Something a bit different at Easter

I ended up playing a game at Billy's place yesterday with Roy and Willy. I have been promising to go and see Billy for a while now, and the holiday weekend was a great opportunity. Roy was able to bring along his plastic 20mm Romans and Carthaginians for a game of Art de le Guerre on some of Billy's lovely terrain tiles. Photos mostly taken by the Romans (i.e. me):

First up is the Carthaginian right wing: lots of Numidian horse, some decent heavier cavalry, and then some medium warband types preceded by slingers.

The Carthaginian centre: African elephants and heavier, armoured warbands. Hannibal in command. I think that in these rules the African elephants aren't as powerful as their eastern cousins. Warbands are classed as either heavy or medium foot, with Impact charges.

The Carthaginian left: a load of powerful elite spearmen, a couple of units of elite heavy cavalry, and some slingers. Roy drew up the Carthaginian deployment and ran the right half of their army, Willy the left.

I set up the Romans. Since I had no idea what I was doing, I put a command of allies on our left: some medium non-Impact foot (must have been Italian hill guys), a couple of units of light cavalry, and two units of elite spearmen - Campanian hoplites, maybe? We also had a couple of units of slingers forwards in the woods.

A suitably Roman centre: a wodge (is that even a word? Who cares?) of Hastati with Triarii in reserve and a couple of forlorn-looking bases of Velites out front. The eagle stands at the back represent the camp.

Our right: another wodge of Hastati, this time backed by Principes elites, with the usual Velites out skirmishing. The extreme right holds three bases of Equites, all packed together so that they could quake in fear equally. Our C-in-C is as good as Hannibal, and is on this wing. I ran the left half of the Romans, Billy the right.

This is a long side shot taken from off to our left. The Hand of Willy is hovering over the Carthaginians on the left as you look at it, and the Hand of Billy on the right is pointing at some Romans. I hope the photo does Billy's layout some justice: he has constructed geomorphic terrain using carpet tiles, mainly for use with later 15mm periods such as the English Civil War, Seven Years' War and American Civil War. We ruled that for our purposes the river was insignificant. Must be the dry season or something.

A second side shot shows the initial moves.

Same view, a little later. In the foreground, the Numidians are happily pouring across the river while my Italians have gone for a sleep in the nice safe trees. In the far distance, you should be able to make out our rightmost command closing with the Carthaginian elite spearmen.

Above is a close-up of our central legionaries confronting the Gauls. Some of then are actually in some woods, but we removed the trees to make space for the figures. Or maybe the Gauls just ate them.

Another close-up, this time showing the elite Carthaginian heavy spearmen bearing down upon Billy's Hastati.

A side view of the whole field at this point.

The Numidians do what Numidians do best - flank entire armies.

Some enemy slingers try to wake up my Italians.

Deadly contact on our right.

And in our centre.

Most of the Numidians are off around the rear of our forces, leaving a few behind to wipe out my light horse.

The central fight against the Gauls has initially gone well for us.

My seemingly doomed light cavalry perform better than expected - only one of them is destroyed, while the other actually wins its combat.

Surprisingly, Billy's Hastati do well in the first part of the fight against Willy's elite spearmen.

An aerial shot shows the Numidians riding across our rear. Painful that is.

Reinforcements go in and our right begins to weaken.

The same happens against the Gauls.

However, we also have reserves...

That was the last photo. Basically, our initial melee surge put us well ahead, but the Carthaginians almost drew level again by committing their reserves. Then we threw in our ours, and edged the battle - a bloody victory for Rome. With hindsight, what won it for us was simply being able to make maximum use of those legionaries, who ended up in the right place at the right time. Apart from the lights, there was no cavalry contact, and the pachyderms played no part, which means that the game played out to Rome's strengths. Oh well, you can't have everything...