"Raphia in 28mm - the end in sight" Topic

Recruits is less than a week away, September 25-27 in Kansas City. We have a great list of vendors and a large number of events.

I'm curious what events people are running or would like to see?

This year we have added miniature painting classes to schedule. I know I am taking a few classes and planing to paint minis a few hours when I can.

recruitsconvention.com

see you all Friday

Duane

Finally getting my Raphia project nearing completion. This table is only 8 feet long, so I had to cut down the deployment significantly. Still basing, so the bases are not flocked.

We played through a bit and all works well. The mix of figs (mainly Aventine, plus meaningful numbers of Polemarch, Relic, Crusader, Foundry). Scale is about 1:100.

This is part of Ptolemy's line. Note the double depth phalanx (24-ranks). Nearest is a unit of Gauls.

‌Raphia Test by DukeWacoan, on Flickr

This is the Seleucid lien. Here the Phalanx are only 16 ranks. The units nearest in the picture are "Arabs", which are mix of troops from the Palestine area, mainly Javelins with some Archers thrown in.

‌Raphia Test 1 by DukeWacoan, on Flickr

Looking at left in the distance, you have Wedge Heavy Cavalry (Agema), then Royal Guard and Peltast foot (which are based single width, and will fight as Heavy Infantry), then the 24-rank Macedonian Phalanx, then 4 units of Gauls , then Thessalian Horse.
On the right are Wedge Heavy Cavalry, then Javelinmen from Dahae and Cilicia, then the Phalanx, then Arabs, then Persian javelinmen, etc.

‌Raphia Test 2 by DukeWacoan, on Flickr

Not shown are a bunch of Greek Mercenaries on both sides, some Libyan Phalangites fighting as HI, Thracian MI, Silver Shields, Egyptian Levy Phalanx, and a bunch more horse.
Thanks to Simon, Lee and Keith and many others for helping me get this nearer completion.

Lovely photos, what rules will you be using?

Looking super! Deja vu. ;-) I love the big elephant bases.

Did you have the figures done at Fernando's in Sri Lanka? If so, what level of quality paint job did you have them done at? Mind sharing what you used as examples of work?
I am also looking at doing some epic sized 28mm Successor armies and I will probably need to send out the figures to get painted. Just want to work around any of the issues you might have encountered.

cheers,

Jeff

I have based things to allow for a bunch of rule options. I based each unit on a stand, which may limit a few things.

But I've been testing with To The Strongest and a conversion of GMT's Simple GBoH rules.

I had some figures done in the States, but Fernando did most (mainly collector) based on photos I sent from books or online pictures of painted figs.

Source materials are as good as you can get for an ancient battle. Comments on OOB here on TMP were very helpful.

There are more details of troop composition here.

link

I'll be posted pics of each unit on my site as soon as I have them fully based up.

Shooting for a big game at MillenniumCon in November, but I have a few pieces missing I need before then, and it is going to be tight.

This info is fantastic! You have put a lot into this. I am also happy to find out that most of you Sanath paint jobs are the collector quality. I was thinking that your figures were so nice that you splashed out for one of the higher paint jobs. Would you find that items like leaders or elephants be even better at the higher quality levels?

Did you have reasons for the different depths of the pike blocks? I am leaning toward 48 figure blocks for impact but could be persuaded differently if there was some real historical reason.

Jeff

Polybius writes that Ptolemy used 24 ranks for his phalanx. Antiochus deployed his in 16 ranks. In game terms that is 6 vs 4 ranks. So the Ptolemaic PH units are 48 figs (8x6) – ~5000 men each. Seleucids are 32 (8x4) – ~3000 men.

I used a unit frontage of 60mm, but the phalanx are 120mm wide.

I find little difference between Showcase and Collector when you have so many figs on the table.

Polybius 5.82 describes the disposition of the two armies, but does not specify the actual depth of the phalanx. The Libyans are described as armed in the Macedonian manner.
link

Great looking armies.

My mistake – I obtained my information from Bar Kochva (who says the Egyptians were 24-32 deep) and also Michael Park's article on Raphia. Bar Kochva goes into some discussion about the depth of the phalanx on each side.

Peck's article is here -
link

I have Bar Kochva's book also. Phil Sabin's book Lost Battles also mentions Bar Kochva's suggestion that Ptolemy's phalanx may have deployed at double depth and the Seleucids countered by deploying 24 deep. Sabin also suggests that if the Silver Shields were 16 deep and the settler phalanx was 32 deep they would occupy the same frontage as both of them being 24 deep. A bit of what if for refighting the battle.

If one accepts that the Egyptian army was very large (which idea has sometimes been challenged) then, as the lines were broadly the same length, Ptolemy's phalanx would necessarily be deeper that its foes. I don't think there's any way of knowing which bits would be deeper though. I went with Bar Kochva and made the worst bits of the phalanx the deepest.

For what it's worth, the scenario designer for the GMT boardgame thinks that the Ptolemy phalanx numbers are too high and that the strengths were much the same. He cites some more modern study. Then he has a variant to go with the Polybius numbers. Since Polybius is specific on numbers, I went with those larger numbers.

Nice looking game.. Big phalanxes are the bomb.