Irregular Wars Wargaming

October’s Big Game Sunday saw Tony, Garry and I facing off with a somewhat plausibly historic game of Fantastic Battles – pitting 1900 points of my Late Seleukids against their unholy alliance of Republican Romans and later Carthaginians. I had hidden a three-company unit of Arab allies in the woods on the Seleukid left as an ambush to slow down the Roman advance on that flank, but during the mishaps phase, both they and a unit of Roman velites opposite were enthusiastic and advanced towards each other. Thus, melee combat was begun before either side received orders to advance.  Elsewhere, the Seleukid side suffered little from mishaps (a single late unit of slingers). It could have been far worse. At one point I think I rolled four or five 6’s in a row which would have caused havoc if they weren’t adjusted thanks to the quartermaster strategy. The Romano-Punic armies suffered more with late, enthusiastic and diseased units along the line. The opening turn saw general advance orde...

Andriochos and Antinichos met for a Seleukid civil war rematch this week running 1,000 point armies of second century BC Seleukids built for Fantastic Battles . Last time these forces clashed , I came out on top. Who would triumph this time? My legitimate forces, led by the rightful king, Antinichos, were defending which put me at a slight disadvantage. Normally I like defending, but our armies (by no means identical) both favour open terrain. This meant there were limited tricks I could play with deployment and Andrew/Andriochos was able to deploy cleverly in response to my setup.   Rolling for mishaps, the usurper's army suffered little other than a unit of skirmishers turning up behind the main line on his right rather than out front. Several of my units were suffering from disease and two units - slingers and thureophoroi - were late my left flank. The forces of the legitimate king advanced cautiously, trying to decide how best to negotiate the terrifying elephants facing the c...

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...

After a bit of an unintended break (too much work, not enough hobby), my 28mm Seleukids made it to the table with weekend for an 1800 point game of Fantastic Battles against Gary and Tony's combined barbarian horde (Carthage, Rome, Germans and Numidians). The Seleukid breakpoint was 21, the allied army had a breakpoint of 22. Mishaps messed up Tony's Carthaginian lines pretty badly, with slightly less impact on Gary's Romans and Germans. The Seleukid line suffered more from disease than poor deployment; the Cretan archers even found that half their number deserted before the battle began. I had hoped that the fields on the Seleukid right would mire the barbarian advance, allowing me to hold them back and shoot them with my Eastern archers. The scythed chariots in the centre charged forward, but were engaged to front and flank by barbarian skirmishers. In the centre, the heavy infantry and heavy cavalry were arrayed in the middle, while Arab infantry and camelry were deploy...