Sarmatian vs Later Carthaginian

My Sarmatian testing is going well, so I thought it was time to play an extremely difficult battle. I faced Paolo with later Carthaginian. Elephants with regular command dice are not friendly to my lancers.

I defended and tried to have a bare battlefield to engage in good going the numerous punic light infantry. Paolo rolled a gully with which he protected a flank. Facing the elephants and rolling very low pips on first bound (1,1,2) I tried to manouver out of the way my knights, organizing an attack against the static right flank of the enemy and pull the enemy mounted over the gentle hill, to exploit the hill advantage.

What I did not guess was that Paolo gave the high pip to the cavalry and just the average to the Elephants. Knowing that I could have tried to manouver the knights to the left flank and try a frontal combat with the punic cavalry.

Carthaginian quickly outflanked my army, while Sarmatians were struggling to get in position

Another round of bad pips let the Sarmatians charge one turn too early, creating a mess of disordered knights. The combat dice were hot by the way, and many punic spears were trampled

The situation was critical now, with the Numidians engaging in combat the Sarmatian light horses

In few bounds the carthaginian spear command was broken. Now the elephants entered combat

The Carthaginians were winning the skirmishers combat, opening also the way to sack the nomad baggage. The last hope was a flying column of lancers coming to the rescue

The Sarmatians proved to be real warriors and destroyed most of the punic cavalry (i.e. very hot combat dice, surviving several hard flanked combats)

The losses were very high. Elaphants proved unstoppable and broke the Sarmatian CiC corps, disheartening a second command

The last combat round was very tense, with losses for both armies and a mutual break. 13-12 for the Sarmatians

A very nice game, which I almost losed for playing a too complex plan with bad pips. The killing power of the knights kept me in the game. I need more practice with such an extreme army