Ancients Campaign - Back from the dead, baby!

Yeah!  That's right!  Macedon gets its backside handed to it - but you can't keep a good Greek down.  

I spent most of the evening scrapping with the Seleucids (John) over Kappadocia (or some similar sounding piece of dirt in Turkey).  This involved my entire army taking on a handful of Seleucid units which hung around for a bit (including his peltasts which spent the entire battle sat in the woods - where I couldn't reach them).  Then as the bulk of my army slowly crawled down the field, John saw discretion being a great option and scooted.  After his horse archers had taken a heavy toll though.

The Macedonian army faces off a small Seleucid force.

The hordes of Mordor head towards Helm's Deep....hold on, sorry, wrong battle!

Typical dice rolling from me.  I need a 4 to hit.

The next turn saw me grab two more Seleucid territories while John and Russ were ripping into my unguarded territories.  But then John came back and attempted to grap Kappadocia back - against a holding group of just 6 Macedonian units.  While mine were strong (hoplites and pikes) they had no mobility and John's lighter troops danced rings around me.  The only bright spot was - while being charged by three of his jellyphants - I manged to kill one and made the other rampage.  Rampage straight into the other elephant (ho ho ho) - killing it dead before rampaging off the table.  Snork!

But his forces soon surrounded me and I called it a day.

I thought that was it and Macedon was no more.

The campaign map

You can see why.  My forces in blue are miles from home.  The Romans (red) are chomping up territories - my territories!  The Seleucids (orange) control huge swathes of territory.  Carthage simply owns most of North Africa, Spain and Sicily.

BUT! While Russ was grabbing my territories, Ian chose his moment and Carthage rampaged into Italy.  When I say 'rampaged' I mean struggled as his dice throwing meant that his army caught not one but two plagues and also got stranded at sea.  But enough got into Sicily to make it uncomfortable for Russ, who then tried to get back to Italy.  But he too was prevented by both storms and pirates.  What this meant was that as John turned back to reclaim the territories I'd taken from him, I was able to clear the Romans out of Macedon / Greece and even managed to take Venetia (only a couple of territories from Rome) as well as recapture my territories from John.

To add to the fun, the Gauls (a barbarian nation) took the opportunity to invade - and also took over a Roman territory that Rome had previously pinched from the Gauls. 

Rome - up a certain creek without a paddle.

So Russ is now surrounded by hostile forces with Carthage, Macedon and The Gauls all closing in for the kill. 

For now - Macedon is safe and rebuilding.  Which is nice.