Clash of the ailing titans - L'Art de la Guerre c.120 BC
Ptandrew and I met up again this week for our second bout of the newish 4th edition of L'Art de la Guerre . This battle saw Ptandrew fielding a Hellenistic army for the first time in the shape of a late Ptolemaic force. I dressed to match with a late Seleukid army, c.120 BC. By the late 2nd century, both 'empires' still had a couple of generations of juice in the tank, but both were also very much approaching (if not already mired in) their autumn years. The armies were rather asymmetrical, with the Seleukids composed of massed pikes and cataphracts with a little bit of support from two units of imitation legionaries, some levy bowmen, two units each of skirmishing Cretan archers and slingers, and a unit of Bedouin medium camelry. Nothing too fancy. The Ptolemies had a much more diverse army mixing elite Galatian cavalry, pikemen, imitation legionaries, thorakitai, and a tumble of mediocre spearmen and mediocre elephants. Out-foxed during deployment, The Seleukid cataphract