Ancients: Rome v. Macedon

 After a long time away in more recent eras as we have worked thru periods from Medieval to ACW in our new rules we returned to Ancients tonight.

Rome: Mark & Chris.
Macedon: Mike & Mitch.

The Macedonians are advancing their flanks as the Romans advance right of centre towards the elephants on the left of the phalanx their centre as they redeploy on their flanks to meet the Macedonian threats there. 

The skirmishers are neutralising each other as the heavies move up behind them.

The real action begins when the Romans legionaries charge the elephants on the far flank & the right of the phalanx charges the Roman left.

As the legionaries slog it out with the elephants, one of the pigs stampedes forwards causing some mayhem in the Roman supports.

The phalanx on the near flank has broken their opponents as the Macedonian cavalry on their flank finally gets around the flank delayed by bad command dice.  The phalanx in the centre is now enaged.  The far flank remains indecisive.

The cavalry are now engaged on both flanks, while the elephants have been defeated.

On the near flank the Roman cavalry is holding on, but the phalanx is slowly wrapping around the legionaries' flank.  On the far flank the cavalry fight is also indecisive.  The roman attempt to turn the Macedonian flank is partially thwarted by the Macedonian's reserve of hoplites.

The Romans have taken out the phalanx at the far end with a flank attack, but their left flank legion has broken.  Their cause looks hopeless & they concede defeat.

Our multi-period rules have a core that apply to all periods & short sections of special rules for each sub-period.  These sections are generally quite short as most of the differences are covered by availability of different troop types & the relative numbers of them.  But the large variety of troop types & our desire to have more variation in unit size makes the ancient section much longer.  This battle showed up few shortcomings in the first draft, but also pointed to solutions.  The main issue was that phalanxes seemed too powerful.