The Crimissos River

I seem to be working backwards through a big weekend of gaming, but it's a question of priorities. If I run out of energy to tell you about all of it, at least you will have heard the highlights. Before we played Settlers (described below) Arnold and I played the second scenario from C&C: Ancients. This time Arnold had even read the rules, and we had some experience from our previous play.

Arnold started with the Carthaginians. Many of the Carthaginian forces start across the river and need to ford it to get into play. Knowing this, I moved my light forces closer to the river so that when the Carthaginians were crossing I would be able to fire at them. However, Arnold ran out of cards to move the forces across the river, and I have no cards nor motivation to move them forward, so that entire flank of the battle stagnated.

Most of the conflict was on the left (looking from the Syracusan, i.e. rule book side). The Carthaginian heavy chariots and heavy infantry advanced to engage the Syracusan leaders and heavy infantry. The Syracusan heavies were massacred, with Timoleon fleeing to the safety of the hills with only auxilia for protection. Mamercus took 2 units of heavy infantry towards the river to pursue the Carthaginian light forces (in a desperate attempt to win some banners before the game ended). Hasdrubal and the heavy Carthaginian forces besieged Timoleon on the hill, until Timoleon's death signalled victory for Carthage.

In the return match, I again started trying to move the cross-river forces into play. However the Syracusan line advanced quickly, outnumbering the Carthaginians. When the Syracusan line hit, the Carthaginians broke. The Carthaginians were quickly mopped up, and Arnold won the game with only 7 cards played. Damn! That was the strategy I had wanted to play earlier but didn't have the cards for.

Two glorious victories to Arnold Horshack! The shame! Anyway, I don't want to talk about that any more, not when I could be blogging about games I actually won.