Well, with a very long ASL game, and then another one that we needed to continue when that was done, it’s been a while since Patch and I have done any CC:A. So, tonight we played the battle of Hipparcritae from the Truceless War pack.

I had the Carthaginians first, and lead off with an Out Flanked to put the cavalry on both sides in motion. I had a couple Left Flank cards and figured to keep peppering him with archery there. The Med Cav on my right picked on a Light Cav that couldn’t evade, and picked it off for no losses. I then drew a second Out Flanked, and made the mistake of abandoning the plan and trying it again. This time the MC picked on an Aux, who battled back for two banners that killed the first unit (I lost a block on his turn), and the second lost two blocks, all for doing one block to him.

Patch played Line Command, which nearly surrounded the remaining MC, and killed it despite evading. In addition, archery took out a block on my right flank elephants. I moved my Med Inf up to fill out a line, and advanced my elephants to get them into range. Patch moved up with Inspired Leadership and killed the elephants. I moved up two of my Med Inf and took out a unit of Warriors in exchange for two blocks. The second unit had Hamilcar, who advanced and tried to take out his remaining Warriors, trading two for one (I thought I’d gotten away clear with two banners, but I’d forgotten that the fresh Warriors could ignore one along with a second for his leader).

Both of us re-dressed our center lines at that point, then Patch used a Double Time to go charging into my line. It cost me five blocks across two units, while he lost two. With the end of my line of Med Inf down to one block, I gambled on a Rally, but only got one block back. Patch got his heavies into contact with it to get the two hits and win. 2-5

Flipping sides, Patch led off with Order Two Right to get the elephants in motion, and take out three blocks on my Light Slingers. I got a banner on the battle back, and he finished them off with the trample. I mostly had Right cards, and started trying to develop that flank when a Move-Fire-Move knocked my LC back to the base line and reduced it to one block. He then moved the other two units of elephants up and reduced both of my Heavies to two blocks and forced them to retreat.

I Ordered Heavy to kill an elephant and force the other to retreat. He brought them back up with an Order Three Right (along with ordering two LC), and forced one Heavy to retreat again. I decided to take a chance, and blocked the retreat of the other unit to pull them out of range of further archery. He killed one block, and I got the elephants on battle back.

I dressed my line, and Patch brought in the remaining elephants to kill a Warrior unit (two swords->two triangles), and kill two blocks on the other with momentum. I Ordered Light to deploy my left flank (was was short of left cards all game). The elephants came in again, finishing off the Warriors (forcing Autartas to evade) and reducing an Aux to two blocks before succumbing to battle back.

The elephants were finally gone, but I was seriously short of units in good shape, while Patch had only taken one other block. My plan at that moment was to move Autartas into the middle of the left line where he might still do some good with a couple Aux, but I managed to forget that by the time I played the card and getting him to the line took an extra turn. Patch moved up on the right, and killed one Heavy, reduced the other to one block, and then nearly killed it when the last archery die came up red, but he’d fired on the LC stuck at the base line instead.

I could have taken a turn to try and move my two one block units on the right out of the way, but I figured either he didn’t have any cards for that flank, or the LC would catch up to anything I could do anyway, and shored up the center. Patch played Darken the Sky to knock out the LC and win. 3-5

Not my best play or dice in either game. Patch had good luck with the elephants for once, which really hurt in the second game.