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Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Fourth Battle of Trasimene

For Carthage, it was the best of times.  For Rome, it was the worst of times.  The levelling factor is that the battle would be decided quickly.  Jubilation and despair will ebb as fresh wounds heal.  

The Rejects gathered for a remote game Monday to fight the Battle of Lake Trasimene.  Richard and Steve would command the Romans. Lee and Ray would take the helm of the Carthaginians.

As a refresher, the battlefield and army dispositions are,

Unsuspecting Flaminius, pinned against the lake.
Army deployments

On to battle!

With Ray commanding the Carthaginian Right, he begins a cautious advance toward the unsuspecting Flaminius.  I remind him the one great advantage he holds is the ambush on Turn 1.  After a brief discussion, Ray amends his opening moves with the approval of the Romans.

The first of three Gallic warbands emerges from the hills and plunges into a Roman auxilia.  Easily overcome, the auxilia rout into the lake.  Having suffered minor damage, the warband halts without pursuit.  The second warband emerges from the hills but stops short of the enemy.  Gallic warband three screams down from the heights dispersing a body of velites.  Following up, the Gauls plunge into a body of principes positioned on the road behind.  Although disordered by the attack, the principes drive off the attackers and advance inland.

With no Carthaginian cavalry joining into the attack and only one unit lost, Flaminius has survived the initial storm relatively unscathed. 

Ambush!
One warband stops short and another is repulsed.
Roman heavy infantry advance inland.
Then Hannibal snaps into action.  Two units of slingers are brought forward to harass the triarii hemmed in by lake and hills.  The triarii suffer from the pelting.  At the head of the defile, Hannibal's heavy infantry advance to block the canyon.
Hannibal advances in center and left.
Having withstood the initial onslaught, Flaminius forms up his heavy infantry and attacks.  To avenge the loss of the auxilia destroyed only moments before, Flaminius leads an attack upon the now isolated Gauls.  After bitter fighting, the Gauls are dispatched.  Flaminius looks on as the crisis seems to have passed.  The legionaries form up into a second large block on the left.
After bitter fighting, Gauls are scattered.
Crisis averted?
The silence is quickly shattered as the Gauls who failed to reach the Roman line before, now attack.  With his back to the lake, Flaminius fights fearsomely and drives off the enemy.  Along the lake front, enemy attacks have stopped.
Flaminius under pressure...
and the Gauls are repulsed.
Sensing a stalemate forming on his right, Hannibal presses forward with his heavy infantry into the defile.  Working in tandem, Carthaginian heavy infantry push back the screening auxilia before crashing into the lead legionaries.  In hard fighting, the Romans are finally pushed back upon their supports.  Hemmed in by the defile, confusion reigns in the Roman lines.  Panic and a sense of urgency spreads.  
Carthaginian heavies press forward
driving the Roman screens before them.
Roman heavy infantry fall back upon supports.
While the Roman vanguard is slowly being pushed back in the defile, Flaminius attacks up from the lake.  First, Flaminius contacts a body of Spanish light infantry.  After a very long battle, the Spanish are driven away.  Unfortunately, the prolonged fight has seriously weakened Flaminius' legion.  Still, Flaminius fights on in pursuit.  His pursuit is stopped by a fresh body of Spanish scutarii.  After much hacking and slashing, Flaminius is forced to retreat back to the lake to recover.       
Flaminius attacks!
and attacks!
and, finally, retreats!
Back at the heated combat in the defile, feeling great pressure as they are being driven into a corner, the Romans counter attack.  After a long struggle to gain the upper hand, the legionaries are exhausted.  They are compelled to retreat.  With much of the vanguard bottled up in the canyon, this retreat disorders much of the van.  Formations begin to break and run.  As the Carthaginians continue in pursuit, the entire position collapses as Romans panic and stampede.  In the end, those not killed are forced to lay down their arms in surrender. 
Legion counter attacks but is driven back.
The Roman van is driven from the field!
The Roman vanguard is no more.
Getting word of the disaster in the defile and being surrounded by the enemy, Flaminius realizes his days are numbered. 
Remnants of the Roman army.
The last we see of Flaminius!
With that, the Roman Army bursts through its breaking point and the battle is lost in what yields a complete Carthaginian victory.  This contest was not even close once Hannibal's Heavies got rolling in the defile.  The Dead Pile shows the lopsided nature of this battle.
Butcher's Bill
Congratulations to Lee and Ray for an impressive victory.  Very impressive and decisive.  My condolences to Richard and Steve for a very painful and complete loss.

Luckily, this foursome has agreed to a rematch next Monday with the sides swapped.  I look forward to seeing how a replay pans out.

As an aside, rarely do I see fate and fortune of the dice side with one army almost completely.  Richard's dice let him down throughout the battle.  In retrospect, I am not sure he actually even won one clash. Ray and Lee rarely failed either a fight or Cohesion Test.

As suggested by the battle report, the results were astounding.  The game lasted only two full turns and was finished in under two hours.  See Richard's summary of the battle at Swift and Brutal.    

Can Richard and Steve turn the tables on Ray and Lee in the next battle?  Tune in next week to find out.

48 comments:

  1. Excellent write up of yesterday's game. I think Ray and I were as surprised by the outcome, and the swiftness of it's arrival, as Ray and Steve.

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    1. Thanks, Lee! It sure was over quickly, wasn't it? I, too, was surprised.

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  2. A super game Jonathan despite the result. It is good to witness and enjoy the talking point of one side's extraordinarily good dice versus the other's shockingly poor. Just as well hobby satisfaction is not dependent on victories. Thanks again for playing host.

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    1. You are welcome! If enjoyment of the hobby was balanced upon wins and losses, many of us would have jettisoned our toys decades ago. I look forward to next week's rematch. Still, I might consider finding different dice...

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  3. Great write up of a brutal encounter. Be interesting to see if Ray and Lee can repeat their victory commanding the Romans

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    1. Thanks, Neil! It will be very interesting to see the tables turned next week.

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  4. What an absolutely biased recollection of the proceedings for this battle. What sort of account can we expect from Carthaginian puppets, I do ask you. I would wager this Palouse is in the pay or a certain Barbarian named Hanibal. I, I mean Rome shall fight another day. Vivat Roma...

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  5. Great opening lines which really summed everything up! Sometimes you do get games where the fickle dice Gods just favour one side above all else. Let's hope the re-match is more kind to the former Roman players...

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    1. Glad you enjoyed the opening, Steve! I considered entitling the post, "Poor Richard's Almanac".

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  6. Great stuff - the dice gods clearly took a hand, and what seemed at first like a very predictable scenario produced yet another variation, completely unexpected! What will it bring next, we wonder?

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    1. Thank you, David! The Dice Gods certainly made their presence felt. What next? Who knows?

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  7. Two turns is a very short game and comprehensive result. I wonder what the result would have been like had the Romans sportingly not allowed Ray to redo his opening moves?

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    1. The result was decisive. Ray's mulligan had no impact on play. Steve thwarted Ray's T1 ambush on the Roman Left handily. The real disaster was happening in the defile out of sight of both Maharbal and Flaminius.

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  8. Ah, the avenging dice gods at work again. Shows the importance of the proper sacrifices before battle!

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    1. For sure, need to follow the proper sacrifice protocol for good results.

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  9. Yip, this was a real drubbing for the Roman's, as reported by Richard on his blog...the rematch will be interesting!

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    1. Richard had a real tough time trying to fight his way out of the defile. Rarely have I seen such disaster.

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  10. That played out differently to our two goes! The Romans never managed to get a large unit built in our games - nice idea. But then in our games the Gauls attacked the heavies not the lights, so maybe that gave the Romans scope to re-organise that way?
    We haven't quite had such severe punishment in the defile either. I think Richard and Steve need to make some sacrifices before the next game, or at least pouring libation.

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    1. The Reject game played out quite differently than any of the three games before. In fact, the three games prior all saw the Romans cut their way out of the defile. In this one, they hardly made it a step forward before calamity struck.

      Forming up into large units was a good idea but I wonder if Flaminius actually needed to cover a broader front rather than deploy in depth?

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  11. This slice of history keeps on giving and at least one more replay to come. It's a reminder that all the battles we study to learn how it is to be done might quite easily have gone the other way. In your reports the "What ifs?" keep coming.
    Thank you,
    Stephen

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    1. Quite right, Stephen. We must not forget that the historical outcome was but a singular data point along a distribution where other outcomes may have been possible or even more likely. More "What ifs" forthcoming.

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  12. Interesting. Perhaps it's unsurprising if the same battle is replayed you will see extreme results due to chance with the majority being similar.
    Neil

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    1. Unsurprising to me as repeated trials may converge to the 'true' mean (if one exists) as the law of large numbers kicks in. We must decide if the historicial result represented the mean or an extreme result.

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  13. The battle always seems to be decided by what happens in the defile rather than along the lakeshore?

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    1. With roughly equal wings and a breakpoint at 50%, the result is likely decided by which wing breaks first. We just happen to see the wings in the defile break first in these games.

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  14. Fun by the lakeside. Definitely not a Roman holiday this session .

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  15. Sometimes everything goes right for a general, but that means everything goes wrong for another.
    War is heck. 😁

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  16. Richard's dice rolling was terrible. That made in an easier game for me and Lee

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    1. Richard’s dice were, indeed, terrible. I have not been a witness to anything that brutal in a long, long time.

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    1. Thank you, Ray! It will be interesting to see how you play from the other side of the table.

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    2. It should be interesting, that's for sure!

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    3. I would not count on Richard having such abysmal luck two games in a row.

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  18. A grand game and fine write up. A crushing defeat for Rome, how big a part did the dice gods play in it one wonders?

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    1. Thank you, Phil! The Dice Gods played a role at arriving at the final solution but, ultimately, was no different from the historical result.

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  19. Another entertaining game Jonathan…
    The pendulum certainly swung back heavily on the Romans this time…
    All the best. Aly

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    1. Thanks, Aly!

      The pendulum certainly swung back heavily against the Romans. We get another look at this battle later today in a one-on-one game.

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  20. How cool to host a remote game with the Rejects!

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    1. They are a fun group to guide through a remote game.

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  21. Wow, early on I thought the Romans might have a chance! Devastating defeat and well played by the Cathaginians.

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    1. Had Richard's dice not ben so bad, the Romans could have made a much better showing.

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