Friday 26 March 2010

Ancient Campaign Update: Rome's fate Hanging in the Balance

As the battle progresses it is becoming clear that: The Roman army is of two halves, a major command (being strained to its very limit on the left and holding a very defensive position) and a minor command on the right (still barely touched) looking for somehow to get into a fight and thus is aggressively advancing forward. The pressing danger for the Roman being that if its major command is defeated, then it is game over for the Romans.

The outer Roman right flank has gone, these are all Carthaginian troops in the picture (also see commentary below): 


Carthage has opted for a pre-game deployment of three commands of almost equal thirds. Hannibal is cunningly using them for distinctly different purposes. The most dangerous one of these is the Carthaginian right, still completely intact and is in the process of successfully turning the Roman left flank (the Roman major command) with very mobile fast foot and cavalry.


(The Romasn in this picture [top left] are actually in the Roman dead-pile) The elephant is lining itself up for an attack on a legion flank, two turns away (so it may turn in time).

The Carthaginian centre command (which was comprised of a large number of warband bases) is now approaching its spent status after being hurled into a kill-or-be-killed maelstrom in the centre of the table.  They faced a murderous flank charge by Roman cavalry and suffered, however a huge block of Carthaginian Fast-Blade has been committed to the fight and the outcome is by no means certain.


Nevertheless the near spent Carthagians did succeed in inflicting considerable damage on the Roman main command. It was here in the centre of the table that Rome and Carthage committed their Gallic warband allies to annihilate each other in frenzied assault and counter assault. The result being an almost net zero-sum exchange. 


Worryingly for the Romans those far left bases in the picture (behind the legion) are in fact Carthaginian warbands! He has one turn to counter attack and restore a contiguous front of sorts or face fragmentation.

By some strange force of attraction every non-General stand of Roman cavalry has been drawn into the middle of the battlefield. This mobile force has managed to forge an ad-hoc join between the defensive Roman left wing and the aggressive Roman right wing with an ugly (dangling flanks abound) "Zee" shape, or "two L step".


The elephant breakthrough will probably be very short lived. The "ugly L" is just off camera to the left!

Meanwhile the Carthaginian left is being refused and is siphoning off as many troops as possible to exert pressure on the centre.


Roman success on its right is actually drawing their troops away from where they need to be!

Rome has its next bound to reform into a contiguous line and/or pick off vulnerable Carthaginian units, however there is is a strong possibly of fragmentation and hanging flanks if the Roman chooses to be too eager to pursue local tactical gains.

With some good dice you cannot rule Rome out but a betting man would strongly fancy Carthage to come out on top. Whether that can translate into a telling campaign result is another matter as the Romans can still pull back inside Rome proper and opt to take damage on her walls instead. 

2 comments:

Erwin said...

wonderful, the report and photographs.
I am player and follower DBMM fan.
Congratulations for your blog.

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

Glad you liked it :)

Hold onto helmet concluding post coming soon ;)