Tuesday 12 April 2022

Ancients campaign turn 5 - game 2 setup

The next battle in the ancients campaign takes place near the town of Ardea in southern Italy. This battle is a must win battle for Rome who are suffering badly in the campaign against the Carthaginians. This year, 209 BC sees Scipio the Younger arrive on the scene, but is it too late to change the tide?

A closer look along the Roman lines.

In the prior game fought in northern Italy Rome's armies were denied a victory. So the omens are not looking good.

Campaign map

Terrain cards decided the tabletop terrain layout. Carthaginian forces lead by Hannibal gained the advantage and selected the tabletop side with the woods on their right. This has the advantage of allowing them to deploy without hinderance. While Rome will be hindered by the woods in their centre, forcing two of their heavy infantry to deploy on their open right flank. These units will be penalised by taking one round of hits a piece. This is because in the deployment rules heavy infantry are restricted to the centre when deploying, unless rushed to a flank.

Terrain cards decided the layout. Rome will deploy at the top and will be hindered by the central woods.

All ready for battle

The orders of battle...

Rome:
  • 5 x heavy infantry
  • 1 x light infantry
  • 1 x catapults
Carthage:
  • 3 x heavy infantry
  • 1 x Gauls (warband)
  • 1 x elephants
  • 1 x heavy cavalry
  • 1 x light infantry

A view from the Carthaginian lines

All figures are HAT and units each have 3 bases

All ready for the game.



8 comments:

  1. Nice to see the terrain cards in action again Peter and the table and figures look rather lovely. I must remember to make my own cards for some future games, to see how they work for me. So many ideas, so little time!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks. For my ancient games I randomly select 4 terrain cards and mix them with 4 blank (open terrain) cards. Shuffle and draw 6 cards for the tabletop terrain. This way I get a good number of open areas.

      Delete
  2. Yay! The elephants are back!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yay indeed! It is always a joy to have the elephants on the tabletop.

      Delete
    2. Does Scipio have a 'special ability' against them?

      Delete
    3. When a leader is present the army gets an additional initiative chance card.

      Delete
    4. Not quite what I was getting at - as he seems to have sorted out a tactical response to elephants (albeit he only encountered relatively raw elephants) I thought there might be a special rule for that.

      Delete
    5. I have not accounted for any tactical response to elephants in the rules. Leaders are all treated the same.

      Delete