"Heraclea 280BC - With AMW" Topic

Just posted a description of our group's refight of Heraclea, using Neil Thomas' AMW and bucketfuls of plastic 20mm figures.

link

Any comments most welcome.

Trebian

Great fight! Sounds like you guys had some fun.

1) Did you have the same amount of units for both sides as per the rules or as the number uneven?

2) Plutarch says that Pyrrhus saw the Romans crossing the river at many places. That could mean many shallow areas or the river was just universally fordable in that area. The ford, however, makes a nice tactical wrinkle in the scenario.

It was a lot of fun. Went well, even tho' one of the players was a complete AME newbie.

It was 19 Roman units v 17 Greek. Once you get up to that number the imbalance is less important. Plus elephants are worth 2 units, at least.

Plutarch says the cavalry cross at many places. The infantry use "the ford". I doubled the number of fords to enable the game to happen in the given time. As it was, things were still tight.

Thanks for posting and sharing Trebian. Looks like it was a good battle. Coincidentally, the April 2014 issue of WI had legion versus phalanx as its theme and Heraclea was one of the historical battles examined. (They did a refight of Pydna, which looked really nice, too.)

I shall have to take a look at AMW . . .

Thanks again for posting.

Regards,

Chris

The infantry use "the ford"

Wow! How did I miss that!?

True about the Elephants. It's good to know that the game can work with asymmetric battles.

That should be asymmetric battles forces.

Chris: I didn't see the WI issue. Legion v Phalanx is a classic discussion and its resolution is never easy. We'll be doing more of this type of refight as we go on, so if you're interested, keep an eye on the blog. AMW is worth a look for its simplicity. The framework is simple and strong and easy to modify without ruining or unbalancing the game.

Joker: You can have different sized forces, but you need to upscale. 10 units v 8 is a tough call for the 8, regardless of armies.

Fun looking game.

Max,

It was a fun game, without suffering from loss of historical verisimilitude. Some people think that you have to sacrifice history for fun, but it ain't so.

Trebian