ADLG Later Macedonian v Republican Roman

Tonight's game was another ADLG game against Stan's Republican Romans. I'd previously used Carthaginians, Samnites and Spanish among other armies against Stan so this time I decided to use Later Macedonian. I went for a fairly simple army composition with one command of Pikemen, one of Thracians and half the cavalry and one command of Galatians and the remaining cavalry.

The Macedonians deployed traditionally with the Thracian command on the left, Pikemen in the middle and the Galatians on the right. The Romans on the other hand went in for a somewhat surprising column of Legionaries and Italian Allied Infantry on each flank connected by some cavalry:

The Macedonians advance while the Roman cavalry moves up to face the Phalanx:

The Macedonians manage to trap both Roman light horse and kill them. The Roman heavy cavalry fall back:

The two Roman columns shake out into line while the Phalanx pushes on:

On the Macedonian right the Galatians charge home while the rest of the command holds back:

The Macedonian left is also engaged. In the centre the Phalanx is cutting down all opposition:

The Thracians cut through the Romans facing them. Two units of Romans are looking isolated to the rear of the Roman line:

One of the Galatians has been destroyed. The huge gap in the Roman centre is very apparent now:

On the right the Macedonian cavalry fall back, The remaining Galatian holds on despite being hit in the flank and frontally:

The Galatians fight on and even manage to rally:

The Phalanx  and the Thracians mop up the last Romans in the centre and left:

Remarkably the Galatians on the right fight on, even managing to disrupt the Romans in front of them. The Romans are fetching up a third Legionary unit to try to finish them off:

The Romans have taken heavy losses now and, while the Macedonian right flank has been thrown back and the Thracians have lost two units, the battle is definitely favouring the Macedonians now:

Two of the Phalanx units have broken through to the Roman camp. The camp puts up a brave defence but eventually falls breaking the Roman army:

This was an interesting idea from Stan to deploy as he did. If I remember rightly the Romans did indeed deploy like that in some battles though perhaps with an allied infantry centre rather than cavalry. The problem with it was that it left all the troops who were poor against the Phalanx facing them. In theory the Romans could break through the Macedonian flanks but, being heavy infantry, this takes a long time especially when the Macedonian cavalry (and the valiant Galatians) could hold them up.

I was expecting the Romans to form a solid line and oppose the Phalanx with the Legions which is a bit of a lottery for both sides so the deployment certainly surprised me. I think Stan got drawn in to leaving too many troops in the centre, if he had withdrawn his cavalry quickly the Phalanx might have ended up with nothing to fight and they are very unwieldy so it is hard to redeploy them. Next time I'll have to think of another suitable army to use......