"Which two Successor should I collect?" Topic

Following on from my post earlier this week, I decided to go for the late Successor period. Although this is my first venture into ancient wargaming, I intend to collect 28mm armies for two Successor Kings that can fight one another. I do this for all periods I wargame, as it makes impromptu games easier and the guys do not need to cart figures around in the car unless they want to.

It would be nice to have one Late Macedonian Successor and either an Eastern or Ptolemeic Successor. But which ones would contrast one another so I don't end up with two identical armies.

Furthermore which ones would give good historical match ups?

I am waiting for my books to arrive, so my knowledge of this period is not great.

I went with the two great generals of Antigonus and Eumenes. Two great battles with info on them, plus hundreds of elephants.

Why go with two sucessor armies? IMHO I would buy one sucessor and one Repubilcan one. Mike Adams

Legion has it spot on. The only difference between my Seleucid and Macedonian in FoG is some horse archers.
So with a Republican Army you have three possible fighting forces.

Of course the big advantage of collecting two successor armies first is that you can use that as one giant army later even if you can't use quite all of your figures in it.

I'd do Raphia.

Pictors – I think your suggestion looks good.

Certainly when I googled the battle of Raphia, it appears to throw up several different types of units for each side.

Furthermore you are bang on when you stated that I could combine the two armies, this is always a great option for the big bashes.

However is there any more suggests?

Antigonus/Eumenes because of their epic struggle. There is a certain amount of variety between the two armies, not least Eumenes' Silver shields and Persian cavalry.

There's also a fair chance that either Gabiene or Paraitacene may be picked as the Society of Ancients game next April, in which case you could bring an army there.

Simon

I did Successors years ago, the most flexible ones are Seleucid and Pyrrhic as both have elements of quite a few other armies:

Pyrrhic has Italians and many mercenaries, will do for a Western Med army and flips over to Roman (the Italians become Roman allies) or Carthaginian, who can pretty much use everything except pike and agema lancers, and if you do your Tarentine Whiteshields as later style hoplites (longer spears, as it is far from clear they were pike per se) then they can be used too in a Poeni army as spearmen. It also works as a Western late successor very easily.

Given that Pyrrhus fought the Romans and Carthaginians (and Successors for that matter – he fought Macedonia, Sparta and Seleucus) he gives a lot of options.

Seleucid is Pike + mercenaries + asiatics, so is easy to morph into the more asiatic armies.

To me the "All Star" army was the one that fought Seleucus and Lysimachos at Ipsus and lost – led by Antigonus One Eye, with his son Demetrios the Besieger and Pyrrus as the main sub generals. It's an interesting blend of Western & Eastern Successors.

Have a look at one or both of the two pen and sword books on teh wars of teh sucessors for ideas.

probably vol 2 – the battles

link

Blimey -are there different ones?!!!!

IMO the early Successor period – when the participants are either Alex's ex-colleagues or their near descendants – is the most interesting. This has the most combinations of enemies and as mentioned above Eumenes and Antigonos are a good pair.
After Seleucus's defeat of Lysimachus the greatest pair of opponents are the Ptolemies and Seleucids.

No one came as close as Antigonos did in uniting the Empire again. Then to go down to defeat while fighting in the front of the phalanx in your 80s. That was when men were men.

Eumenes was also one of the greats. He went from being Alexander's clerk to one of the greatest generals of all history. His only misfortune was fighting an even greater general and not being a Macedonian.

The two armies contain some of the most exotic troops of all. Indian elephants, cavalry and bowmen. Persian light infantry in the thousands. Hoplites, Macedonian, mercenary and Eastern phalanxes. Hillmen. Heavy Macedonian companions, heavy greek and persian cavalry. Tarantine cavalry. What ever you have, you can throw in. Also the Silver Shields, the best infantry in the world. He who had their loyalty was unbeatable on the field of battle.

I started out just to paint up a Successor army to be used as everything from Alexanders to a Late Macedonian army. But there was so many other units you could add. Then after reading several books on the struggle, I had to have two armies, Antigonos and Eumenes, to face off against each other. I use Tactica II for my rules and under them Successor armies use the most combined arms tactics of all. Cavalry on the wings, heavy infantry in the center, supported by elephants, skirmishers and light cavalry. My group have had some great battles that come down to the wire everytime. Plus did I say elephants. These games let me put out 10 or more elephants for a game.

If you want late-Successors, the suggestion by Pictors is the best bet. You can also have the troops fight at Magnesia against Republican Roman.

Antigonus, Eumenes and Pyrrhus are the first round of Successors. That said many of the core-troops would look fine in both periods. These would be phalanxes, Cretan archers and several other types. I've even used later period armored elephants in a Pyrrhic army – I just made sure my opponent knew they weren't supposed to be armored

Best wishes, Dean

I am now torn between Antigonus versus Eumenes and the later Ptolemy IV Philopator versus Antiochus III the Great match up.

Although one of my mates has a Republican Roman army, I don't think that fact would influence my decision to go for the later generals.

Can someone please give me a brief summary of what sort of different troop types were available to these generals mentioned:

Example, Eumenes – Silver Shields and Persian cavalry etc.

Thank you all in advance.

Checkout the Basic Impetus lists as a guide

dadiepiombo.com/basic2.html

The No. Of of relate to a block 120mm frontage – typically 8 heavy foot, 6 heavy/ medium horse and peltasts, or 4 lights frontage, and 2 ranks deep (foot) or 1 deep (horse). In most rules Phalangites are formed up 4 figs deep at full effect

But the core army is something like (rules irrespective, they all wind up with similar numbers)- Regulars:

- 12 heavy lancers, 6 elite
- 8 mercenary greek light horse
- 48 phalangites, 16 of which are elite (eg Silver Shields)
- 16 mercenary greeks (hoplites eary. thureophoroi later)
- 8 mercenary slingers (cretans)
- 8 mercenary slingers (something greek)

You then add 16-32 purely mercenary or "local" phalangites, add more medium (say 6) and light (say 8) horse and lots of local irregular peltasts (say 12) and irregular psiloi (say 12 javelins, 6 each archers and slingers), depending on who you have:

- Lysimachids – Thracians
- Selueucids – Mainly Persians
- Antigonos, Eumenes – Ex Macedonians, ex Persians, sundry Middle easterners, Thracians
- Ptolemies – Egyptians, Middle Easterners, Mercenaries
- Antigonid Macedonians – Macedonian, Greeks, Thracians
- Pyrrhus – Greeks, Italians (replaces Greek mercenary hoplites etc with Italian ones)
- Bactrians – replace "local" phalanx with light horse and a few more light infantry, their light and medium horse are horse archers

Pyrrhus "invented" shielded cavalry as he was the first to use Tarantines (from Tarentum, who invited him to come over and sort their Roman problem out….) so from then on replace the 8 Regular Light Horse with Tarentine style

From Pyrrhus onwards people are playing with the Italian/Roman scutum style heavy infantry that can operate in looser style – Thorakitae – so swich c 1/3rd of the Peltats into this form. The Seleucids switched half their silver shields (elite phalanx) into imitation legions, and uparmoured their heavy and medium horse (excluding elites) into parthian style cataphracts

Apart from the Seleucids there were not a lot of Elephants going round, Pyrrhus is sometimes credited with inventing the fighting tower.

For more details its probably worth getting some book with battles in them, or army lists

freecloud

Thank you very much for that, its just the info I need to start planning the project.

I have ordered some books on the subject and would like to plan this idea with some structure (not like my other historical periods which were based on what I liked the look of at the time).

Raglan
link

BTW, I personally found the Pike vs Pike battles a bit dull, I found i liked to mix it up with Romans and Carthaginians too, so I basically started off with Pyrrhus as a core (my mate also had Romans…so we were in action far faster there), and that's a quick morph into later Macedonian and then Seleucid.

I took some pix of my stuff and the website has some morphing guides

link

In the end after taking all your advice into consideration, I have decided to go with Antiochus III leading his Seleucids and Ptolemy IV Philopator on the other side.

I guess I was swayed by the look of the easterner troops and also the variety of troops available to the Seleucids.

Furthermore the idea of running Syria campaign sounds real fun.

Thanks to you all for the great advice.

In that case Bar Kochva is your Bible

link

hard to find, but worth every penny – this is what is on Google Books

link

"The Seleucid Army: Organization and Tactics in the Great Campaigns"

I managed to find a copy on Amazon for a bargain price £23.00 GBP – result!!!

Does anyone please have an electronic copy of the WAB Successor Supplement by Jeff Jonas that they would be kind enough to share?

Thanks

If you are looking for variety, then I think the early Successors will fit the bill more than the later ones where Hellenistic styles of dress and weaponry became more pervasive. You will still see 'native' gear later (e.g. in Antiochus's army at Magnesia) but in the early period there is even more variety.

If I got into this Period I think I'd do Bosphorans

Steve,

That single pikeman that you sent me was the springboard for this project – thanks a lot!!!

It will most likely cost me another small fortune.

LOL, mighty oaks from little acorns grow! Glad to hear Eutychos the lone pikeman will get a phalanx to buddy with.

Good re book – and do the Seleucids first, at least you have a Roman enemy to play while you do the tons of Ptolemaic pike you have to paint…

freecloud

Did you catch my previous post:

"Does anyone please have an electronic copy of the WAB Successor Supplement by Jeff Jonas that they would be kind enough to share?"

Raglan

An interesting source for Successor lists is Rick Priestly's Warmaster site:

rickpriestley.com

Hi Raglan,

For the WAB successors lists I suggest you ask Jeff himself. He's a good bloke and I understand he rarely bites these days. :) He does post here quite often but you can contact him directly via the email address on his web site (half way down on the right).

link

If you haven't already checked out Jeff's site you should do that too.

Trev

Cheers guys,

I will send in some photos once the painting process starts.

Raglan

I've done a little work on the ethnic make up of the Seleukid army if you're interested link