Teutoburg Wald #3... the Angrivarii Boundary

 So far we've played through 2 out of 3 of the Command and Colours Ancients Teutoburg scenarios which have all gone the Germans way, as you'd expect.  This time round we skipped on a few years and gave Germanicus a chance to exact his revenge against the Angrivarii and Arminius.

This time the Germans are on the defensive behind a wall of ramparts but the Romans have arrived in strength (somewhere around 60 000 troops against an unknown number of Germanic tribes)... historically it didn't go well for Arminius but could we re-write history?

The C&C map has the Germans holding a line of ramparts with a wood on their right flank.  I was tempted to leave the safety of the defences and charge along the line into the Romans but given my initial hand of order cards I had a chance to distract my opponent Anthony by pushing through the woods... I hoped this would at least allow me to keep his attention away from a general assault along the Roman line and sure enough it worked.  Thanks to some lucky dice rolls my warbands actually chewed up the Roman left flank quite spectacularly and, more importantly, left the main Roman forces standing around while he tried to shore up the flank.  Would it have been better to ignore the flank attack and push on in the centre... maybe... put it would have allowed me to run riot on the flank so I'm not sure the Romans had much choice.  

As usual all the figures are from Anthony's lovely 54mm collection

The battle was pretty much entirely decided on my right flank.  As always with C&C it can hinge on which order cards you receive and here I was pretty lucky.  Although I mainly had cards allowing me to act on the left and centre sectors, I kept getting a card each turn which allowed me to keep the attack on the right going... it could easily have stalled in which case I might have been tempted to go for an all or nothing attack along the line, but the Gods were with me and I always received a useful card in the nick of time!

I did have one other important ally in the game when Leonard, Chieftain of the Chattii Catii tribe arrived to boost morale!

yep... billions of pounds spent on developing AI technology and I'm using to
enhance cat photos (but he's so cute!!!)