Carthage invades Sicily

Welcome to another report on the campaign season at Mike's house.
Yesterday we gathered to have Carthage face off against a Syracuse army in defense of Sicily.
The gamers were - Mike our host, Bill, Ken, Jake (Bill's son), myself and special guest Mike Cosentino.
Carthage was commanded by Bill, Mike C. and Ken while Syracuse was commanded by Mike A., Jake and myself.
After a bit of our usual banter and patting ourselves on the back we set up our troops into their starting positions. For Carthage Bill commanded their right flank, Mike C. their center and Ken their left flank. For Syracuse Jake commanded the left flank opposite hid Dad, Mike A. had our center and I had the right flank. So we had Bill facing off against his son Jake, both Mikes facing off in the center and Ken and I having at it on our end.
Here is how we looked at the start.
Carthage below.

 Syracuse below.

We had Jake roll our initiative dice throughout the game for as we all know the youngsters roll much better than their elders. Must be because they have not used u all their luck yet!
So we won the initiative and started to put our strategy into play.

Overall we were planning to sweep the Carthaginian left flank and the roll up their battle line. To do this takes a bit of time as we need to completely defeat their cavalry defense in that area thus allowing us to swing to our left and flank their troops.Our center made a modest advance and our left flank was intending to use our light troops to sting the heavy infantry facing them. Carthage had other plans as can be seen below.

It seems that Carthage was desperate to close with their heavy infantry and begin slugging it out. This tactic denies us the time required to defeat their cavalry  and sweep their battle line.
So turn 2 sees us winning the initiative again (go Jake) and we continue to develop our attack.

 

Jake deploys his archers as best he can to maximize the number of dice he can roll.More dice means more chances to hit.

 Carthage continues their rapid advance.

And Ken and I engage our cavalry in what would be costly to Carthage but time consuming to Syracuse.
We lost our third initiative roll but the odds of keeping the initiative rapidly declines as each turn goes by. Spoiler alert - Jake had a 3 to 1 success rate on gaining the initiative! Woo Hoo!!

Turns 3 and 4 find the light troops on our left flank gone but having inflicted a fair amount of damage before being driven off the field. Also the Carthaginians have charged into the waiting Syracuse line. Now the fight is on and a desperate one it became.

Above we can see Jake and his dad Bill going to it. Seems that Jake had the drop on his father and was rolling more dice per turn thus averaging more hits.

 In the center Mike and Mike were toe to toe and exchanging hits left and right.

And darn if I wasn't still trying to defeat Ken on my right! A tremendous defense was fought by Ken tying up my troops all game!

So turns 5 and 6 find everything depending on the fight in the middle. As both Mikes duke it out the tension kept rising but to no avail for Carthage. Mike A. made 2 critical saves and kept units on the table while Mike C. was having trouble convincing his troops to stay.
Hooray for Mike A. our gracious and high rolling host!
All in all another great game at Mikes. Sadly our last game for this season will be next month. Maybe we can get a few in at my place over the Winter.
Special thanks to Mike Cosentino for gaming with us and all of our regular participants. And a hearty welcome to Jake who we hope can attend many more games in the future.
So thanks to all who make this possible and especially Mike Adams our gracious host. As always here we have some Mike eye candy!

Thanks for reading and good gaming!
Greg