Antigonids vs Seleucids : the end of the affair

"The Elephants are coming!  The Elephants are coming!"

The first evening of play ended with Antigonid Theureophoroi recoiling from Seleucid slingers as the Seleucid cavalry and elephant wing finally began to get into position to add its weight to events.  A confused mass of pike blocks and other massed infantry units, jumbled up with light troops, was duking it out in the middle while on their right wing the Antigonid cavalry was doing virtually nothing against a thin screen of Seleucid light cavalry.  See the last post if you want to see the dismal steps through which this position was reached.

It was late in the afternoon of the next day before two of the generals from the previous night - myself for the Antigonids, my son for the Seleucids - dragged ourselves back to the table to carry on.  Our expectation was that a couple of turns would see the Seleucids breaking the Antigonid left which would win the fight as the Antigonids did not seem to be getting anywhere on their right.

First up was the Seleucid cavalry charge.  This misfired as the Lancers found they could not charge the Theureophoroi disordered in the last turn because, as usual, light troops were in the way, while the veteran Companion cavalry took a hit and were disordered by archery fire!

Lancers get impeded by slingers rather than impaling them while Antigonid Theureophoroi are relieved not to be charged by the Companions.

As the expected attack spluttered on their left, the Antigonids continued to fail to deliver with their right hook.

Antigonid cavalry have finally managed to beat up one unit of Kappadokian archers but have then pursued impetuously into a second unit of archers who are not so obliging as to evade.  The cavalry are now locked in a melée again, disordered, out of command and are impeding the phalanx block to the rear which has no room to manoeuvre as the block next to it continues to fail to beat the Seleucid Theureophoroi in white cloaks.

In the next turn, snarling bitterly, the Seleucid general turned his elephants on the archers and then decided to launch a cavalry charge having managed to restore order among the Companions and drive back the irritating slingers.

Seleucid cavalry charge the Antigonid Theureophoroi

while the elephants bear down on the pesky archers

who run away.

Antigonid light cavalry finally drive back one of the Seleucid light units while their heavy cavalry get nowhere against the other one.

The other unit of Antigonid Heavy Cavalry - the elite one - is losing its melée against Kappadokian archers while continuing to impede part of the phalanx. Beyond it, another part of the phalanx has finally pushed back the Seleucid Theureophoroi and, on the hill, yet another block of Antigonid pikes - the one that had earlier gone off in pursuit of some Theureophoroi, has managed to get back to the fight and attacked the Seleucid pikes driving back a raw unit in disruption and pursuing into the flank of another block, fixing it in position. 

With the Antigonid pikes beginning to get a bit of momentum going, it was crucial for the Seleucid Cavalry to do well with its charges.

The Companions forced the unit they faced to recoil and become disordered. Yay!

The Lancers failed to follow through, taking two hits from the Antigonid spearmen while inflicting none in return, so had to recoil and become disrupted.

With the elephants having been sent off to distract the archers, the Seleucid general had nothing new to add to the fight against the Antigonid left in the coming turn.  Would this allow the Antigonids the time to start breaking up the Seleucid left and centre-left?

Not if their cavalry had anything to do with it!  The lancers recoiled from their unequal fight against the Kappadokian archers while their companions lost a melée to the Seleucid light cavalry and recoiled.  Not wishing to test themselves agains the invincible archers, the end phalanx block turned about to see if it could be more useful in plugging a gap in the centre.

In a complicated set of minor, dance like moves, S4 - the white cloaked Theureophoroi beaten in the last turn - moved into contact with the rear of A1 to try to reduce its chances in its next round of melée with S2.  S3 charged into the flank of A2 - S2 not being able to join from the other flank as it was pinned to its rear by A1.  S1 could have moved but the general decided not to attack A1 as his unit was already disrupted and was raw, so would have had -3 on its hit rolls which would be an automatic fail.  The final step was for A3 to attack S4, negating its attack on A1.  Got that?

A gyre of pikes.  This shows the position in the centre after the melées set out in the previous picture, the red arrows marking the lines of recoil by two Seleucid pike blocks.  The Antigonid veteran pikes in the centre had extraordinarily seen off the flank attack made on them by their Seleucid opposite number.  The pikes on the hill had won their melée against the Seleucid pikes they had attacked in the rear, but only by one point, which seemed by the rules to allow the beaten unit to recoil and end up facing their attackers with only a disorder point.  The third pike block, attacking an inferior group of Theureophoroi that were in a state of disruption had failed to win with just about everything stacked in its favour.  Finally, the pike block on the left, despite being raw and disordered, had drawn its melée with the Seleucid Theureophoroi.

The Seleucids had been taking tests for wing morale for some time, due to the damage done to their left-most command, but had been comfortably passing the tests.  As the melées raged in the centre, the Antigonid light horse had finally forced one of their opposite numbers to rout from the field, adding to the negative modifiers for the Seleucid command.  The test was taken with trepidation but again was passed!

Both generals had been begging the dice to fail the test so that the game could be ended with a clear result.  How could a wing not rout with two units destroyed and another routed?  The answer goes back to the original set up.  If I had sensibly followed the rule book scenarios and had commands with 4 or 5 units in them, the morale mechanism would have worked.  As I had given them more, the wing remained resilient and there seemed to be no obvious way of dealing with it beyond several more turns of uncertain melée.  We did not have the spirit to carry on, so called it a draw.  

REFLECTIONS ON PLAYING THREE AGES OF ROME

Stepping back from the heat of battle, I hope I have made clear from the two parts of the report that many of the difficulties in the game were caused by the generals and by decisions I had taken in setting things up, not by the rules themselves.  If I had contained my delusions of grandeur and kept the armies to the numbers of units and size of commands given in the books we would probably have had a quicker and more enjoyable game.  If the terrain placement had been done by humans, as advised, rather than by the directions of the inscrutable dice, we might have had a table top less discombobulating to an inexperienced phalanx commander (though I would not put it past me to trip myself up on a perfectly flat plain).

Movement under the rules can be swift (unless you attach your elephants to your cavalry!).  The uncertainty as to which command will be next to move, while assuring that every unit that can move will be able to do so during a turn unless pinned by an enemy (or blocked by friends) keeps players on their toes.  The shooting and combat rules are easy to pick up and follow.

Having said that, there are aspects that I would suggest need more thought.  

The first is the behaviour of light troops.  As the rules stand, the player has a choice of whether to try to evade or not if contacted by massed infantry or cavalry.  Even when they want to evade, there is only a 50:50 chance of doing so.  By deliberate choice, or by failing an evasion test, light units end up forcing a massed unit to fight a melée with them first before these can go on to fight primary targets.  In those melées, the probability of the light troops avoiding defeat and even inflicting damage on the attackers seem rather high.  Over the course of several battles we have had only a couple of instances of the light troops being overwhelmed.  I feel quite strongly that light troops should be allowed to use their missile weapons against an attacker but must then evade automatically unless they are in defensive positions or are in line with their own massed troops who will engage in melée at the same time if the enemy makes contact after missile fire.  There should be a test for whether the light troops evade in good order or are disordered.

The second is the disadvantages given to raw troops.  These are given a -1 on hit rolls, saving rolls and on tests to recover cohesion.  This makes them extremely fragile, to the point where they are a burden to any command that they are put into and no sensible commander would expose them to battle - it took extraordinarily bad hit rolls over several turns by the Seleucid Theureophoroi in the last game not to make mincemeat of the raw Antigonid pikes when they got to grips with them.  Veteran troops do not get a benefit on their saving rolls, only on the other two tests.  It might be better to give raw troops no disbenefit on their hit roll or saving roll to balance things a little.  It would still leave raw troops 2 points less capable than trained and 4 points lower than veterans.

Finally, although the combat mechanism is easy to use, it seems to produce a high proportion of draws and not to be very responsive to changes in the condition of troops on each side.  The last game saw veteran units with advantages of impact weapons and number of dice rolls failing frequently to trouble units already disordered or having only one die to roll.  Powerful units can attack enemies in flank or rear and end up achieving nothing.  Poor dice rolls cannot be avoided but I am left with the sense that only good dice rolls do anything useful. 

In summary, from the experience gained so far I would say that this is a rule set that has some good features and could be made better with adjustments.  As it stands, it is more a frustrating than an enjoyable game.  It is clearly designed for battles with a limited number of units and should be used as intended, not forced into an unnatural shape as I did in the battle reported on above.