Amazingly the Romans again won initiative against Hannibal and so I chose Developed terrain with lots of tricky terrain (3 x vineyards and a gully). Russ went for a couple of gentle hills to keep part of the battlefield open.
The main battlefield. Roman infantry bottom left, then cavalry and velites - screened by a vineyard.
I put some velites close to a central vineyard and then put my main infantry on the left (to supposedly run through his Gallic foot and sack his camp
We had a couple of spectators and Russ let one run his cavalry. This led to the Numidian cavalry being run over the hill to chuck some javelins and the Gallic / Spanish heavy cavalry being pulled all over the middle and hindering his foot troops' movement.
Velites take on the slingers
In the middle Russ moved his slingers to take on my velites. Cutting a long story short, Russ threw some amazing dice (using my dice tower against me) making loads of hits then making cohesion test rolls and death rolls with ease. In response, I didn't seem to be able to get many hits back (missing with 7 dice at one stage!).
Velites with cavalry behind go to charge the Numidian horse.
The velites went to charge the Numidian horse. Russ suggested that the guest move them - but he decided to stay and fight. The velites made inroads on impact and melee and managed to inflict serious damage. This was essentially a battle-losing move.
The result!
As a consequence the Numidians were reduced pretty quickly. One unit autobroke and the other threw 1,1 on the consequent cohesion test - meaning they also broke (having been disrupted from the previous combat). They routed and Russ had to try to get them back using Hannibal - taking him away from the action for the time being.
In the vineyard the slingers were battering the velites. They wore them down and essentially massacred them. I lost 2BG of velites for virtually no return - but we worked out later that we should have split the combat which might have had a more positive effect for the Romans. Nevertheless we now were drawing - 2BG each.
Velites get battered.
The main event was soon in evidence. As the African Spears and Gallic foot moved in a pincer movement the Roman cavalry got out of the way (and the remaining velites moved to intercept the slingers in the vineyard).
So the main bulk of the Romans moved forward to engage the Africans and Gauls. The triarii moved in to prevent an overlap on the right but the Gauls found themselves fighting 3BG of hastati. In the impact it was fairly even but Romans spread the hits across the three BG's while the Gauls took it on one. The same applied in the melee - and the Gauls quickly evaporated.
The Romans rush to meet the Gauls and African spears. The subsequent melee saw the end of the Gauls.
On the other side the Africans were fighting two BG (hastati and triarii). The Romans lost a base but the Africans lost three and became disrupted. Hannibal was fighting in the front rank (raising them to Elite) but the splitting of hits was proving the key point.
Africans go Disrupted.
We called it a day (at nearly 11pm). At this stage it was up for grabs. The Romans had 5 BG of tough infantry, all their cavalry and 2BG of velites around. The Carthaginians had 3BG of infantry, their heavy cavalry and 2BG of skirmishers left. It is possible that the first BG of Africans could be lost (being 1 base from an autobreak) which would have left 2BG of infantry vs 5BG so potentially the Romans could have won the overall battle BUT the Roman camp was under threat by the Cartho cavalry.
The result was a minor Roman victory BUT if the Numidian horse had not been sacrificed it would have been a Cartho one. Russ was very unlucky.
So the final Punic War battle left the result at 7-2. The Romans prevailed but it did show that when the Africans get to grips, they are a fearsome bunch.