ADLG Palmyran v Numidian

My first game of 2023 saw my Palmyrans give Gordon's Numidians a practice for a competition Gordon had entered.

This time I thought I'd go for the 'Roman' version of the Palmyrans which resulted in a rather small and not at all elite 22 element army.

The Numidians won the initiative and decided to attack in Steppes (why?!) so I rather fortunately put down an impassable river on one flank. Again oddly Gordon didn't really want any terrain so the rest of the table was rather empty apart from a couple of hills on Gordon's side and a patch of scrub on mine.

On deployment it quickly became apparent that I had totally misjudged Gordon's army. I'd been expecting the usual mix of light cavalry, javelin men, imitation Legionaries and an elephant or two. What I faced was a horde of Medium cavalry, almost all elite and some with the new 'javelin' ability allowing them to shoot from a new (I think) variant in the army list!

The Numidians rush forwards on the flanks:

On the left there is some initial combat and skirmishing:

The Palmyrans are already being split into smaller groups:

On the right they advance but are unable to catch the faster Numidians:

Javelins are hurled at Cataphracts with little success:

On the left both sides take a few losses and hits:

The Palmyran army is becoming scattered with open flanks available to the faster moving Numidians and some of the weaker Palmyran units being picked off:

A rare success for the Cataphracts as they catch up to an evading Numidian!

Unfortunately the Numidians are now taking advantage of the flank opportunities they have engineered:

Further losses to both sides on the left:

Elements are scattered everywhere now, the slower moving Palmyrans can't take much advantage of this though unlike the Numidians:

Eventually the Palmyran army breaks with the Numidians having suffered significant but sustainable losses themselves due to their larger army size:

A fun game in which Gordon totally outwitted me with his army composition! His horde of medium cavalry were very hard to pin down, evading largely when threatened while picking off my weaker units and taking full advantage of gaps that developed in my lines to achieve flank attacks which my troops were just too slow moving to either exploit or defend against.