Greek Persian Wars - The March of the 10,000

This battle was loosely based on the 10,000 Spartans that fought for Cyrus the Younger in a civil war against Artaxerxes the second. The Spartans ended up on the losing side of the battle and had to fight their way out of Persia, this battle was a theoretical action of a Spartan rearguard against an attacking Persian force that was trying to cut them off.

For the full details of the battle I would like to refer to this wonderful detailed write-up that my opponent did, but be warned it is full of Greek proproganda and heresay:

http://themonkeythatwalks.blogspot.com/2012/02/plateaesque-kind-of.html

I won’t repeat the details of the battle other how I saw it go from my perspective. My overall plan was to win the flanks and hold the centre, and that’s why I placed my infantry behind difficult terrain. I knew my infantry was outclassed and didn’t want to commit them to battle. I was relying heavily on my horse archers and light javelins to shoot him up on the flanks and disorganize his line. So when my unit of horse archers got completely wiped by a lucky roll of the dice I knew it was going to be downhill from there.

I made a few key mistakes in the battle, I placed my general on the wrong flank where he got bogged down in terrain and was too far for his command distance. I hadn’t played the game in a while and so lost the skirmish battle due to poor placement. My execution of attack with my infantry and medium cavalry was poorly co-ordinated, it was my plan B and when I needed them to move the terrain hindered my progress severely.  Lastly, I could’ve made a better army list and used more FL with Javelins and probably one more horse archer in place of CM.

All in all is was a good game, albeit a bit frustrating, I learned some more important lessons about how to use the Persians. They are a tricky army to play with because they have a lot of diverse weapons but not all of them are good and they have to be combined to be used effectively.

Also, looking back through my blog posts I noticed I’ve lost 5 out of my last 6 games, with my sole victory being a technical victory at a high price in material. I hope this trend ends soon, but in the meantime here’s how the battle looked from the perspective of the doomed Persians.

Greek Persian Wars - Part 2 – Battle of Marathon

Continued from the last post...

The Greeks won a critical initiative roll in turn 3 and were able to get spears into the Persian sparabara before the Persians could fire their bows. Then it became a race against time - could the hoplites break the Persian infantry before the Persian cavalry came to rescue them.

The Persian Sparabara and Javelinmen waiver and fall back under the Greek assault.

The Persian cavalry arrive on turn 4!

The Persians put up a final stiff resistance but despite the arrival of the cavalry their Sparabara collapse and the Persian camp is sacked by the Greek general himself, causing a route of the Persian army. It was too little too late for the cavalry to be able to save the day.

Final Comments:  As the Persian commander I enjoyed the battle though I made some mistakes with my initial cavalry unit and the placement of my skirmishers. The Greeks also rolled impeccably well on their discipline tests and got across the table pretty quickly, kudos the Greek player for being aggressive.

In terms of scenario design, I’m not sure if I should’ve had the cavalry arrive sooner, if it was poor tactics on my part or good rolling for the Greeks that caused the one-sided route. It’s probably a combination of all three. If I ran it again I would allow the Persians to roll for their cavalry too arrive one turn earlier and would probably add a few units to the Persian side to make it even on points prior to the cavalry arrival.

At least the battle was a pretty good representation of the actual battle. Next up Thermopylae.

Greek Persian Wars - Part 1 – Battle of Marathon

This is my first post in my new blog. Since this year is the 2500 year anniversary of the Battle of Marathon I’ve been wanting to play out the battle for a while. I would like to eventually play out a scenario for each of the major battles in the Greek-Persian wars, this is the first installment.

I made a few changes to the actual historical OOB’s, I added one unit of cavalry per side and gave the Greeks some skirmishers, I also allowed for the possibility of the Persian cavalry returning in time to save the day. This scenario was played out with Impetus using 25/28mm miniatures. The Persians have the beach to their left flank, the Greeks to their right. The Athenians are the attackers, the Persians are the Defenders, the Persians deploy first and the Greeks automatically have the first move. Since each side only has one command I decided to modify the Impetus deployment rules and have side take turns deploying half their units.

To add a little twist to the game I decided to allow for the possibility of the Perisan cavalry coming back in time to save the day. Starting from Turn 4 roll a dice to determine if the Persian Cavalry arrive, on a roll of 5 or 6 they successfully arrive on the Persian right flank at least 30U from the centre line. Use 2 dice on Turn 5, 3 on Turn 6 and so on.

Marathon Map

Map of Marathon



Greek OOB




Persian OOB





Greeks and Persians Line up for Battle

 Greek Hoplites advance under a hail of Persian arrows. On the Greek left, there was a duel between skirmishers and cavalry. The Greeks got lucky and managed to destroy the one Persian cavalry unit on the table, but the Greek cavalry was crippled in the process. On the Greek right, anchored by the sea, the hoplites were able to use double moves to run across the table in 2 turns.

The Greeks won a critical initiative roll in turn 3 and were able to get spears into the Persian sparabara before the Persians could fire their bows. Then it became a race against time - could the hoplites break the Persian infantry before the Persian cavalry came to rescue them.