Vikings vs Carthaginians

I managed to finally square my Vikings off against Marks Carthaginian's this morning. We played a 600 point game, my 8 battle groups vs. 10 of Marks. I lost the initiative, so Mark choose a “Developed” terrain layout and to my luck I managed to get most of the terrain off to the sides so not to imped all my slow moving heavy foot. My deployment was pretty straight forward (normally is for Vikings). Having to face Elephants and a battle group of mounted Swords I was a little worried about one flank but was confident on the rest of my troops, I just had to hold them back from charging in too early. Again I forgot my camera, so these pictures are from my iphone.. hence they are not great but give a bit of a feel to how the game ran it’s bloody course. Mark deploys one battle group in the Village, and I deploy around the enclosed field, the only piece of terrain that really gets in the way in this game for the Vikings. I pop my Archers out in front to do a little bit of teasing. Mark’s battle line ends up with his skirmishers out on the right flank in front of the Elephants. I knew this was gonna be a bit of praying to the Dice god’s to get thought on that flank. The light foot troops force my battle line out after I fail a check not to charge, which ultimately ends in there destruction as the Elephants show how effective they can be. The dice God’s deserting my today. One the left flank I move my Freemen up along with my Archers and try a few shots but nothing comes of it. Mark sits back and waits in the Village. Moving up slowly I decide to split my battle line a little to give me an option to turn my Huscarls into the Elephants, which ends up to be a waste as my battle group of Freeman gets routed and flees, with the Elephants in hot pursuit charging right past the waiting Huscarls. The battle lines then clash and we get into some serious overlaps of battle groups. Taking our time we work through it, the Huscarl heavy weapons doing there work. Mark charges in his Horsemen against my Offensive Spear Freeman on an overlap, which end’s in them breaking and fleeing into my second group  Huscarls that I managed to get around to the back after missing the Elephants. At this point the Carthaginian's have destroyed my right flank and Mark is well ahead with 6 points only needing 8 for the win, and I only had 4 points needing 10. My Viking Thralls stand to protect the camp, I’m hoping they will be a speed bump and maybe allow me to pull back into the game being down in points and Mark only needing one more for the win. Amazingly the Thralls stand proud and strong and deflect the initial impact against the charge.(impact foot troops). But it wasn’t long after this my army fell, the win going to the Carthaginian's. It was a really close game, the match up of troops was very much even for the most part, alot of straight dice rolling with no Point of advantage to either side. And now I think about it, this was very evident in the actual dice rolls as well. Many times did the middle of the battle field come up even. The two things that really lost me the game were. Losing control of one battle group on my right flank which charged forward and broke my battle line, this allowed Marks Elephants to crush them and that pretty much cascaded through that flank. Then the second thing that after thinking about it was the time it took for my Huscarls to break the centre battle groups. That gave Mark time to break my left flank as well and I couldn’t catch up in points quick enough. Great game.