The Scrape at the Escape

I passed an enjoyable Thursday evening playing the final group B game of the CLWC B4AD tournament. While the match up between Mid Republican Romans and the Pyrrhics could have gone either way. Last night, it was Simon's night. He out scored me 12.9 points to 7.2.

Deployment positions at the start Romans on the right 

Most of the damage was done in the final couple of turns on the right flank where I got myself tied up in knots with a traffic jam of light foot. As a result my flank screen of medium foot, in retrospect  they were deployed on the wrong flank, were exposed and trampled, chopped and squashed by a combination of elephants and cavalry. One of the medium foot units were Italian Extraordinairii. These chaps which served me well in previous games, however Simon had faced them before in a previous games, when I deployed them he mentioned that he found them a dangerous opponent. My inexperience showed  by allowing to let them get isolated and his elephants and cavalry made them pay dearly. Two bases were killed off and the remaining ones routed when they witnessed the attached troop commander getting flattened by an irritated battle group of elephants.

  Tentitive advances

Up until the penultimate round it was more or less square, with tentative advances by both sides until the Pyrrhic elephants and cavalry struck.

The legions forelorn charge 

In the set up I lost the initiative and every optional piece of terrain I put down was removed by Simon's dice coming up with sixes. This resulted with a feeling of agoraphobia on the part my commander, faced with a large pike contingent with lots of room to manoeuvre and no terrain for me to run and hide in.

On the last turn I had my legions charge Simon's pike after an bit of manoeuvring to nullify the prospect of counter charges. This was in the hope I could cause a bit of disruption and claw back a couple of points for pride.  In the end I did fragment a pike unit to salvage some pride, despite some dismal dice roles on my part.

All in all a highly enjoyable evening playing soldiers!