This one does look a cert for the Carthaginians. A better army, more cards, more leaders and they go first, but my solitaire scores of 2-2 didn't bare this out. I was confident however, through these plays, that the best Carthaginian strategy lay in a steady cautious approach.

Get the elephants out the way, gather the strong heavy and warrior infantry together and launch the assault. when the Romans are faultering the cavalry and elephants are there to finish the job. Simple, or so I thought.

Face to face play, and horrendous dice rolling, have a habit of blowing the best laid plans out the water. I played my brother this summer with him as the Romans. My starting cards were mostly flank and mounted cards, but rather than be patient I launched my cavalry and elephants forward in total divergance with my plan. What was I thinking! The elephants were initially successful in taking out a whole unit of mediums to a mounted charge, but everything else went absoloutly t*ts up from there in. In one assault by a medium and 2 Light cavalry units all with leader benefit (10 rolls), against a light infanty unit with no leader support and no evade path, I inficted 2 casualties whilst losing 2 mediums (double triangle), leader (double leader), 2 lights (double circles) and a whole light cavalry unit (double retreat). This ridiculous luck continued, not in such an exteme vein, for the rest of this short game and I lost 7-2.

Romans formed a forward line by centering their LI two hexes in front of the MI...and there they managed to stay, until almost the end. Carthaginians advanced their own LI straight ahead, leaving a central gap for the Elephants to charge straight through.

Romans anchored their LI line with Auxilia. Carthaginians advanced Elephants down the central corridor, and Warriors on the right.

Things then got bogged down for the Carthaginians, who were restricted for too long to flank advances. The Romans found that although Elephants are large (and, here, immobile), they are surprisingly hard to hit with javelins :-/ However, the hits added up, and eventual Rampages ended up with far too many brown-on-brown Elephant casualties. Xanthippus and the Carthaginian HI waited, camped at the rear, for the carnage to finish.

Meanwhile, on the Carthaginian right, Warriors (supported by cavalry and LI) started making a mess of the Roman Auxilia and LI. A detachment of Roman MI and HI tried to make a difference, but a well-timed First Strike saw the Roman HI sent reeling back in tatters. Things were looking equally bad for the Romans on the Carthaginian left, where Hamilcar had brought his Light and Medium cavalry detachment forward to make a mess of the Roman Auxilia and LI on *that* flank too.

Sensing disaster, Regulus had a moment of inspired leadership, sending his own cavalry swinging around to Hamilcar's rear, to be the anvil to Regulus' MI hammer. While the Roman cavalry took terrible casualties, the combination of missile fire from the flanks, relentless infantry at the front, and a blocked retreat path, saw the dissolution of Hamilcar's detachment.

The Carthaginian HI came to life just in time to see Regulus's unit chase Hamilcar off the field. Despite Hasdrubal's exhortations that the Roman left was about to collapse, Xanthippus wasn't so sure, and the Carthaginian forces decided that enough was enough, ceding the field to the Romans.

Regulus's report noted that while Roman losses were minimal, could he please have some more Thracians, as he seemed to have run out...

Romans win 7-5.