Slitherine

I’m assuming that I will be facing lots of legionnaires and not many cavalry. So I go for Max chariots as they are reasonably good against impact foot, and also max out my cavalry (and went for basic infantry minimums, except maxing out on the Sacred band who have proved their worth many times). My aim is to exploit the enemy flanks. However I lose initiative and get an ugly map, as there is no way to use the width of the map without breaking up my army, and I’ve learned the hard way in my early games not to spread out this army too much. My army doesn’t really like rough terrain so the idea is to use the flat land on the right side of the map.

Never fought Jewish troops before, that will add to the flavour.

Well this narrow front isn’t going to help my cavalry but what can I really do? Can I beat up the pikes and MF before the Legionnaires arrive?

It’s a slow advance, Now can I use my slight numerical superiority in LF to drag the pikes off the hill?

A) I manage to charge in with one chariot, need to keep my chariots away from the elephant and the pikes, b) manage to lock in one LH, I can’t afford to fight on a narrow front the wider I make it the better, so aiming to swing around the top right hand corner of map, pikes will probably stay on top of the hill, which is great for me.

It gets a bit confused now, my Chariot is stuck, and I realise that I can’t loop around the top right had portion of the map, my cavalry will be trapped if I do so, and my Average protected Spears won’t go toe-to-toe with Super armoured legionaires –so I withdraw on the far right.

I manage to catch one legion (A) with a chariot, and one enemy LF (B) couldn’t escape, also managed to impact Jewish pikes with Sacred band (C). The Sacred band should be able to chew through the pikes now.

I rout a Scutari unit, but miss out a chance of catching the roman cav at the bottom of the screen (A).



The Jewish pikes start to look fragile.

A few units on each side rout, I feel the battle hangs in the balance, but I’m reading the situation all wrong, my best troops the sacred band are doing well, but they are taking casualties, my weaker African spears haven’t been engaged yet, and they are now in a position where I couldn’t extricate them if I wanted to. My troops that give me a hope, my cavalry and chariots are neutered by the Hefalump and terrain.

Both main lines look brittle, however most of the enemy pikes have departed, which means my chariots can have some fun, well they would if they were near the action. I’m surprised by how well my garden variety African spears are doing, but it really is a false dawn, you can’t rely on good dice rolls to win, that ain’t much of a plan.

My Sacred Band are severely weakened, and the Romans despite some disruptions are still superior to my troops, things look better than they really are.

Both frontlines begin to dissipate, and mine quicker, the warning signs are becoming more apparent. I’m really handing this to my opponent, I’m playing the battle the Roman way, not the Carthaginian way.

My spearmen have about reached their limit, having the chariots in reserve initially would have been better than sending them off to the left.

My Spearmen implode – it was only a matter of time, they did better than I thought. I’ve really made some bad mistakes here, I didn’t counter the legions with my chariots (wandering off to the left of the map) and not using my spearmen to counter the hefalump who proved a real pain(also forgetting several times to loose missiles with my javelinmen didn’t help, it would have auto-routed if I had remembered.

Now it’s time to run away, futile hope really. Should have done this at the start of the game.

The hefalump is still being a real pain!

Next turn my camp is looted and the game is over. In hindsight, with teh map choice given to me by my opponent my only real choice was to play for a draw.

In Summary
I don't think the Early Carthaginian list is all that bad. If you look at my reuslts, I lost against players that are better than me, who I have never beaten, and beat the players I normally beat.