Rome Marches On

On Tuesday I finally managed to make it to the club for the first time in six weeks. We played the latest game in our Empire campaign: Rome invades southern Italy. The Italians deployed with their left flank anchored on some rough ground, and a long low ridge in their centre. To their left were some Samnites and Italians; the centre was the phalanx (Tarentine city militia); and the right was composed of some Italian foot, city militia cavalry and excellent quality Tarentine light horse. The Romans set up with the legions in their usual three lines in the centre. They had two units of poor quality Italian infantry on their right and all of their cavalry (again mediocre, but plenty of it) on their left on the open wing. Both sides had a goodly number of skirmish troops. Mark and I played the Tarentines and friends. He took the left and centre, and I took the right. Simon was opposite Mark, and William against me.

Our plan was to try to hold the legions as long as possible with the central phalanx and grind one or both flanks. Mark was able to do this on the left, as the combination of Samnites and Italians on the overlap destroyed the Italian militia facing them and seriously damaged the end legion. I failed miserably; the cavalry on both sides cancelled each other out, but my Italian foot ran away on morale, meaning we had no overlap there to even out the odds against the legions. The phalanx collapsed in the centre and it was all over.

Stupid quote of the night: "At least we are controlling the tempo of the skirmish fight" (me).

The Romans have now efficiently conquered central and southern Italy. They will in the near future have three options: Sicily; a seaborne attack on mainland Greece; or Northern Italy (Cisalpine Gaul).

After the battle we rolled for the next series of events. Carthage failed (again) with a seaborne attack on Sicily. The Macedonians, thwarted by the success of the Persian rival claimant to the throne in Syria, have decided to keep that as a buffer state. Instead, they are attacking into the area of Pontus along the southern Black Sea littoral, where they will face a loyalist Persian army in our next game. This should be played in two weeks' time.