Tuesday 17 December 2013

Half of Magnesia (well not quite)

In the background whilst I've been flitting from project to project I have been plodding away with a solo project I started a couple! of years ago.
I wanted to do the Battle Of Magnesia in 28mm. Over time nearly all the figures for both armies have been bought ( I still need 3 Indian Elephants!) and I have been gradually painting my way through the Seleucid army. The original intention was to do big big battle DBA and army compostion has been based on that.

However Simon (aka Big Red Bat) sent me a copy of his 'To The Strongest Rules' and I quite fancy trying the battle out with the rules.

Now bearing in mind I haven't started on the Romans yet I have been making my way from the right flank of the Seleucid army to its left. I am on Phalanx number 9, one more to go and that puts us past the centre.

So today I decided to get the figures out and try the deployment as close as possible to Simons grid based rules, the results are seen below;-

Below is a general view looking at the Seleucid line from and elevated position.

 Closer image of the Seleucid right van, horse archers and bows with slingers out front.
 Moving from left to right we now have the Argyraspides, Indian elephants to their rear! light Infantry to their flank and just visible is the start of the Cataphract line.
 Continuing along you can see the light infantry and scythed chariots behind which is the mass of cataphracts with Antiochus himself. ( The banners need emblems on them)

Continuing along there is a unit of Celt Iberians masquerading as Galations and then the start of the Seleucid centre which comprises of 8 Phalanxes interspersed with more elephants and light infantry to the front. I just deployed to fill the 6' frontage.

There's some more close ups below.






What I have found is that where I was going to be looking at a table around 16' long using BBDBA I reckon I can lose about 3' of the table because of Simons grid idea.

Now this part of the army is deployed I'm going to use my Imperial Romans as proxies and have a bit of a bash, a to see how the rules go and b) just for the fun of it!



2 comments:

BigRedBat said...

Aha! My mind has also turned to Magnesia, recently. I have made a small start on my Polybian Roman army. Will follow with interest!

Graham C said...

The key now is to crack the pikes and keep the momentum flowing!!!