Dusting off the Greeks

 Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) - Greeks Mercenaries versus Early Successor - July 2021

I hadn't played a wargame in over 15 years, but had always maintained my interest.  New Year's resolution: use the Greeks this year or sell them.  Well, here I was using them against Phil's Early Successor army.  I used to play a lot of WRG 6th in the past and it was important to forget some of the rules for that set that had no bearing on WAB (very easy to forget at my age!).

I fielded a Greek Mercenary army based on the Alexander the Great (AtG) WAB supplement and the list available on Jeff Jonas's Ancient Battles site here: Mercenary Greek Armies

We deliberately had no terrain so that we could focus on learning the main elements of the game.

I nearly went straight home when Phil rolled a double 6 for his oracles!! (Phil's photo, of course!).

Initial deployment (not to scale - obviously - and the figures are representative)

Both of us advanced across our whole fronts.

The Successor Thessalians were checked on my right flank.  Then they fled. But the war elephant caused mayhem by its mere presence - and saw off a unit of cowardly Thracians who couldn't even be bothered to attack.

The Hypaspist chased off one unit of my peltasts, whilst the second one had some initial success against the (huge) wedge of Companions.  It then decided it was time for a tea-break and left to join the others.

In the middle, 2 hoplite phalanxes ground it out with the the pikes, but eventually started to peel away.  The third hoplite phalanx never made contact, whilst the Spartan Exiles (I know!) dithered over which way to go! Maybe it was their commander's fault, or maybe this is why they were exiled in the first place!!

A losing draw for me. A great game; both wanted to win, but not to the point of competitiveness that would have spoiled such a friendly and interesting game.  

Lots of learning points for me:

• Great to catch stationary cavalry with an infantry charge, but charging peltasts lose the 2nd rank of figures in combat
• Don't fixate on the elephant! Deal with it, but don't spend all my time trying to throw troops at it and trying to work out how to counter it.  Leave it to the light infantry. My Spartan Exiles would have been better used trying to flank attack the pike phalanxes.
• As expected, hoplites can't usually stand up to pikes forever.  Although the rank combat bonus rule did keep them in the game for a while longer than anticipated.
• Cavalry wedges are powerful so need to be ganged up on to be neutralised.
• Phil's a great host and brilliant painter.  I was inspired to buy more Greeks to paint!
• Bring superglue!

For Phil's perspective on the battle, please visit his blog: Phil's War Cabinet.  You can also see many of the other figures he's painted expertly over the years.

Copyright

Please note: 

All images and text are copyright Andrew Moran and must not be reproduced in any form without the author's express permission. Thank you.