TTS AAR: Later Carthaginians versus Wars of the Roses
/Time to get my newly painted Carthaginians onto the tabletop for the first time, with my opponent being friend Dillon and his Wars of the Roses Lancastrian figures: an army comprised almost solely of Billmen with extra Longbow missile weapons. I had a feeling that this was not going to be easy!
Ed.’s Note: as the figures for the Carthaginian command and Heroes haven’t arrived yet, I proxied them with Celtic alternatives. That’s why you’ll see lots of them on the table!
The game began well: winning the scouting, I then used the This Way Effendi strategum to push one of Dillon’s commands off the table which, along with his Lost stratagem, meant that I started the action with five of Dillon’s eleven medals already in my hands.
As the Lancastrians had used their mounted infantry bonuses to push their main battle line forward already, I began my first turn by pushing the Carthaginian veteran infantry (the Vets) and my mercenary Celts forward as fast as possible, hoping to score a quick win by taking the rest of Dillon’s victory medals before he could bring any of his missing units back onto the table.
At the same time, I sent my mounted command down the left side of the battlefield looking to outflank the Lancastrian main battle line.
This worked quite nicely, with some of the Vets in a position to get stuck in immediately the next turn began, and the Numidian light horse reaching deep into enemy territory. Unfortunately, the Lancastrian line then opened fire with their longbows and, misere de misere, killed a unit of Numidian horse, my only unit of slingers and one of my generals: that’s four of my own victory medals, one third of my total, lost to longbow fire on the first turn!
This was not good, but compensated for by the fact that my Vets then disordered two of the three Billmen units in front of them, and were thus poised to shatter the Lancastrian left flank.
Unfortunately, however, the enemy Lost unit then turned up: another unit of Billmen right on my baseline!
No matter: if the Vets could, as they were perfectly positioned to do, destroy the Billmen command in front of them, then the game would just about be mine, as the Vets could then turn and either go for the enemy camp or roll up the enemy line.
I also managed to get one of my cavalry units across to threaten the flank of the Lost Billmen: a bit of luck with the cards and they would soon be mullered too!
The cards, however, had obviously been offended by my hubris. Looking at the Vets’ attacks on the Billmen on the left, my cavalry’s attacks on the flank of the Lost Billmen and various other “how can you miss” opportunities, I then proceeded to pull eleven (yes, eleven) attack cards in a row with nothing higher than a five! That’s a 0.022% (or 1 in 4532) chance of that happening!
And I lost the elephant to counter-attack. And my Vets pulled a couple of Aces for activation..
This reprieve allowed the Lancastrians time to recover and develop their own attack down my left flank, now empty as all my Numidian light cavalry had died. This allowed one of their Billmen units to take one of my camps and my last three coins!
Well that had been a 12-0 drubbing for the Carthaginians, who had gone from a great opening tactical position to being wiped out for a duck soley (in my humble opinion) because the cards had decided that that was going to happen. Still, at least Dillon was happy. As he said: “I’ve never won 12-0 before”!
