Broken Legions - Argonauts vs Barbarians

I bought a copy of the Broken Legions skirmish rules at MOAB convention. I really like the theme of "weird" ancient Rome where the Emperor (whoever is in power at the time) is involved in clandestine attempts to locate powerful artefacts, with skirmishes, not recorded by historians, taking place in the far reaches of the empire.

Martin and myself tried a game last week with Barbarians AKA Gauls/Germans (Martin) vs Settites AKA Egyptians (me). I got trounced. We decided to try again this week. However, this time I ran Argonauts (Greeks), who I thought would be better at fighting and maybe be able to defeat the rampant barbarians commanded by Martin. The lists used were;

Argonauts (150 points, 9 figures)
1 x Argonaut Captain (32 points)
2 x Heraclean Champions (48 points)
1 x Lost Legionary (20 points) - Auxilia
5 x Argonauts (50 points)

My theory was that this was a hard fighting force - no tricksy magic stuff. Everyone had a melee level of 4, and were heavily armoured.

Barbarians (151 points, 13 figures)
1 x Tribal Chieftan with Battle Axe option (33 points)
1 x Tribal Champion with Battle Axe option (17 points)
6 x Warriors (36 points)
3 x Berserkers  with Warpaint (45 points)
2 x Huntsmen (20 points)

Again, no druids or magic using, just a straight fighting force, albeit the huntsmen can shoot with deadly longbows.

We played the Lost Treasure of the Gods scenario, where a number of sacred sites had to be searched for special items that gave victory points and arcane blessings. This is probably where I made my first mistake - I was outnumbered, but split my force in order to get to more sites faster. In hindsight, I should have kept everyone together as a group, and focused on defeating the enemy first. Below is a photo of the right flank action;

I seemed to initially do well here, defeating some of the barbarian warriors, but as there were more of them, it was difficult to exploit any advantage. The Argonauts made a few critical fumbles, and failed some morale tests and broke from combat. Meanwhile, on the left flank;

I ran into the berserker force. The trick seems to be to get the first charge against them (they are very deadly on the charge), but this is easier in theory than in practice. I defeated one, but the remaining two made short work of my force, even without the aid of the Tribal Champion, who showed up a bit later (after he finished searching the site in the background) just to make sure of things... The next picture shows the overall view;

In two games against the barbarians (commanded ably by Martin), I found them very hard to break. They have a special rule where every one fighting gains increasing attack bonuses as more figures fight. As they also outnumbered the Argonauts, they could get late charges in to gain further bonuses and first attacks. However, I could have used some of the special hero abilities better (such as "To me, Men!") to try and get the jump on the enemy.

If I was to play against the barbarians another time, I might try the Settites again, and give everyone the ability to shoot, and damage the barbarians from a distance before the melee starts.