Sunday, 30 January 2011

Plutarch's Wars: A Successor Battle

The Wars of Alexander's Successors have interested me for a long time and make for good wargames. A number histories have quite a lot of detail about the battles and the troops who fought them. The various generals have armies which are similar enough for generalship to play an even larger part than normal while each having their own quirks to make them distinctive.
We recently fought a Successor battle with DBMM at our club. The armies were equal points - 500 apiece - one being based on Antigonus One-eyed's forces (Asiatic Early Successor) and the other being Seleucid. It was similar to the clash at Ipsos which resulted in Antigonus's death. It is possible to recreate the coalition force at Ipsos using the Lysimachid list but I was slightly short of some of the necessary troops, especially the eight elephants needed for one side.
I feel Successor battles work best at 500 points (or more) as it gives you enough points to have a sizeable phalanx while still having the troops to fight a good battle on the wings.
Here are a couple of pictures - the club lighting isn't up to much and using the flash didn't improve the pics much :(

Here is the Antigonid phalanx, flanked by a vineyard. The Seleucid elephants are advancing. They should be towerless at this point but I haven't finished the basing of the ones I have - it was a last minute decision to use these armies!

The whole field near the beginning of the game. Seleucids on the right.

The clash of pike. The Seleucid argyraspides initially killed a number of enemies but overall there was enough toing-and froing that the Antigonid's were beginning to threaten the Seleucid flank. Out of shot, the rest of the Seleucid pike were beginning to beat the rest of the Antigonid phalanx.

The situation on the Seleucid left. This was the major clash of cavalry as the right was partially covered by a marsh.﻿ The Seleucids moved their right flank general and his agema to this wing. This didn't create a superiority in numbers but did improve the command situation. We had a clash of elephants as well as a swirling cavalry battle. The Seleucids broke the Antigonids but it is unlikely that many of them could have avoided pursuing the enemy from the board.
We called time here. The Seleucids didn't need to inflict many more casualties to break the Antigonid phalanx but their own left was beginning to falter and this could have had a devastating impact on their own phalanx.

Next - some photos of some Successor generals.

1 comment:

Figurenschieber said...

Very impressiv and inspirering battle. Thanks for sharing.