TTS AAR: Gauls versus Later Carthaginians
/Time for a practice game for the To The Strongest tournament at this year’s Warfare show: what turned out to be an epic clash between my Gauls and Peter’s Later Carthaginians.
I lost the scouting, and watched as Peter predictably deployed with his troops heavily weighted towards one flank.
I had been here before (far too many times!) so I knew that there was only one way forward: send my cavalry on the far left in a wide sweeping movement to attack the Carthaginian right flank, and position my infantry on the right to face forwards and right in order to hold out until the cavalry arrive to help.
The first phase of the game unfolded as expected, with only the appearance of a double Ace draw interfering with my counter-plan:
Although my cavalry made good time on their flanking manouevre, I let my chariots get distracted by a unit of light infantry lurking in the woods on the left: a silly mistake that tied up three times their points value in a pointless exchange of javelins.
Nevertheless, just as the main Carthaginian attack hit my infantry, the cavalry arrived to distract half of the enemy veteran legionaries:
I had managed to blunt Peter’s weight-one-flank strategy, but I was not out of the woods yet, as was proved when the Carthaginians snuck a unit of light cavalry through the, er, woods that were protecting the corner of my position and smashed a unit of warriors from the table.
This was fairly critical, but was fortunately immediately followed by my cavalry finally breaking one of the units of Carthaginian veteran legionaries and ending up perfectly positioned to ride down another.
Unfortunately, the cards then produced my second double Ace of the day, and the Celtic horsemen failed to charge home.
The Carthaginins quickly re-positioned themselves, and a grinding fight began as just about every figure on the table was now committed to the kesselschlacht.
Key to my position were the two warbands that were facing to the right at the bottom of the table: if either of them went, then it was safe to say that the rest of my army would follow.
Somehow they held out, turn after turn, both double-disordered and under constant attack, but obviously determined not to give way, perhaps encouraged by the two chieftains that were with them.
At this stage, the Carthaginians (who had lost a couple of generals) were down to their last two coins, meaning defeat if one more unit routed. I still had something like seven left, but with most of my warbands on two disorders already, one lost unit would almost certainly lead to a cascade of routs that would cost me the game. It was close…very close!
In the end, it was the Carthaginians who gave way first: their cavalry failing to evade when charged in the flank:
A fantastic game of TTS that absolutely came down to the wire. Peter deployed superbly, and it was only by the slimmest of margins that I managed to get my infantry into a position to hold until my cavalry arrived. Even then, if it hadn’t been for the extreme resilience of the two warbands on my right flank, my army would have collapsed in spectacular fashion. The very narrowest of victories for the Gauls!
