418 Naissus (268 AD)

We played this game 3 times today, each game lasting 30-40 minutes.

The first time, my opponent was the Romans, who peppered me with missile fire while I struggled against bad cards to get my lines organized. The two Heavy Cav in the center received 16 dice of missile fire in the first two round and had 1 hit left for each.

Then he started getting lucky, both with dice and cards and I made a mistake while trying to recover the situation that made things worse. Final score was 7-2 and I was lucky to do that well.

This reinforces the old adage that it does not matter how smart you are if luck is against you. My opponent agreed to do the scenario again with the same sides.

The second time went better for me, although it was not great. I managed to get the Heavy Cav off to my left with only a couple of hits and get my line straightened out but took continual missile fire and he used his Cav to kill a couple of my units while he brought forward his infantry.

He moved his right wing Cav forward and we had a serious fight with both sides getting lucky and me getting the worst of it. At the end, I was down 22-12 on hits and the score was 5-2 in his favor with a lot of his units being dinged up.

I prayed and played Sparticus and got VERY lucky in the exchange that followed. The score after that was 6-5 in favor and I was leading 26-24 in hits. He played Clash of Shields to kill one more unit but I finished the game, 7-6.

In both games, he played First Strike when I attacked his first Heavy and killed the full strength Warrior unit that was attacking it.

We switched sides for the last game. I followed his lead and peppered the Heavy Cav with missile fire. He responded with Mounted Charge (which I didn't start with in either game). This didn't end well for him, exchanging the 2 Heavy Cav for a Medium Cav and a hit on a Heavy Infantry.

Worse for him, I was able to get my Light Cav screen out of the center of the map while he had to set up his line and my formation was in good shape.

He played a Double Time card and moved his leader and 4 Warriors into the middle of my line and then got terribly lucky, killing 5 units (including both Heavy Infantry) in exchange for losing a Warrior and having 2 Warriors knocked to 1 hit each. But the Warrior with his leader was untouched and I had several weakened units within his reach.

I tried to rescue the situation by charging with a Heavy Cav and a leader but got only 1 hit and no retreats. His return fire scored 3 hits (1 in 8 chance of doing that), destroyed my unit.

I can only observe that you are doing very well when you kill 5 full strength units with the play of one card.

2 solitaire games, with the Romans winning both times, 7 - 5, and 7 - 4. Neither game had a fight over the wagons.