Age of Caesars - Palmyra in action

First go!

AI savvy gamers had produced quite reliably correct Palmyran BB
and of course I wanted to give it a go! Read all about it.

Preparations

Agreeing on this game also kicked off my AoCs painting project: Warlord and Camel Cataphracts! They are planned for Parthians, but should serve fine as Palmyrans too. Models are 3D-printed Scropha Miniatures.

The New Feud

Me and my brother-in-law Petri are prepping to play in the Saga World Cup this Summer and Petri will be playing Sassanids. Not exactly an antique faction in the Saga context, but close enough.

We agreed to play the New Feud from the WC tournament pack.

Petri rolled to be the 1st player and picked Counselor and I chose the Mystic.

My Mystic and Counselor

Armies

Palmyrans

- Warlord mounted

- 1,5p.  HG: Camel Caraphracts

- 1p. Legionaires

- 2,5p. warriors: all mounted with CB

- 1p. levy archers

Sassanids

- Warlord cataphract

- 1p. HG cataphract

- Elephant

- 2p. warriors: 8 mounted and 8 with CB

- 2p. Levies: 12 swoed and board, 12 archers

Terrain & deployment

So the hill in the middle comes from the scenario. Petri placed a ruin on his side and I countered with a rocky ground - recently made terrain by me

Petri then placed a lovely swamp in the middle of my DZ, I chose to move the ruins M away to make it quite obsolote. Petri finished terrain placement with woods on his left flank.

Deployment: placed my CB cavalry on both flanks - ready to react. My left was protected by the mighty Camelphracts - they'd welcome a charge by Sassanid cav! Legionaires faced the hill and screened my archers against any alpha strikes and finally my Warlord war in the middle.
Sassanid Warlord and his HG took and extreme right flank (which I think was a mistake, as they are quite slow). Then mounted CB, elephant and S&B levies in the middle, then archers in the woods and finally fighting cav securing their left flank.

My left

My middle and right

Rounds 1. & 2.

Sassanids cautiously pushed forward, while my horse archers backed 
away to avoid a one move charge from the enemy cav. 

On my R2. my Camelphratcs charged first the enemy mounted archers
and then proceeded to "try and win the game" by charging the Councelor.
Unfortunately neither a Saga die was lost nor the Councelor killed, while I 
lost 3 of my HG

My Legionaires charged the S&B levy on the hill, but nothing much happened, 

as the levies closed ranks. Petri was now scoring points from the Counselor standing on the hill...

End of R2

Round 3. & 4.

It started to rain... luckily our BB's are laminated

Sassanid Flames of Atar was really holding my right flank mounted 
archers at bay - their levy archers would deal serious damage with these
puffs to reaction shooting

Sassanid R3 saw my HG's being chipped away. Their HG and Warlord finally moved towards
the center, but could not charge right away as some of the models were behind the ruins.

So my mounted CBs on my left moved in and shot and charged the Councelor finally taking him out.
They also shot at Sassanid CBs and dropped them to 2 models. My levy archers boldly moved and shot at the elephant, but failed to cause more then just one F. My Legionaires made another attack on the levies, but bounced again. My Mystic (whom had delivered 2 SD every round so far) moved out from his rocky hiding place, towards the hill...

Round 4. saw the "battle of the hill" continue: Sassanid elites charged my cavalry and were then both shot by my levies and charged by my Legionaires - some pila were also thrown. My Warlord also threw him into the frey and beat the levies on the hill... road was open to move the Mystic to the hill and win the game.

In the 5th round I only got 3 Saga dice as the Mystic played his trick.
Luckily Sassanid's weren't creating that many SD either... 

Final moves in the game were not documented with pictures: My Warlord moved to the hill and the 

Mystic followed and lurked behind him. Sassanids made a final attempt and managed to take out my

Warlord, but then they ran out of steam... My 6th round was never played as I had already secured the win.

Conclusions

Palmyra sure has potential, but it's an advanced level board to play. It takes extra effort to figure out

how to place your SD. Many times I found myself thinking "if only this die would be Roman / Phoenician". Started with 5ph and 3 Roman dice. I played Changing inluences once (quite early) and balanced the dice to 4-4.