Having been hammered fairly quickly in our first game, there was still time for my Carthaginians to fight Dillon’s Wars of the Roses Lancastrians again.

Although the terrain was very different, we both deployed in a similar fashion to our last encounter and, again, my cavalry attempted an outflanking manouevre on the left.

The Lancastrians responded with a magnificent advance in echelon which effectively neutralised my flank attack, which meant that it looked as if my troops were going to have to do things the hard way!

An advance in echelon has one weak point, and I was able to get a unit of veteran Celtic cavalry to charge exactly where they needed to in order to crack the Lancastrian position but, as with the last game, the cards refused to give me any sort of useful result, not even a disorder, and the moment of opportunity rapidly passed!

On the right flank, however, the Carthaginian veteran infantry, equipped as Roman legionaries, were doing well. A pilum killed an enemy general in the opening charge and, despite attacking uphill and the nasty shock of an extra Billmen Flank Attack unit suddenly appearing, the Vets managed to kill or drive back everything in their reach, and were eventually in a position to threaten the enemy camp, having taken about half of the Lancastrian victory medals on their own.

Elsewhere, although I’d failed to crack the Lancastrian formation with my cavalry, I was gradually grinding them down on the left. Remember that after all the good work from the Carthaginian Vets, all I needed to do was gain five coins (2.5 units) and I was well on the way to doing so.

Then disaster struck!

It started with losing the cavalry that had tried to pry open the Lancastrian position, and their general, to another bi-polar run of attack/save cards: that’s five Aces you can see, including three consecutively, leaving me down four coins.

Then my elephants, after getting into a prime position to stomp some Lancastrian infantry from the flank, failed to do so as the Aces kept coming. The elephants and their general then died as the unit to their flank neatly pivoted, attacked, and drove them from the table. That’s down another three coins.

Finally, Dillon managed to sneak his one unit of cavalry through my lines and take one of my camps: another three coins gone! And look at his cards! An eight to move into range, and then a ten to take the camp!

Then, finally, my last coin and the game disappearing as a unit of Numidian light cavalry failed to evade Lancastrian Billmen and was hit and killed.

Even Dillon acknowledged my pain. As he said afterwards:

I've never won 12-0 and never won two TtS! games in a row. The second was my Man U v Bayern Munich event. About half my units were disordered at the end but all the card luck was with me for the last 2 or 3 moves. You was well and truely robbed!

That’s another deck of cards heading for cremation pour encorager les autres, and the start of a big sulk from me!