Routing, not shown: AS/VII LG: c,h. AS/XIV RC: a
In Pursuit: AS/XV Ex RC (w/ 4 hits)
The voting:
Option | Votes | |
|---|---|---|
| No Trump | 1 | |
| Trump with Drusus | 3 | |
| Trump with Laevinus | 2 |
Not many votes this time. The usual update tardiness combined with many previous "Surrender" votes is to blame, no doubt.
Which is too bad, because this is a pretty interesting situation. The Romans don't need to trump for any direct reasons -- they're already ahead on points, and it's not like Drusus or Falco is going to accomplish much anyway. But if Laevinus succeeds, he bypasses Megacles and Leonatus, meaning they get only one activation each. That's significant, as if Pyrrhus is going to catch up he's going to need those extra activations to eliminate units.
On the other hand, if Laevinus tries to trump and fails, the Epirotes could possibly win! There are enough activations remaining to Philocles (2), Leonatus (3), Megacles (3), and Pyrrhus (2) that it's just possible that enough units could be eliminated for an Epirote win.
Conversely, trumping with Drusus has little point in terms of Roman actions, but it does, if it succeeds, cut off the further adventures of Philocles with almost no penalty for failure. So that's where I cast my vote, and that's what we try. But he just fails with a dr '4', so Philocles continues:
Routing, not shown: AS/VII LG: c,h. AS/XIV RC: a
In Pursuit: AS/XV Ex RC (w/ 4 hits)
The two closest routed units are attacked, with the southernmost passing its TQ check and rendering the attacking LC hors de combat because of the resulting hits incurred in Shock.
The second LC goes south to attack the vulnerable velite, which routs during its Pre-Shock TQ Check. It's only rout path is through the path taken by the attacker, which seems a little weird but legal. The velite didn't bother with Reaction Facing Change because it's 4 TQ with a +2 drm is worse odds than sticking around and hoping to put two or three hits on the attacker. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. The velite is eliminated in the resulting pursuit.
So that's 14 more RPs against the Romans:
Current Rout Point totals:
| Side | Current | Limit | Pct | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Romans | 177 | 185 | 96% | |
| Epirotes | 143 | 120 | 119% |
At this point the Romans are guaranteed to exceed their RP limit, too, since there are 15 RPs of routed units not shown on the diagram which will exit the map this turn. So the Roman victory will be, er, Pyrrhic at best.
Philocles tries for Momentum again and succeeds with a '2'. Using the same reasoning as above, and in an attempt to move the game along, Falco tries to trump, and fails with a '7'. So we go on to Philocles' 2nd Momentum.