We can see Athens

Missus was out so free for another game, three in one week, my cup it runneth over, I'll be suffering from combat fatigue shortly. Anyway it was another opportunity for Kevin to get the hang of his Greek City States army, four large hoplite phalanxes this time, one mercenary and another veteran, his flank guards were two peltast units, and three skirmish commands, one the elite Cretan archers. Facing a phalanx in WAC is no fun for Romans despite what history teaches us, so I went for numbers hoping to crush the Greek flanks and then outflank the phalanxes, so I had two regular legionary cohorts and two with raw troops, the latter had officers to boost their morale. My flanks were loaded with massed Auxiliary archers, horse archers, infantry and bow armed skirmishers. Kevin does not yet have Greek cavalry so I thought it unfair to bring mine, apart from the horse archers.

Kevin's mercenaries and regular hoplites.

Legio XII on the left, Greeks on the right.

I once again decided to hit the flanks while keeping my centre out of the way, this was not too difficult as the Greek advance in phalanx was fairly slow and when they were near, I withdrew my cohorts where possible. The flanks did not crumble as fast as I thought they would, my large archer unit was not very good and the skirmishers opposite took forever to shift, I did eventually manage to chase away some skirmishers and peltasts and put my Auxiliary infantry into a good position against the Greek left.

The Romans move on the flanks and the Greeks on the centre.

Steady lads, steady.

I had a bit of a Pyrrhic victory on my left, I quickly destroyed the skirmishers but the peltasts held me up and actually fought my Lanciarii to the last man, I tried twice to make a glancing attack to reduce their numbers with the horse archers but they refused. My plan to use the Lanciarii to hit the hoplite line therefore failed. By this time the mercenaries and a regular unit were upon my two regular cohorts, I expected defeat but in an amazing combat one unit held and only narrowly missed a draw while Cohors I stopped and then routed their enemy dispersing them. A large hole had opened up in the Greek line. This setback seemed to unsettle the Greek commander.

My cohort fighting against the mercenaries held for one more turn before turning and fleeing for the rear, but the rout led the mercenaries away from the main battle. The crises had been reached, there were still two hoplite units not in action but slowly being surrounded by Romans, a quick, desperate advance may have saved the day but one of the units withdrew rather than advancing. The Romans seized their moment and attacked, the Greek left was now outflanked and outnumbered, the battle lost.

It's all over for the Greek left.

This may not sound like it but it was a tough fight for the Thunderbolts, the legionaries are outclassed by the hoplite units and therefore need to catch them on the back foot, I could have went with heavy armour and elite units but decided numbers were better for this set up hence the recruits in the line. Kevin was desperately unlucky with the unit which ran, it took casualties but did not manage to inflict any, this, and a dodgy morale throw took the unit out of the battle leaving the remaining two units on the left up against four Roman units. Plan A worked after all.