ProjectSeleukid - An army for the battle of Magnesia (190 BC)

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 1:200-1:250 ratio against the Magnesia troop numbers, we determine how many bases we'd need, which then led to unit building.

The left wing

The centre

The right wing

There was some flexibility in the building to allow for gaming possibilities - Andrew built an additional unit of cavalry and thureophoroi, and a couple of extra bases for other units where he had left over models. I decided that my body of Pisidians, Pamphylians and Lykians would be thorakitai (the ancient sources don't mention how they fought) allowing me to run them as reformed infntry/imitation legions in Seleukid civil war games.

Fantastic Battles army list

The army for Fantastic Battles then comes in at just over 3,500 points. Obviously this is not an army size for a quick evening's game, but neither is it unreasonable. We have already played a Seleukid civil war game at roughly 1900 points each which was completed in under 2.5 hours (more anon), and I've played much smaller games against one of my other regular opponents where he would have more characters in play than we have here. 

Hail Caesar army list

For Hail Caesar, we've been more rigid with unit sizes - three companies to a regular unit, two companies to a small unit. Sticking to the Magnesia order of battle, this gives us six divisions coming in at 731 points - certainly feasible for a decent game.