Thursday night - the last Impetus battle before Grand Armee takes over and it saw me and Ian (Romans) take on Russ and Mark (Carthage).
Set up was as expected - except Russ (after Tuesday's battle) had beefed up the Carthos with more elephants and some Bruttians.
To combat the elephants we wanted to push our skirmishers forward to take them on, with the legions following up behind. Ian moved the Roman cavalry up slowly on the left and I did the same with the Numidians up on the right.
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| Initial moves - the counters denote disordered units. |
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| Mark and his chameleon nose - turning the same shade as his Coke can |
In response, the elephants and skirmishers pushed forward but they kept their cavalry back (maybe a hold over from Tuesday when the cavalry action was quite decisive).
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| The allied Numidian cavalry pushes forward en masse as the Spanish cavalry looks isolated |
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| Ian cautiously moves the Roman cavalry forward on the left. Caution is rewarded as all three go disordered |
The Carthaginians looked keen to get the cavalry in. But it meant that their light cavalry had become a target for the allied Numidians who whooped in delight.
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| Numidians line up the Cartho light cavalry |
Undeterred, Russ and Mark moved their skirmishers up to shield the elephants. Our own scutari had moved forward too far and were disordered and too close to the Cartho line. This could come back to hurt us.
Our cavalry on the right moved up to engage - cleverly using javelins to disorder and hurt the opposition (rather than rushing into melee). This proved a useful tactic. However one of our light horse (trying to get around the flank) got disordered.
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| Two lots of javelins fly in to the Cartho light horse. Note the elephant in close attention. |
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| The exposed scutari gain the attention of skirmishers and elephants. |
The scutari were beyond their general's command range (d'oh!) and so became the target of both skirmishers and elephants. Not good. We were lucky to get a hit on the elephant as it came in - thereby it wasn't fresh and lost its impetus bonus. Still bad news though!
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| Bang! At least the elephant was disordered before it got to grips. |
On the right flank, we moved the disordered unit out of the way of the charging Spanish (which meant that it hit fresh air). In response to being charged, we moved our light cavalry back - meaning both charging units were going to hit fresh air (and so become disordered).
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| Charging Cartho cavalry misses and goes disordered. Goody! |
The Carthos therefore angled the elephant over to our right as well. This triggered a host of charge and evade moves that pulled the Cartho left over and away from the centre.
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| Elephant also tries to get in on the act. Evade! |
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| Russ and Mark debate who is to throw the crucial dice. Russ loses. |
One unit of scutari were massacred by the elephant who could then rumble forward unmolested. As a consequence (and as it worked well on Tuesday) I moved the triarii out on both flanks and moved Scipio into the middle to improve cohesion rolls from the centre. This allowed us to undisorder the last surviving scutari - in time for them to line up the elephant that was heading for our Numidian cavalry. In response, Mark moved a unit of African Spears to also head right.
In addition, they moved their Gauls off to our left (to address the cavalry push on our left). This meant that they had an elephant between themselves and the cavalry. I disussed with Ian the idea to move the cavalry up to force the Gauls to impetuously charge through the elephant (which HAD to be bad) and then arrive in front of the cavalry disordered. We rubbed our hands at the cunningness of our plan. Bwah ha ha ha ha!
As things were getting tight, there came all kinds of calls for 'cocky dice'. The table had 3 covers on it, meaning the odd hem was on show. My dice kept on landing on these ridges - prompting Ian to claim 'cocky dice' (invariably when I'd thrown a miss) which led to much finger pointing and cries of disbelief.
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| Cocky dice! (Just touching the ridge) |
You can see the general plan of battle below. We'd noticed that the centre was being denuded of strength as the Gauls and African Spears were angled away. We therefore decided to line our legions up with the gaps between the elephants and to punch them through unmolested. This was due to the our rule that elephants could only charge in a straight line in their turn. To explain, they couldn't turn and then charge - they could charge straight ahead or turn but wait until next turn to charge (to reflect the fact these were fairly untrained elephants).
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| General view - the centre looks tempting. |
On our right, the elephant and assorted cavalry charged again, and again hit fresh air as we evaded. Then we'd step up and javelin from close range. This tactic was working really well. We were keeping our cavalry fresh and out of melee yet inflicting damage each turn. We were simply trading space for time and casualties. Our 'lost' unit turned with the hope we could get it undisordered at some stage.
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| Carthos hit fresh air again. Quick, javelin them and run away! |
The surviving scutari were hanging on against the Bruttians (although taking damage). More worrying was the sight of the African Spear coming towards them. But this meant the centre was being eroded as our legions moved up. They were reluctant to move the elephant next to them up though as the triarii were now in line and (with long spears) could negate the elephants impetus bonus.
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| Scutari fighting alone. |
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They keep coming on the right - and we keep killing them.
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Back to the right, and the evade - javelin - evade tactic was working a treat. We faced much superior forces but were whittling them down all the time (and one elephant was pulled way out of position as a result).
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| More trading of space for time |
The Carthaginians got their African Spears turned again - but this meant a big gap between the other spears at the back. I suppose they wanted strength on the right but it meant facing a whole legion single handed.
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| The African Spears break up and go all over the show. |
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| More disorder on our right. Suits us! |
Just so you know, on our left Ian was playing the waiting game - moving the cavalry to the left to pull the Cartho cavalry and Gauls that way.
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| African Spears coming over |
We worked out why the African Spears were moving to our right - Hannibal was with them and he was trying to get his Left cavalry undisordered. However, as he moved left, he ran the risk of the troops on his right similarly going disordered. Ian's move left had effectively extended the Carthaginians into an wide thin line.
We turned our 'lost' cavalry back to get them closer to make getting them undisordered easier. But it also meant we could shoot at the Spanish cavalry in the rear.
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| Our 'lost' unit turns again. |
As time was getting on we went for the kill. Both sides used up their destiny rolls in trying to win initiative and the Carthos managed to win it.
The Carthos had put most of their front line on opportunity which proved really hard to address. We lost a unit of velites to opportunity shooting and as Scipio pushed forward, his triarii also went disordered from shooting (but remained fresh thanks to me rolling one of many 1's for cohesion).
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| Scipio rushed in - and gets shot at |
Also trying to get a result, our rightmost triarii rushed the elephant facing them and killed it, so they could move up to support the scutarii. In addition, the Numidians also managed to inflict sufficient damage on the right to kill one of the cavalry facing them The Lost unit managed to charge the Spanish in the rear - also (after much re-rolling of cocky dice) and a lucky roll from me (1) and a shocker from Mark (6) meant the Spanish cavalry also died. The right flank was wide open.
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We win on the right - only a unit of Bruttians (who are about to die) stand in our way.
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Therefore the right was owned by Rome. The triarii stepped up to join the melee with the scutarii and polished off the Bruttians. So there were a host of troops that could only be faced off by one unit of African Spears. On the left, the Roman cavalry moved up to pull the Gauls out of the way and opening up the centre.
Then, with the clock ticking down and both sides completely engaged in the action, Ian leant forward to move a unit - and an earthquake struck! Well, what actually happened was that one of the trestle tables we were using collapsed. The whole Roman army was swallowed up as the leg on the right folded in and that side of the table dropped.
Now, pointing no fingers here but Mark was the one who'd put the tables up. There were accusations of incompetence (likely - I've seen the wiring in his house. Flick a light switch and the doorbell rings). But were darker forces afoot? Had he actually kicked the table leg, knowing that a defeat was inevitable? Or was the piece of string (stuck to which was a label with a Ruthin phone number was attached) leading from the table leg to their side of the table a clue?
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| After the disaster. |
So we abandoned the game (earthquake stops play).
ReviewA great game and proof that we're warming to the Impetus rules. It was an absolute corking battle, enjoyed by all and one that could have gone either way. Except we would have won!
