Campaign weekend 1st Battle - against Carthaginians and Spartacus Slave

The first battle Nick and I fought at the Campaign Weekend in Nottingham last weekend was against a combined 1st Punic Wars Carthaginian army and a slave army from the Spartacus supplement.

Before the game, we diced for who would be the army general and Nick got that honour and so the CinC and army standard bearer would be Macedonian for the weekend. Also all the teams were given three random territory cards which gave extra army benefits. You were allowed to play up to 3 territory cards during each battle, with the winner taking their choice from the territories risked. We got three very useful cards:

Sardinia - a single unit maybe designated stubborn

Calabria - may designate one formed unit of infantry or cavalry as having light armour

Luciana - a single unit using throwing spears may upgrade to heavy throwing spear.

We had all been asked to bring along a few extra units to play as the scenario dictated. For the first game we could have an additional two units a side. We took a unit of drilled Greek hoplites from Nick's army and a unit of 11 Punic heavy cavalry from mine. We designated one of Nick's pike units as stubborn with the Sardinia card, and my 12 Numidian open order unit as having light armour using the Calabrian card.

The table (8ftx6ft) was fairly bare with a rocky area to our left flank and a hill to our right. There was another hill to the centre right of our enemies deployment zone. We could deploy 18"into the table and there was an 18" flank zone which only cavalry could initially deploy into.

We deployed intending to do a right hook with the main strike units of Nick's army, while most of mine tried to hold the left and look for an opportunity to get around the flank.

We deployed from right to left: 11 Numidian cavalry; 10 Tarantine cavalry; the drilled hoplites; the companions; the drilled pikemen; 18 Carthaginian veterans; a pike block; 2 elephants; 2 more pike (one stubborn with the territory); 18 Bruttians (to the left you can see them heading right to support Nick's attack, but after his 'elephant' troubles they reversed and came back to support the left of the pike line); 12 open order numidian cavalry with light armour (due to card); the extra Punic heavy cavalry; 2 units of Oscans and the last unit of Numidian light cavalry. The cretan archers and thracian slingers supported Nicks right; while my numidian javelinmen were across the pike and elephant to the front, and my moorish archers were on the left supported by Nick's peltast javelinmen in skirmish.

Our opponents - Team Munky (picture left shows their right flank against mine) - deployed as we expected with the Carthaginian mercenary hoplites on their right, opposite my lighter flank, and the slaves to their left against Nick. The Carthaginians have a couple of small 9 man numidian cavalry on my extreme flank supported by a unit of Punic heavy cavalry which meant I was outnumbered in cavalry for the first and only time for the weekend. My opponent and I fenced each other for a good three hours, each of us trying to find an opening to break each others lines. My Oscan's occupied the rocky ground and the Numidians did what Numidians do and skirmished all game. Every time I thought I had a chance to charge in with the Bruttians and Punic cavalry, but they closed it up! The top picture shows the peltasts and Numidian cavalry pushing forwards, while the Oscans occupy the rocky ground. In the second picture you can see the two centre's moving forward. Nick's pike opposite the slave warbands packed with gladiators and leaders!

On the other flank things were much more exciting. The slaves pushed their two elephants against Nick's numidians and tarantines and despite lots of shooting, they seemed impervious to arrows, slings and javelins. At one time Nick got 22 hits on one elephant, but all wounds were saved..... That forced Nick to pull his cavalry back and try to seal the line with the drilled hoplites and Carthaginian Veterans.

The picture here shows the Veteran Carthaginians moving up to support the numidians, while the drilled hoplites occupy the hill. The companion wedge is looking for a hole to charge through while the tarantines and cretan archers try and remove one of the elephants - something they completely failed to do all game! Most crucial is the thracian slingers just to the right of our elephants, they helped turn the tide somewhat by charging some slave skirmishers - beating them in combat (they are warband) and then chasing the routers onto a block of slaves behind who had the fiery logs. While the thracians were trashed, they used up the logs, and then saved their morale throw so stood in there for one more turn slowing the slave movement!

Next turn several of the slave warbands failed their tests and that signifantly disrupted their formation with one charging a pike block, and another having to wheel to their left revealing a right flank to my forces. The warband was held and defeated by the pike, despite having a few gladiators in the front, but managed to hold in there. Next turn Nick put in a couple more charges and routed a couple of slave blocks including the one now devoid of fiery logs thanks to the thracians. His companions moved up to charge another unit which would have been hit in the flank by my punic cavalry at the same time, but in the end that was it and time was up!

It was a great fun game - with lots of challenges but not a lot of fighting, mainly because I held back while Nick was hampered by those elephants who seemed impervious to missiles! But we came away with a minor win 607pts to 419pts. In doing so we could take one of our opponents territories and so we took Numidia - which gave us the option to make one skirmish unit in our army have feigned flight.

1-0 to the Flaming Pigs!