Irregular Wars Wargaming

A few of the gents from the Irish Historical Wargamers Guild met up for another of our Big Game Sundays last week to play a spot of Hail Caesar .  We once more played an apocryphal match up between the objectively true heroes of the ancient world (AKA the Seleukids) and their Punic pals (Tony and myself), against the barbarous hordes of Iberia and the Roman Republic (Karl, Paul and Garry). The nominal and not really at all significant objective for both sides was to hold the oasis in the centre, uncontested, for two turns. I'm not overly fussed with playing on such a cramped table, but we only had two terrain mats and nobody wants to leave painted toys off the table. It did look impressive if I do say so myself! The mighty line of 28mm heroes. The savage line of 28mm barbarians. The Seleukid line was matched against the Iberians and about a third of the total number of Romans. The Seleukids looked the business, but their force contained rather more cavalry, light infantry and skirm...

Last weekend saw another 'big game' ancients clash in Belfast - this time returning to the Hail Caesar rules to accommodate the variability in our approaches to basing. My Seleukids allied with Tony's Carthaginians, to take on Paul's Romans and Karl's Iberians.  I didn't realise it when we agreed to the division of an almost plausible Syro-Punic alliance against Rome and its Iberian allies, but our side may have ended up with dramatically more units - and divisions. That said, I think we actually had less heavy infantry than the other side. The Carthaginians deployed to our right, opposite the legion of Rome. I say legion (singular) as there was only a single division of seven heavy infantry units supported by two units of velites - something that wound prove quite a hard nut to crack. My Seleukids were deployed against the Spaniards and Celtiberians, the field to our front interrupted by a frustrating village and with all the Iberian units focused towards the...

This week I was down at Battle Inc in Belfast to take my Seleukids out for a spin at a game of Hail Caesar with the lads from the Irish Historical Wargamers Guild. With a total of seven divisions and six players, two of my divisions were commanded by other players - I retained command only of a division of eastern thureophoroi and Arab auxialiaries. It wasn't necessarily their most glowing performance, as reported below by Nikias, commander of auxiliaries. An account of Nikias of Amphipolis, commander of auxiliaries. Being in command of thureophoroi from Osrhoene, scythed chariots, and various camelry and other Arab tribesmen, I was posted to the far right of the Seleukid line; a position of honour, but also beyond the left flank of the barbarian enemies - an assorted line of Libyans and Romans. At the outset, my speeches fell on deaf ears as the translators struggled to convey my orders from Greek into Aramaic and Arabic. Restless for action, the two companies of scythed chariots...

At the completion of ProjectSeleukid , Andrew and I have amassed a fairly respectable 28mm 2nd century BC Seleukid army. Since starting this project off in July last year, between us we've painted: 284 foot, 86 mounted, 3 elephants (+ crew), and 2 scythed chariots. Not bad for 16 months given other projects going on along side. Starting with the order of battle for Magnesia, we split the army roughly down the centre, with Andrew taking the right, and the left falling to me. The division enabled us to build forces of roughly equal size meaning that we could use them together, or in opposition, with the three rulesets we're likely to use - Fantastic Battles , Hail Caesar , and l'Art de la Guerre . We decided to stick with 60x60mm bases for everything, using 9 figures to a base to represent pikemen, 6 to represent other solid foot, 4 to represent irregular foot and three for skirmishers; mounted were based 3 for heavy/medium cavalry or 2 for light units. By applying a roughly ...

And there we go, with the completion of two more Seleukid commanders and 16 months after embarking on ProjectSeleukid, its initial ambition is complete! I can now field half of the Seleukid centre, and the left wing for the battle of Magnesia (190 BC) at a sliding scale of 1:200 - 1:250.  The strategoi stands are both made up of 28mm miniatures from Aventine Miniatures. The green captain uses a spare officer and infantryman from the thorakitai/imitation legionary unit, while the mounted yellow captain is from the South Italian cavalry pack used to make up my Tarantine cavalry. His Attic helmet is an older model, but it checks out. I'll do a complete army showcase in the near future, but here are the lads all packed up in preparation for an epic 1900-point game of Fantastic Battles against Andrew's half of the Seleukid project this weekend. Across two 10.5 litre Really Useful boxes I have: 1x royal commander (Warlord) 4x commanders (captains) 1x priest (magic-user) 4x cavalry u...

The final unit for the left wing of our Magnesia order of battle is a unit of Cataphracts. These are Blitzkreig Miniatures 3D prints. They are about the same height as my Aventine Seleukid Companion cavalry, but a lot heftier. There was a wee problem with 'lumpy' undercoat which is mostly disguised in these pictures, but the overall look is not too shabby! Just two captains to go, and it'll be time to get them on the table!

This week saw the completion of the second-to-last unit on my Magnesia roster for ProjectSeleukid. I needed an elephant - the iconic peice of Seleukid wargear .  After my previous work on an Aventine beastie , I would have loved another. However, storage-box-height concerns meant that I needed to make certain compromises. After a bit of a search, I figured that scalecreep might be my friend for a change, and ordered an elephant from Essex. What can I say? The inside of the elephant is marked Essex 1984 - the sculpt is 40 years old. While it's showing it's age - especially the crew which have the same proportions of Essex 15mm ranges - the elephant itself isn't bad. It is roughly the same height as the Aventine one, it is significantly narrower, and the head is smaller. The howdah was equally tall and skinny, so I cut it down by about 10mm to allow it to fit in the storage box.  Just a couple more commanders and a three-comapny unit of cataphaacts to go!

Attempting to keep up some momentum - although I'll admit these were a struggle - this week we add two companies of scythed chariots to my 28mm late Seleukid army. The models are from 1st Corp. They were fiddly to build, but look decent painted up and, most importantly, just about fit on a 60x60mm base! Scythed chariots are an enigmatic legacy of the Acheamenid army, absorbed into the Seleukid military machine. While we know almost nothing about their exact look and fit out, they were seemingly employed by the Seleukids from the 4th to at least the mid-2nd centuies BC, present also at Ipsos (301 BC), against Demetrios Poliorketes in Kyrrhestis (285 BC), on the left flank at Magnesia (190 BC), 140 were paraded at Daphne (166 BC), and were perhaps also used by Lysias in Judaea (162 BC). In Fantastic Battles, I plan to use these as fantastic beasts with the expendible, furious charge and reckless traits to represent their battlefield role as one-shot disruptive terror weapons. 

Taking advantage of having a day off work, I forged on and painted up another unit for my 28mm Seleukids, this time its the mercenary Galatian cavalry. These'uns are from Crusader Miniatures Celtic range and they are pretty nice La Tène mounted nobles. I wanted an irregular feel, but always prefer to stick with a limited palette (so they don't look too much like a rainbow), so stuck with a green theme with a bit of red, but multiple different horse colours. The army is now coming together nicely and the last units needed for Magnesia have been ordered... more to come.

Sitting down to get started on my Galatian cavalry, I had to wait for some wash to dry on the horses, slipped, and painted up a small unit of slingers. These are Macedonian slingers from Crusader Miniatures; decent if unremarkable figures. Nominally they are sitting in as Trallian slingers for our Magnesia project. According to Livy, 1,500 Trallians were deployed on each flank at Magnesia. Other Trallians are listed (by Livy and Appian) among the mercenaries fighting for Pergamon and Rome on the otherside of the battlefield. Beyond that, there doesn't seem too much consensus on who they were, or what they may have looked like.  Duncan Head argues very plausibly that they were armed as slingers. In both armies they were partnered with Cretan archers, and on the Pergamene side, they were also joined by Achaian peltasts. In a later passage, the "the Cretan archers, the slingers and javelinmen" are mentioned facing off against the Seleukid chariots, Presuming the javelinmen a...