing! Must have been a good game, & with some clever tactics from the Roman commander.

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  2. Hi Aaron, it does sound like it was a good fight. The guy who played the Romans, Gordon, lives quite close to me, so we tend to go to the club together most evenings. The good thing about it is that if there is the odd evening I can't go, Gordon can still take troops in to keep the campaign moving. We had a bit of a discussion about how best to run the Romans in the car last week, so he has obviously been thinking about it since then.

    From the viewpoint of the campaign, it is probably a good thing that the struggle between Rome and Carthage is at a stalemate. It's still early in the timeline, so I don't think we want a dominant power in the Western Mediterranean yet!

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  3. Did you happen to take any Pics? Sounds like it was an excellent game.

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  4. I'll ask around to see if anyone took photos, but I doubt it. Our club only recently paid to have decent lighting out into the hall we hire, and we haven't got in the habit yet of taking photos. Maybe I should start, though; the next campaign battle looks as though it'll be a good one!

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