I have started collecting some of the excellent figure flats from WoFun Games in Romania. My original rationale for this was that it would enable me to game periods that A) I did not currently own any miniatures for; and B) wanted to dabble in without the expense in money and time of building armies from scratch.
I have landed on two ranges initially, the Persian Wars and the Renaissance. The latter would allow me to progress forwards to the Thirty Years War or go backwards into the Wars of the Roses. The Persian Wars I'm very familiar with having studied it for A-level.
I had originally been planning to playtest Men of Bronze from Osprey Games, but given the massive amount of criticism it has received on YouTube, stuck with Warmaster, which I do like as a system, both for historical and fantasy battles.
I designed the Marathon scenario myself, although must give a nod to Lost Battles by Philip Sabin of King's College London and Battles & Battlefields of Ancient Greece by C. Jacob Butera and Matthew A. Sears, which we invaluable in scoping out the battle.
Above: View of the advancing Greek left, as seen from behind the Persian lines. Iranian sparabara spearmen in the immediate foreground, archers off to the left. The hoplites have left their dithering peltast support behind.
I opted for the Persians to have their backs to the sea, rather than with the Aegean on their left flank, which is a bone of contention with ancient historians. I also gave the Persians a couple of units of horse archers, which they may have had on the day. Or not. But the Greek hoplite force looked entirely too muscular for the Persians to be facing without a bit of light cavalry.
The game actually ended up following the course of the historic battle quite closely. The Persian horse archers came around onto the Greek right and effectively pinned down the Athenian hoplites there, who were under the command of Miltiades. The centre, under Callimachus, had some trouble moving forwards initially, leaving the light infantry/peltasts to tangle with the Persians in the first instance.
Above: Persian horse archers trying to get around the Greek right flank, or at least harass it. I believe it was Artaphernes leading this effort.
The real action came from the Greek left, who seemed keener to get to grips with the Persians and eventually engaged and started doing some serious damage. Towards the latter stages of the battle Callimachus managed to get his men moving into the Persian centre.
I made the error of not giving my scenario victory conditions. We eventually decided on a random game end and an evaluation of the losses to determine the victor. It was a close call, although Persian losses were starting to mount. A marginal Greek victory? I lean more towards the 50% losses break point we have used in the past with Warmaster.
Above: Good overview of the later stages of the battle; the Greeks have broken through the Persian line in the bottom right of the picture, and one phalanx is moving behind the Persian centre. Another phalanx approaches. No sign of Callimachus at this stage. On the other side of the field Miltiades still faces off against the horse archers.
Warmaster did a good job of replicating the dynamics of ancient battles. I liked the way the Greeks suffered losses from archery in the early phases, and how they proved more powerful once the hoplites piled into the Persian infantry lines, which is really what happened in the real battle of Marathon. My one criticism is the lack of clarity in the melee rules in the current iteration of Warmaster Revolution. I may need to re-write these myself.
I will continue to expand my ancients armies, with a view to potentially re-fighting the battle of Plataea in the autumn. Warmaster remains my favoured ancient battles rules set at the moment, as well as for the larger scale fantasy battles.
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