"Magnesia refight using Lost Battles" Topic

Hello all,

Have posted a solo refight of Magnesia on my blog. The write-up is in three parts as follows:

setting the scene,

link

the battle itself,

link

and finally some analysis of the result, thoughts on the rules and comments on the refight as a whole.

link

There are a few pictures as well, so hopefully it will be of interest to some.

Thanks for looking,
Aaron

Very nicely done battle and a super write-up. Thanks!

Doug

absolutely.

are you taking comments on the game choices you made for it?

Thanks Doug!

And certainly, Keraunos. Comment away, positive or negative!

Cheers,
Aaron

positive.

I'm assuming it is replayable, of course.

we did magnesia about two years ago now – absolutely streatched our choice of rules to the maximum to do it (2.5 times normal points for the romans, and 4 times normal points for the seleucids on a normal sized table. with no compensation for victory conditions, since we would know it when we saw it. it looked fantastic).

we leant heavily on bar-kochva's interpretation of the battle, and then hit it with a few new translations and interpretations we had picked up through things like slingshot and what not.

some of you interesting choices stood out thereofore.

brigading the right wing cataphracts with phalanx – quite a strong endorsement of the interpretation that the agryaspids were present to the right of the selucid cavalry.

As the agryapsids then disapear from the battle chronicle, despite that right wing being the wing of notable success for the army, its quite possible that they were actually in with the main phalanx itself (the right of the line, as was traditional, meaning the line if infantry) – leaving a totally cavalry right wing to charge the left most roman allied legion.

levy cataphracts – thats a lot of expensive horse and armour to leave up to some levy troops. another brave decision, I thought for what should be at least the second best horsemen in the army behind the bodyguard Agema).

The seleucinds being the weaker force in game terms is also interesting, since they are always reported as at minimum equal, and usually a good 25% larger in size. Of worse quality, certainly, but still not such the the Romans should have to work so much harder to win. in fact I would expect the reverse to be true – the seleucid numbers and quality in the more expensive cavalry arm should make it harder for them to win against an efficient Roman meat grinder.

its very hard to replicate the effect of the scythe chariots in most rules – either they cause a route through test, in which case you just stay as far back as you need to in order to avoid the check, or they simply die.
That you managed to get any sort of test against the morale of the seleuccid left wing by attacking them first is a sign Lost Battles is on the right track here – perhaps just a house-rule modifier for the shock of this novelty weapon failing and fleeing back into the cavalry is all you need to do the trick there to make them passing or failing that test to determine the course of the wing (and thus of the battle).

in the reported battle, the romans missile troops were the ones who made the attack against the phalanx- targeting the elephants in particular, and causing them to run amok through the phalanx, thus doing the dirty work for the romans. by the time the hastatii had discharged their pila and closed, the phalanx – always of dubious morale, given the number of losses it had to replace over recent years – was quite likely to fail, and I think the evidence for it even advancing properly is quite weak.
if its quality is such that the seleucids are very wary of attacking with it until the romans themselves are weak enough, you may get a better representation of this.

try taking the phalanx out of the seleucid right wing – and bumping in some more cavalry if need be – something which can charge hard but which may easily keep going to the camp if it wins. the descriptions of that wing breaking through easily and then bopping around pointlessly between the exposed flank and the weakly defended camp suggest they were not facing much, and yet couldnt find anywhere to exploit once the did break through.

I would also suggest finding some way to balance out the victory points, so that the Romans have a much better chance of winning on an even casualty spread than they get on your current plan – the seleucids effectively break, rather than fight to the death, so you shouldnt need to kill all of them to win as a roman.

make the velites veteran, they easily trounced the seleucid skirmish line historically, and should have no bother doing it in your game, and it gives thema chance to lead the attack into the exposed phalanx.

I think if you make the cats up to average for the selecids, especially on the right wing, but add a penalty to the left wing morale if the chariots rout to increase the chance of that left wing suffering a morale collapse prior to Eumenes attack, you may get a better balance to the game overall.

games that good should be played twice.

Thanks Aaron I found that to be the best exposition on Lost Battles I've read to date. Very nicely done.

Great account – always thought that a more aggressive centre on the day may have paid dividends on a battlefield suited to the phalanx.

Shame that Antiochus learned nothing from his previous cavalry battles (I think of him as an earlier albeit ineffective version of Prince Rupert).

Seems scythed chariots go hand in hand with meglomaniacs!

Well presented armies by the way.

Well done Aaron! You have quite a lot of stands in your armies now. Very nice looking game!

looks great! Very cool

Thanks again for the kind comments, gentlemen.

Oh – Lost Battles lends itself well to the old battle report, I think. It's concerned with large-scale movements and attacks, so there's no need to worry about the tactical level stuff.

Mithridates – I have 4 of the things, so must be halfway to a petty dictatorship!

John – it's nice to see the hours of painting pay off :)

Keraunos – thanks very much for your thoughts. I'll dedicate a separate post to responding to your comments.

Cheers,
Aaron

This is in response to Keraunos' post, so everything in quotes is from him.

we did magnesia about two years ago now – absolutely streatched our choice of rules to the maximum to do it (2.5 times normal points for the romans, and 4 times normal points for the seleucids on a normal sized table. with no compensation for victory conditions, since we would know it when we saw it. it looked fantastic).

Sounds good. Which rules did you end up using, and how did it turn out?

brigading the right wing cataphracts with phalanx – quite a strong endorsement of the interpretation that the agryaspids were present to the right of the selucid cavalry.

As the agryapsids then disapear from the battle chronicle, despite that right wing being the wing of notable success for the army, its quite possible that they were actually in with the main phalanx itself (the right of the line, as was traditional, meaning the line if infantry) – leaving a totally cavalry right wing to charge the left most roman allied legion.

I didn't read Bar-Kochva's account of the battle for this I'm ashamed to say (I don't have a copy!) – I simply went through Livy and used the scenario and scenario notes from Lost Battles itself. I think Phil Sabin does have the Agyraspides as part of the phalanx (that's certainly how I envisaged it), so the cataphracts being in position where they were on the right is not technically 'where they were'. I probably should have put the phalanx in greater depth at that point and placed the cavalry to the right of it to prevent confusion. As Lost Battles uses a zone system, it doesn't matter where the units are positioned within the zone for game purposes so long as one of them is designated the lead unit and all are facing in the same direction.

The zone system does congest things a little here, and it might be better (as you suggest) to have the cavalry in a separate zone to the right of the phalanx. It does do a good job though in making the use of the two arms somewhat difficult. I do think Antiochus' advance is possibly best represented in Lost Battles by a flank march, but I can see how it would work in the present set up, also.

levy cataphracts – thats a lot of expensive horse and armour to leave up to some levy troops. another brave decision, I thought for what should be at least the second best horsemen in the army behind the bodyguard Agema).

This classification I'd put down simply to Phil Sabin's interpretation of their performance. They are classed as levy because they broke early in the battle (and because there were a lot of them!).

The seleucinds being the weaker force in game terms is also interesting, since they are always reported as at minimum equal, and usually a good 25% larger in size. Of worse quality, certainly, but still not such the the Romans should have to work so much harder to win. in fact I would expect the reverse to be true – the seleucid numbers and quality in the more expensive cavalry arm should make it harder for them to win against an efficient Roman meat grinder.

Yes – Lost Battles works on the premise that the historical result is the benchmark, and that it is the 'right' result for the battle. This approach filters down through the entire Lost Battles system, and is felt particularly in how troops are classified. The levy-average-veteran quality progression is mirrored by its inverted representation of troop numbers. A unit of levy troops represents twice as many troops as an average unit and four times as many troops as a veteran unit yet only contributes 2 points in fighting value to the army compared to 3 points for average troops and 4 points for veteran troops.

This means that grading troops becomes something of an art form: you have to juggle the numbers to match the historical figures, juggle the expected or traditionally attested quality of the troops and then factor in their actual performance on the battlefield. Then one must take into account the fighting value of the whole army vis-a-vis the fighting value of its enemies and try to fit that into the Lost Battles framework of roughly 20 units per side and fighting values between not less than 50 and not more than 100. It's a pain to try to explain, but it actually works very well in practice.

To return to your observation – the Seleucids are much the greater force in terms of numbers and of units on the field, but the Romans have a higher fighting value because of the higher quality of their troops and the fact that they have a second general present in Eumenes. The result of this particular refight was not really typical, so it probably makes winning appear more of a difficult task for the Romans that it really is. Even in this refight – which was quite one-sided – the Romans could still have won the field (though probably not the battle, due to the handicap system and the heavy casualties they had sustained) if Eumenes and the other veteran cavalry unit had been able to score two hits between them on the turn before Eumenes died.

its very hard to replicate the effect of the scythe chariots in most rules – either they cause a route through test, in which case you just stay as far back as you need to in order to avoid the check, or they simply die.
That you managed to get any sort of test against the morale of the seleuccid left wing by attacking them first is a sign Lost Battles is on the right track here – perhaps just a house-rule modifier for the shock of this novelty weapon failing and fleeing back into the cavalry is all you need to do the trick there to make them passing or failing that test to determine the course of the wing (and thus of the battle).

Yes, the scythed chariots and how they should be treated in the rules is a really interesting question. In Lost Battles, scythed chariots must always be the lead unit in a zone (ie the unit that both gives and receives the first attack). When they are themselves attacked they are automatically removed and count as 'routed' without needing to roll the attacking dice. I think this could be changed a little, perhaps so that the attack dice ARE rolled against the chariots, but if the result is a hit then one other unit in the zone must take a hit to represent the effects of panic, and then the chariots are removed as per normal. If the result is a miss the chariots are removed as normal. If this result is equal (ie, it can be turned into a hit if the attacking unit 'all-out attacks' and accepts a hit as well) then the attacking unit takes a hit and the chariot is removed. I think this *might* better represent their potential for both good and ill, but would need some testing, of course.

in the reported battle, the romans missile troops were the ones who made the attack against the phalanx- targeting the elephants in particular, and causing them to run amok through the phalanx, thus doing the dirty work for the romans. by the time the hastatii had discharged their pila and closed, the phalanx – always of dubious morale, given the number of losses it had to replace over recent years – was quite likely to fail, and I think the evidence for it even advancing properly is quite weak.
if its quality is such that the seleucids are very wary of attacking with it until the romans themselves are weak enough, you may get a better representation of this.

Good points. If the quality of the phalanx was reduced somewhat (more levy troops) then there it would change the dynamic of the infantry fight.

try taking the phalanx out of the seleucid right wing – and bumping in some more cavalry if need be – something which can charge hard but which may easily keep going to the camp if it wins. the descriptions of that wing breaking through easily and then bopping around pointlessly between the exposed flank and the weakly defended camp suggest they were not facing much, and yet couldnt find anywhere to exploit once the did break through.

I think this is definitely do-able. If the heavy cavalry line were extended by another zone then this effect could be achieved much as you suggest.

I would also suggest finding some way to balance out the victory points, so that the Romans have a much better chance of winning on an even casualty spread than they get on your current plan – the seleucids effectively break, rather than fight to the death, so you shouldnt need to kill all of them to win as a roman.

Yes, one would think this was the solution, but Lost Battles already has this covered pretty well. I didn't explain it in detail in the report, but if just one unit in Seleucus' zone (the zone Eumenes was attacking) had broken, then the resulting morale check would have had a good chance of taking most of the remaining troops in the zone with it. If this had happened then the Seleucid centre would be under attack from two zones (twice as many attacks) and would have a further morale penalty, so the rout of the Seleucid army would likely have occurred suddenly and dramatically. Therefore the Romans can easily win the field, and can still win the VP contest on an even casualty spread *provided that* the casualties are not so high that the VP penalty for their loss exceeds the VP bonus gained by routing the enemy units.

It's a very fine line, as you have rightly guessed, and if the balance is not quite right it can be adjusted by altering the force composition somewhat (ie, by raising the Seleucid Fighting Value and thereby reducing the handicap benefit they get for being the 'weaker' force.)

make the velites veteran, they easily trounced the seleucid skirmish line historically, and should have no bother doing it in your game, and it gives thema chance to lead the attack into the exposed phalanx.

Good points – but it is a juggling issue: if they were raised to veteran than someone else would have to be downgraded, or the Seluecids correspondingly upgraded. Average velites can still perform the role you suggest if their commander would allow them to get in the first attack (so that's my fault!).

I think if you make the cats up to average for the selecids, especially on the right wing, but add a penalty to the left wing morale if the chariots rout to increase the chance of that left wing suffering a morale collapse prior to Eumenes attack, you may get a better balance to the game overall.

The right wing cats are already average – it's those flakey left-wingers that are the trouble ;-) The levy units have a morale penalty compared to average units, so if we can manufacture that early morale test on the back of the chariots routing off the field then they may well also take off and give Eumenes a free ride into the flank of the phalanx.

Anyway, I'm taking up far too much space. Would just like to finish by saying how much I appreciate your taking the time and effort to offer these comments and I hope that my answers have given you some idea of the reasons why the dispositions and classifications are as they are. Please feel free to add more comments if your typing finger is not too sore!

What I'm going to do is refight the battle again with the official Lost Battles scenario and then have a look at what tweaks (if any) might be considered.

games that good should be played twice.

You're a man after my own heart, I see! lol

Cheers, and thanks again,
Aaron

good answers – i hadnt picked up that the levy cats were all behind the chariots.

we used Armati – it enabled us to play and packup the whole game in a normal club evening, depsite it being a least three times normal size. (ignoreing the normal game victory conditions also helped, as it would have been over much sooner hd we done so)

in ours, the cats and agema charged and broke the 1st allied legion – exactly according to plan.
the velites accidetally show down all of the sleeucind screen – again according to plan (despite them being identical under teh rules)

and we had a house rule that the left wing cav had to follow right on top of the chariots, ot ensure they had route checks when they got shot down – which they did.

however, the left seleucid wing passed all the charot cheks, as yours did, and it became a straight cavalry melee.

I rolled played the right wing attack, and presued to table edge, then about faced and reordered before returning (which meant they played no further part) – but my roman stayed in competition armati mode, and threw his legions immediately into teh fight, instead of shooting me up for some turns furst, as he expected the cats to return quickly.

on the cavalry fight, it to-ed and fro-ed until there was just a small group of roman archery left – who turned in to target the elephants and would have caused them to rout down the line of teh phalanx – so that was going to plan as well.

but the roman infantry attack was getting a right kicking, and he was about to admit defeat, when he got a series of route through fails on the first line of the phalanx (we had two lines of pike one behind the other to represent the nuimbers better), and that was enough to clearly give the roman victory as all that was really left was the returning cats, now about to face the victorious legion.

our major change for teh refight was to make our pikes even worse – but that was over compnesated by th dice god failing us,antiochus' charge failed completely, the chariots diordered everything behind them, and it was all over in a blink for teh romans in teh second game, so much so we idnt bother to think about it again.

Im quite keen on ding a third go – this time using Tactica 2 (which has a better mrale check system, and which we are playtesting with bu which should be publised soon). maybe for our annual christmas game this year…

Hi Keraunos, I'm well up for a Tactica II Magnesia at Christmas time. I already have a scenario, and a couple of tweaks should see it ready to go(table size is 12 feet by 6). It would be an interesting exercise to compare it with your Armati game and the Lost Battles refight – another Slingshot article, maybe?

Paul

Thanks for a very interesting battle report.

yea, sounds good – only quesiton is which date – since I agreed to work the non public hols this year.

can you pop the orbat on your blog?

The date can be flexible for me – would you like to choose, since you're likely to have work commitments?

I've put the scenario on the ancients scenarios page on the blog. I think I'd like to change it, though, after observations made by others and some conversation since.

For the Romans, this would mean doubling the numbers of Velites to make them a higher proportion of the legions.

For the Seleucids, I'd reduce the Argyraspides to veteran heavy infantry and make all of the other phalanx units veteran mediums. I'd also make these guys into 64-figure units in eight-figure wide columns to compensate. The final two ranks wouldn't count for depth bonus, but it would still mean that the Romans would have to grind through them. I know that the rules have a maximum limit of 48 figures per unit, but this is a scenario rule to reflect Antiochus' deployment of the phalangites in a noticeably deeper formation.

Hope I'm making sense!

Paul

im following .

i think the Monday 27th looks good at this stage – two days after commitments have passed, and still a pub hol.

I think we reached a consensus that the veteran status of the phalanx was far too generous – they were not particularly experienced or well trained, and while the agrys could have been, their complete absence from any deed of note sugegst they are probably no better than veteran (i.e. average).

If we are going up to 64 figure units – which is a good idea – then the sheer numbers should simply compensate for the worse than usual morale, ending up with an @= number of hits to inflict as if they had been normal – but with a much more fragile state when their neighbours do get in trouble

it'll be interesting to see what we come up with vis the elephants – but again, the normal route rules for friends is probably enough to disorder them without any silly over dramatics.

I'm pretty firm on the Galatians NOT being warband though – i dont care what Art thinks about the 'man not changing' – no one hires a mercenary who wont stay in the battle line, and they were first choice of cheap expendable men for the whole of the post Alexandrian period so they should just be more foot – perhaps even better morale than the regular phalanx.

the question is, what mechanism do we use to make the left wing keep in touch with the chariots in order to be bothered by them failing. Lost Battles has a big advantage there – no movement, just a presence in a zone solves that problem easily.

Interesting question about the chariots, and something that seems to be a problem for just about any set of rules, Aaron's post-battle musings included. One way to do it would be to order the whole Seleucid left wing forward regardless. That makes it more of a replay and takes away the element of player choice on that flank. Another would be to extend the rout distance of scythed chariots, kind of like we did with the elephants at Zama, although in the event that was never much of a problem.

I was also thinking of changing how the rules work the cataphracts in a way that makes them more susceptible to disorder. I don't know they play in Lost Battles, but just making them generic heavy cavalry with impetus means a loss of flavour, at least for me. I wouldn't want to hijack Aaron's thread, but I think his refight has thrown up some problems that would challenge any set of rules.

And I like the idea of the Galatians not having impetus by this period. Would it be too much to make them elite, though?

Yea, sorry for knicking your thread.

elite is too much – but if the basic phalanx is not veteran – regular at best depending on he actual number of hits needed to break it – I would be happy with veteran agryaspids and veteran galatian foot.

we could just give Billy the seleucid left – he'd be bound to do something bizarre with it, no matter what instructions he was given. (Every multiplayer game needs a Billy – he takes all the rational planning and hindsight out of refight scenarios)

I quite like the L-B idea that if they are attacked first, they die.I wonder whether simply allowing the Roman skirmish bow facing them to be within bow shot at game start, and have shooting before first initiative rolls will do it – if they hit, and they should, then they rout back.
if they dont get the kill (it should be @ 50 50 chance, I think) then its game on for them as usual.

A report of another refight of the game has been mentioned on the Lost Battle Yahoo Group:

news-wargamers.co.uk/?p=217

These folks used Field of Glory, and it sounds as though it was another really good battle. Interestingly enough, there is a section on exactly how to use known player psychology to represent the action of generals on the tabletop.

Something else we could do would be to have one overall commander on each side who gives out the initial orders, and then no more communication should be had unless he rides up to talk directly with one of his subordinates. I know that's a standard multiplayer mechanism, but it might help. Especially when combined with player propensities. Additionally, we could rule that Antiochus can't do this anyway, because he is so busy personally leading his own right wing into combat.

I wonder how Aaron felt it played as a solo effort? He mentions decisions he made a few times. I tried out Armati mechanisms melded with the Piquet card system on a couple of occasions, and it seemed to work fine. But maybe Lost Battles lends itself more to solo play without other mechanisms being needed? It would certainly be good to see how it plays out again at one point.

Thread not knicked at all, chaps. Glad to see you planning a Magnesian afternoon yourselves! Will be very interesting to see how it plays out under Tactica II. I've been following Paul's accounts of the Empire campaign battles on his blog, so while I can't say I'm familiar with the details of the rules I do know they seem to provide a good battle.

And speaking of multiplayer games, I've been thinking of putting together an umpired multiplayer Lost Battles game to be done by email. I think it should work OK provided we can get six people who can stick it out through ten turns…

And Paul, as for LB solo, I usually play it that way. I just set up the historical deployment instead of free set-up (which involves a bit more thought and has room for plenty more 'generalship'), line 'em up and let 'em go. Great tonic :) So far it hasn't let me down!

Cheers,
Aaron

well, so long as there is enough good booze, I'm always happy to delegate the plan and sit back like a Russian quietly imbibing while the minions get on with the minutae.

it seemed to work well when we did Aspern, anyway.