Friday 20th February

Another FoG game, this time Romans vs Carthaginians 750 points.

I commanded the Carthaginian right with the Elephants, one unit of African Spearmen, one of Scutari, one of Javelin LF and a unit of Gallic cavalry. Tim managed the centre with two units of Gallic infantry, one of African spears and one of slingers. Chris controlled an all cavalry command on the left. This is my command at the game start.

Our plan involved pinning the Roman centre with the Gallic infantry, while crushing both flanks. The first units to clash were - of course - the Gauls, who bravely took on three units of legionaries and held them for the rest of the game (See later).

On my flank, the plan started out Ok with my Scutari driving off the Roman LF. This left my Elephants and spears to get stuck into a legionary HF unit.

Unfortunately as they chased the Roman skirmishers off they ran into the Triarii and a short fight later they were broken. As the Scutari fled, they broke through my Gallic cavalry who, having lost a rather messy melee with the Roman HF broke as well.

The Scutari managed to get to the rear, but the Gallic cavalry were surrounded and destroyed. (2-0 to Rome).

This was the crunch point however, so my General moved in to support the Elephants and Hannibal himself joined the fight against the Legion. This did the trick as the Roman HF facing my Elephants and spears reached auto break, and on the same turn the Gallic infantry unit in the centre supported by Hannibal did the same thing to a unit of Legionaries. A large hole had opened in the Roman left centre.

Over on the Carthaginian left our cavalry seemed to struggle because of the quality of their opposition. They pinned the Roman cavalry and supported the Gauls to the best of their ability. Their major contribution was to break a unit of LF towards the end of the evening. (3-2 to Carthage). Their pursuit placed them in the centre of the Roman rear, and thus they would have been a certainty to loot the Roman camp (had one been deployed on table .....)

At this point the umpire declared a tactical Carthaginian victory, but had we allowed for the looted camp the final score would have been 4-2 to Carthage.

The final positions are shown in the last two photos. The cavalry are engaged on the far left, while the Light Cav threaten the Triarii who are moving to intercept the Gauls who have broken through.






On the right the Elephants and Spears have swung right and are threatening the remaining Legionaries supported by the slingers.









Another fun game, and our knowledge of the rules went up sharply again.