"We will find a way..."

As Hannibal didn't say "We will either find a way or, much more likely, we won't". James has described the latest events in the Punic War campaign in some detail, so I will restrict myself to a few observations.

Firstly, James has been rather kind in not pointing out the somewhat rash nature of my strategy; or to be more precise the fact that I didn't abandon it when it started to go wrong. As we've been playing for some months I no longer have the excuse that I lack experience. Ah well.

Nope, never read it

More importantly, I still have a number of  reservations around the fighting of the battles using Command and Colours. James mentions the issue of how the Romans are represented. I frankly know nothing about the period, but I was rather assuming that James and Peter did. I was therefore rather surprised when first playing C&C as written to find that it differed in troop classification and also didn't have any specific rules for the triplex acies. No doubt James is on the case already.

The new formula for allocating morale chips

However, I am less sanguine that we are on the right track regarding victory conditions. There is merit in James' current suggestion of a fixed element plus a variable bit, but absolutely no science behind the choice of six and one per five. To my way of thinking the problem is fighting every battle as if it is simply about destruction of the opposing army with one victorypoint per unit destroyed rather than allowing for other objectives. If the Carthaginians had been allowed to have troops off table, but keep the morale for them then we would have had the previous week's paradox in reverse. this time the smaller army would have been unable to win no matter what they did. I can't speak for the C&C ancients scenarios, but the Napoleonic ones include examples of allocation of VPs for holding terrain, exiting off either baseline, and only on destruction of multiple units.

Now those scenarios are obviously playtested and that's a luxury that we don't have. My own current half baked thinking is that at least in cases of mismatched forces (and remember that the last two battles have been 2:1 and 3:1) that there should be a sort of matrix game element where each side separately pitches to the umpire what they would like to achieve in the context of the strategic situation and he defines victory conditions accordingly. He would of course also have to change the post battle outcome. So, for example, in the current battle - which I tried to evade - I might argue that my objective was to withdraw and the umpire might determine that the subsequent retreat losses roll might be adjusted depending on how many units were indeed withdrawn. Peter might argue that he didn't want to deploy all his troops and should be allowed to not retreat if he lost (I'm assuming that the arguments are made separately so he wouldn't know I was retreating) and immediately offer battle again, or perhaps (if he guessed my intentions) that he should be allowed to immediately pursue with the uncommitted forces. Just my twopennyworth.