"Pyrrhus at Heraclea: a Lost Battles report" Topic

Hello folks,

Have just posted a report on a refight of Heraclea. It was an fine battle full of twists and turns. There is no official scenario for Heraclea in Lost Battles, but one was created after a few consultations with chaps on the yahoo group.

The battle was played solo (as mine so often are…) but it did not want for action or excitement, being tense and hard-fought throughout. My report does not really do justice to it, but hopefully it gives some sense of the action.

There is a preamble which looks at troop numbers and so one, so if that's not your thing you can always skip straight to the pictures.

Here is the link:

link

I would also like to thank Jeff Jonas for his WAB scenario for this battle, which was an excellent starting-off point. You can find JJ's page here:

link

Thanks very much,
Aaron

I need to get serious about trying to play Lost Battles.
I don't think I've opened up the book in 6 months or so.

An excellent AAR! Looks like it was fun.

Simon

Thanks gents. It's lots of fun solo, which shows just how much of a sad b*st*rd I've become in my mid 30s!

Cheers,
Aaron

Very nice report, however I would note that Pyrrhus had no Samnite allies until after the victory at Heraclea. It was at Asculum that he expanded the frontage of the phalanx and increased their flexibilty by alternating his phalanx battalions with Samnite and Oscans units.

The Tarentine white shield phalanx was nominally a hoplite unit, but certainly not as proficient as in earlier times.
Clssifying them as levy hoplites makes sense, they were not thureophoroi at this time (since the Galatians were contemporaneously ransacking Delphi).

It is certainly unlikely that any Tarentines had been re-armed as pikemen at Heraclea. Of course we have no idea how many of them participated at Heraclea.

Thanks for the credit.. I'm happy when my little offerings lead to enjoyable games by folks.

Heraclea is always a good game set-up, if it's close run thing then it seems a good test of the rules.

I enjoyed reading your AAR. Two of my gaming friends hosted a WAB Heraclea at our "Enfilade!" Convention last year.

Ted

Hello Jeff, and thanks for your comments. I have a sneaking suspicion you might have mixed up the refights – I have no Samnites at Heraclea, but do at Asculum, on which battle there is a report further down the page!

To your own OOB, I was curious about why you decided to go with overstrength legions for Laevinus. I wondered if you'd got that from a secondary source or extrapolated it yourself from this, in Plutarch's account:

And now word was brought to Pyrrhus that Laevinus the Roman consul was coming against him with a large army and plundering Lucania as he came. (Pyrrh. 16.3)

Ted, thanks for your kind comments. How did the WAB battle go at Enfilade? Is there a report on the web somewhere you could point us to?

Cheers, and as always, thanks very much to you all for reading and taking the time to give feedback and comments.

Aaron

I'll try to find the references to oversized legions being raised that year. I think it's in Garoufalias, so it's noted.

Some have recently been challenging the notion of emergency legions for 280 BC.

Thanks Aaron – a fine report. Must have another look at Lost Battles as I thought it did have a lot going for it.

Garry

" I wondered if you'd got that from a secondary source or extrapolated it yourself from this, in Plutarch's account"

It was definitely a secondary source, it's not in Garoufalias. The numbers for both sides are problem, the most agreed upon idea is the Romans outnumbered Pyrrhus, which could mean his army was smaller than stated. The other issue is the allied legions that seem to be operating independently of consular armies at the time The Campanians sent to Rhegium. Because of this I think folks may have created extra legions for Heraclea- to make a consular army exceed Pyrrhus' forces. There also the idea that it was a double consular army with many detachements, but that seems like a frabrication. I reckon I went with the notion that Laevinius could have had the increased emergency legion size since it kind of reconciles the forces, with an advantage to the Romans.

I find it enormously funny that my OOB is cited by wiki…
so your mileage will vary :)

Hi JJ, yes, you can go either way with numbers. You can either reduce Pyrrhus' forces to keep a consular army superior, but to do that Pyrrhic's chaps need to take quite a big hit numerically. I prefer the 2 consular army hypothesis myself, as do you, it appears :)

Cheers,
Aaron

Don't know how I missed this. Very nice AAR! I was going through the rules earlier. Need to set up a game soon.

Thanks,

John