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Well, the last short ASL scenario was shorter than I expected, and so Patch and I were back for another CC:A scenario from Truceless War. This time, Hannibal’s Camp was up, which is certainly unusual. It’s the first time we’ve actually seen ramparts and fortified camps in a scenario.

And now I realize we got the latter wrong. Forgot to take off a die for all attacks out of the camps. And that probably benefited me more than Patch, darn it. Well, we got the rest of it right….

Anyway, I had the Carthaginians first again, who definitely have the short end of the stick. The rebels go first, have six cards and three more units. The Carthaginians have the defensive position, but aren’t properly occupying it at the game start, and start the game with three cards, going up to five over the first couple turns. Oh, and they lose instantly if their leader dies.

I spent my first couple turns sorting out my defensive line on the ramparts, and worried that Patch would manage to envelop my flanks. (Not that likely at the rate units move in this game, but I wasn’t thinking of that.) Patch shook out his line before going in on the left, and crumpling my flank. I countered with a Mounted Charge to hit his leader-led mediums with my elephants, and move up the MC on the other flank. The elephants just barely took out the Med, advanced and took on the Heavies that the leader evaded to, but could only get two hits on six dice. The battle back killed them, but six blocks to two is better than we usually manage.

Patch followed up with a Line Command, and both sides got chewed up. He took out my left-side Mediums in three attacks, at the cost of half of an Aux and the death of his Heavy, with the leader going with it. He took out the Aux in the center of my line at the cost of two Heavy blocks, and he advanced into the rampart. He failed to damage the right-side Med, but they took three blocks off an Aux.

I activated the left flank area, where I was still grimly holding on, knocked out his Aux, damaged his Med and forced them to retreat two hexes with my Heavies, who Advanced and attacked his heavies to knock them out. 5-3

For the second round, I took a pretty slow and steady approach, trying to use as much archery as possible. Both flanks have some light troops, so it’s not hard to do some archery, and the sword hits that the defenses protect against don’t count on archery anyway. I got pretty lucky and reduced both ‘corner’ mediums to two blocks without much else happening. I advanced a little more, took a hit on my Heavies, and took out his left-side Med. Patch moved his MC up, got three hits on the Aux at the end of the line, and retreated out of the way.

Then I played the Line Command I’d finally drawn, engaging the center, and drawing close on the left flank (which I had a lot of cards for). My Med went after his remaining corner Med, suffered a First Strike that weakened them before knocking his Med out and occupying the camp on Momentum. The rest of his line held, one Aux losing two blocks in return for killing two Med and two Heavy blocks in my line. Patch managed to finish both of them off in his turn, but couldn’t touch the Med in the camp. I moved up the left flank, killing his elephants and forcing two light units back.

Patch pursued my right flank, finishing off the Aux, but failing to touch the Med again, and losing his Aux to the battle back. I forced a light to lose two blocks to a banner on the baseline, and Patch played Mounted Charge (he’d been about to play it when I got the elephants—thank goodness!), and his MC and my Med traded one block apiece. I managed to get another banner on his Light to kill it on the baseline for the win. 5-3