The Battle of Adrianapolis

This past weekend we got together to play another game of Hanibal at the Gates. This was another fight in Greece between the invading forces of Levant, who used a Macedonian Successor model army against the defending Greeks who chose a Roman model army. You can read the campaign master's official account of the game in Sallusto's History starting on page 16. For the first two photos, I've stitched together the photos using some on-line panorama software. Getting a single-photo of the entire tabletop was not possible from my position at the table.

The Levant army was comprised of two cataphract divisions and four large pike block wings. With some woods and dense hills on one side of the battlefield, the Levant army covered the entire open area of the battlefield. Their plan was simple - roll straight forward and crush the Roman army with sheer numbers. The plan worked very well. Assigned the Roman center my orders were to tie up the left two pike wings with my legion while Bob used his Veteran legion, and some reinforcements from my Extrordinarii division to attack the Cataphracts and Mike would use his two legions to try to overwhelm the right most pike wing by out flanking it in some woods. For my contribution I only successfully slowed down one of the two pike blocks, the other split off into two smaller groups and continued to harass Bob's command. The cost of the delay was the majority of my legion with no significant damage to the pikes they opposed.

Bob had some early success on the left, but then Charlie stabilized things there and the Cataphracts held firm, their heavy armor proving difficult to attack. By the end of the battle Bob had lost his legion and only eliminated two stands of Cataphracts. Some of our cavalry had managed to squirt through the Levant lines, but it was too little, to late.

On the right, Mike's command was able to finally eliminate the Levant flank guard, but by then the two Levant pike wings had done their damage, killed a few legion stands and turned around to nullify the turned flank. On his flank Mike was able to eliminate a single pike stand with concentrated skirmish fire and a few attacks from his legion stands.


As the night got long, Mike chose to end the battle as a fighting withdrawal. This saved him some casualties in the campaign, but also let the Levant invader off with less total casualties than a completed battle. I expect more unrest in Greece in upcoming turns. Greece seems to be where all the action is so far in the campaign.

Below are some more photos from the game, including some eye-candy shots of the figures.