Had another great game of Dux Italica yesterday with Simon MacDowall. He brought his Gauls over for their first outing. We played a battle rather than a raid and thus were able to play through the pre-battle sequence. Simon won initiative and opted for a combat of champions which , after early success in wounding the Gaul, my champion ended up losing his head! So I called upon the gods, who weren't listening before Simon made a speech which gave him the best possible result - his Warlord an extra level higher AND an extra card in his Fate deck hand!
I hoped to fight the battle aggressively as the gallic faction is very scary if they attack, but it didn't work that way: the character activations favouring Simon who was able to dictate the whole battle. He also gained a stunning Fate hand which he used to devastating effect launching his chariots and then his warriors into my Antepilani warriors who ended up Shocked beyond recovery and fleeing off table, despite not losing too many men killed. This was all due to activation order (and skilful card playing!)
Then Simon managed to get the drop on my Levy shattering his own fanatics and my levy in the process. Sadly my cavalry was just too far away to impact on proceedings despite having worked the flank, so I withdrew from the battle.
Gallic victory! The Romans have now won 2, the Etruscans 1 and the Gauls 1. My Samnites are still being painted. But it's all great fun and seems as though the lists are pretty balanced. We'll run Gauls v Romans again in a fortnight and see if I can get my revenge.
