Game two of the To The Strongest tournament at Warfare, using my Early Imperial Romans, was an interesting match against the Polybian Romans: an earlier-period Roman army that presented in a quincunx formation i.e. deployed in three lines in a chequerboard formation, with the younger hastati in front, followed by the more seasoned principes and the veteran triarii behind. This would allow Nigel’s units to rotate his lines on the spot: meaning that he could rally and bring more pila into action even when in a “zone of control”.

My plan was not a subtle one: it was to get stuck in with my legionaries whilst trying to lap my cavalry round his flanks. Accordingly, as the game began, I marched my troops forward smartly.

Things started well, with me managing to get a two-on-one advantage on two of his quincunx, one of which I managed to destroy. The picture below shows two legionary units perpendicular to each other as one has just moved into the square where the quincunx was:

Unfortunately this turned out to be the high point of the game for my Romans!

The two battle lines came together and a grinding melee developed with fortunes swaying backwards and forwards between the two sides. Here’s a pic taken just before the lines clashed:

At tbis point my flank forces should have finished with his and come back in to hit the sides of the enemy line, giving me victory.

What actually happened was that my flank forces got bogged down and couldn’t get the local victories I needed to break themselves free to intervene elsewhere. As an example, here’s a unit of enemy horse sandwiched between two of my units: it should have died very quickly, but just kept surviving everything I could throw at it!