In the middle of August (one of the days it was not raining….) I went over to Paul Schneider's and had an 'outdoor' game since the weather was fantastic. Paul had set up his table on his patio where we would try out his new Bosphoran Greek army against my Hannibal Carthaginian one. It was great! Gary Comardo and I used to set up our wargame tables outside several years ago (when we both played WRG 7^th). The figures always look so much better…well, most of them…in natural light.

Needless to say, my die rolling was true to form. For terrain, for the first time ever, I had nothing on my side of the table except a woods in my center that Paul had placed! I had three discards and two hills that ended up in Paul's sectors...the dice Gods were not going to kind. Besides that, I rolled a '3' for one of my generals...re-rolled up to a big '5'. Neither CinC was very good; both of us were Brave at best, so no terrain die roll help on that.

My Carthaginian left would be refused, hanging around the woods and hoping to hold (with my worst general, two units of Gallic warbands in the woods and a Romanized Libyan heavy infantry unit holding the extreme left flank).... My right would attack. Here I placed a unit of skirmisher horse, three units of Gallic cavalry, my CinC and second in command with three SI units, two units of Spanish foot and two units of Libyan heavy foot in support.

The center was lightly held...an elephant unit, another Libyan foot unit and a small cavalry unit to the rear in support. Paul had placed his army all along the table edge, so both of us had many units out of place when the blind was lifted.

I determined to use my right in an all out assault on the Bosphorans before they could get to my refused left (Paul had two units of SC, four units of HI pike, three units of SI and two units of Thracians all heading that way!) Paul had lined up two units of Skythian SC and a large four stand unit of armored nobles supported by two unarmored peltast units to hold in the face of my right flank attack.

All went fairly according to plan as I pinned and routed the two units of Skythians before slamming into the armored Bosphoran nobles...so far, the combat dice were fair...this would change! My successful Gallic HC slugged it out with the AC until my SC unit managed to get to their rear and hit them, forcing the AC to fragment and rout.

The various foot units battled it out with my pilum armed (and heavier armored) foot breaking his unarmored peltasts...somehow overcoming some truly horrendous die rolls...'1' to '6' for random, and charge die rolls of '1' for example. As I closed on one of his generals, he retreated and I shot him in the back with javelins (the joy of SC), almost killing him.

At this point, Paul had gotten into charge range of my elephants with his foot (he was within 1/2 of his normal movement range of them), so I retreated them, but picked up a disorder from doing so. I needed to buy time. He was down 5 units to my none and needed to lose two more units (he had a breakpoint of 7, mine was 6). I charged the elephants into his foot and lost badly, losing a stand but passing the morale test.

Paul had also gotten around to hitting my Gallic warbands in the woods, but the warband Gauls took care of his Thracians and my Libyans went after his SC, forcing them to retreat. By then, my right flank had swung on his center and the battle ended.

We both had a fine time of it, the weather helped and it is back to the drawing board for both of us to further tune up these armies for Fall In.