Bagradas 255BC- A nice big refight!!

My Romans emerged from their cupboard alongside Paul's Romans to take on a fraction of Nick's Carthaginians, to refight the battle of Bagradas in 255BC. 

Nick has enough Carthaginian lead to create Hannibals army in a 1:2 scale.....yes he has two figures for every one of Hannibal's. I may be overstating the case but to lay his Carthaginians edge to edge requires 30 feet of table. But in this instance he brought a small fraction with him to fight this historical refight.

Historically the Carthaginians, under the command of the Spartan Xanthippus defeated the Consul Regulus...saving Carthage. So it was time to give it a go......... (maybe the Romans (Ross and Paul) could reverse History!)

We tried to follow the historical sources to get the deployment of both armies correct. The one big standout in terms of deployment was the Carthaginian first line which included all the elephants supported by skirmishers. This would play a very interesting role in the final outcome because when the Carthaginains (Nick, Phil and I) went forward we sent our supporting lines close behind the elephants to mop up the squashed mess that the elephants were going to create. Well we hoped they would create a squashed mess.....but you know what they say about the best laid plans....they never survive contact with the enemy!

The Romans (Paul and Ross) had other ideas as they raced their velites and allied light troops forward to engage the big beasties.....and our trumpeting behemoths found themselves being harassed......and the Carthaginians suddenly found themselves with retreating and enraged elephants disrupting their supporting lines. This was not the way is was supposed to happen!
The Romans, once they realised that our elephants were creating problems in our line,  slammed into the Carthaginians with their Princeps and Hastati.

The Roman Legions begin to go from defence in depth....to a thin red line!

The Cartho right flank

In the end the Romans were successful!!!! Go figure....I wasn't commanding my Romans and they won. Hmm.....I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from that....except that my Republican Romans in the last four years have suffered a total of 22 losses, 1 draw and 1 win. And I wasn't in charge when they won. Army for sale: Cheap!
So we had a rewrite of History.
In the Brother's version I guess the Romans could go on to sack Carthage......and change the course of history...no Hannibal, no Second Punic War, no Third Punic war.??????
Still, although, as the Carthaginian,  I got my arse kicked- my Romans were on the winning side!!!

THE TABLE: Romans on the left, Carthos on the right.

Carthaginian left.

The Carthaginian Heavy Infantry

Here you can see how close our second line was to the Elephants...when the elephants started having problems....the next line was too close to get out of the way!! Instant Carthaginian toe jam!

Carthaginian Cavalry

The Cartho left flank.....the game would be decided in the centre where those f%^king elephants squashed more Carthaginians than Romans

See????...Way too close.

This is the point where the Carthaginian infantry were far too close the to the elephants....a retreating elephant can do some very nasty things to a well dressed line of infantry!!

Numidian and Cartho cavalry cleaning up on the flank...but the centre was a stomping fest

The Romans, after hammering our elephants followed up...hitting the disordered infantry.

WAY TOO CLOSE!!

Carthaginian Elephant casualty pool.....the Romans slaughtered these guys!