Battle report [DBA]: The Lamian war (323-322 BC)

A good friend of mine was visiting me on sunday and so we made some matches of DBA. He has played tabletop earlier but isn't an active gamer anymore. Anyhow he quickly learned how to play DBA - it's simply a great game, easy to learn but difficult to master! Ok, he has played DBA twice before when we met after christmas, but that was also some time ago.

So I set everything up and we chose our armies. At the moment I basically own Greeks and Macedonians, so it had to be a combination of these two. My friend chose to field the forces of Antipater. I looked in the list for potential enemies and found Athens, which I played. With these armies we simply had to play the Lamian war (323-322 BC), which broke out after the death of Alexander the great. The Greek cities rose up again to regain their freedom, but were ultimately suppressed and lost their autonomy forever. Focus of the war was the town of Lamia (therefore Lamian war). This conflict was overshadowed by the wars of the Diadochoi, but indeed has much wargaming potential with it's land battles, sieges and marine operations. We decided to interprete the history for our needs, so the following battles are recreated, but only set in the context of the Lamian war 

1. Battle of Lamia

As in history, in our first game the Greeks were attackers. They marched north to conquer the town of Lamia. A Macedonian army was hastily send to prevent this. Both armies clashed on the fertile plains near Lamia. All hills were gentle, so only the woods were difficult terrain.

The view from the Greek perspective: the hoplite phalanx on the left, fully extended. Psiloi and auxilia behind the woods, on the extreme right a unit of cavalry. Not in the picture is a unit of light horse on the extreme left.

On the other side stood the Macedonians. On their right flank was a mighty elephant, in the center the extended pike phalanx. Auxilia closed the gap between the phalanx and the hill. On the hill were the psiloi, behind them the cavalry in reserve.

The deployment from another view.

The Greek general (that was me) wanted to resolve this battle quickly. His plan was to use his longer line to overwhelm the Macedonian phalanx before they could outflank him with their superior and more numerous cavalry (bottom right on the picture). So he pressed on with all his troops.

But it was too late! Antipater destroyed the auxilia, which should guard the flank of the phalanx. Things went bad for the Greeks, who seeked the decision in infantry combat.

This is how the final close combat began. Despite their longer line the Greek phalanx was thrown into disorder. To make things worse the Macedonian cavalry wheeld around to hit the phalanx in the flank, just in time. The Greeks are trapped and so the line collapsed. As the casualty rose the hoplites threw away their shields to run away. The battle ended with a glorious Macedonian victory, they didn't even lost a single base!

Conclusion: it was a fast and fun battle. The Macedonians had a good timing which brought them victory. I need to paint some casualty markers (you don't need them for DBA, but they look pretty cool and I'm a wargaming aesthete). 

Greek and/or Macedonian camp

Hi there,

I've been busy the last months, finding a new job and such stuff. This left not so much time painting or even playing. Unfortunately this development will go on the rest of the year...

But beside that I do have finished something - a camp for my Greeks and/or Macedonians. It's suitable for FoG and DBA with its size of 12x12cm. The tent, which I shortened a bit, is from Italeri's 'desert well and tents'-set (great stuff!). The miniatures are take from Linear B's 'Roman market', but I think you can also take them as Greek civilians. The miniatures themselves are rather chunky, but do look good painted. The hoplite is from HäT.

 

 

Greek Peltasts

Hi,

I finished a battlegroup of greek peltasts some weeks ago and of course want to show them to you! If you want to know, what a peltasts was, check the Wikipedia article (it's really good), because I'm too lazy to explain it myself. In short, these were skirmishers, but more profession and better armed than the standard psiloi, who were recruited from the poorer classes of the poleis. Peltasts served as light and medium infantry and were especially good on rough ground. They became a common sight in greek armies in the 5.th and 4.th century B.C. and were also in use by the early hellenistic monarchies. They were namend after their pelte, a small shield.

I used this HäT set, which is great for every kind of light infantry. I converted some of the miniatures, because I wanted that all of them wear a helmet, so they look more armoured and differ from normal psiloi. I also replaced the spears with brooms (I highly recommend this blog article) and equipped all of them with shields. I employed the same colours I did with the poorer hoplites and the bowmen, because the peltasts were also drawn from a poorer class in Greece and should not wear expensive clothes in battle. The shield are held in colours, with white free hands, which are simple geometric symbols.

Ancients! Hoplites, bowmen and light cavalry

Nearly two months passed since my last post, a quite sad fact. I admit, I havn't done much since then. I'm writing my masters thesis at the moment and a computer game ist stealing my time. But I finished some ancient figs that waited long enough on my shelf half painted. I also adapted my old terrain to my changed game board, but I missed to make some pictures (it also looks unspectacular, so you don't miss anything). The last thing I did was to change the blog layout, which you may have noticed.

1. The Hoplites

You may have seen my other four bases of hoplites, also taken from this set. They had no armour, because it were the rear ranks. Now I've done some front rank hoplites. They wear greaves and linen armour. I made them very colourful, because they were rich men and rich men always like to show their wealth - and colours were expensive in antiquity. I have two more bases on the workbench, the last ones. With ten bases you can field nearly every Greek DBA army, that involves hoplites (there's only one exception).

2. The Bowmen

Eight bases of Bowmen from this set. With eight bases I can easily make a FoG battlegroup or use them as psiloi for Greek and hellenistic armies. Their tunics are held in bright brown and sand tones, because bowmen were drawn from the poor classes of the Greek society and could therefore not afford fancy colours for their clothes.

3. Light Cavalry

These two bases are from this superb set. They can be easily recognized as Thracians, a people with a long tradition as mercenaries for Greek poleis and hellenistic states. They'll serve as light cavalry for DBA.

The first 4 bases hoplites

After two weeks of painting (and some other stuff as well) I finally managed to make some pictures of my first quickshaded units. I'm also quite satisfied with the quality of the pictures, something which always annoyed me.

First, some thoughts on my choice. I took the hoplites because of several reasons. They were already deflashed, much work was done already. Then, (later) hoplites are very versatile - they can be used as opponents of  Philipp II. of Macedon and Alexander the Great or as allies. They are also suitable for inner Greek conflicts and southern Italian or Sicilian city states. I'll paint 10 bases of them, enough for every later Greek DBA army or a Field of Glory battlegroup. The miniatures themselves are also fine sculpted and fit good together as a phalanx.

The shields (called aspis in ancient greek) took most of the work. The decals are from LBM and add much to the unit, but they need much preparation. But I think the work was worth it! The grass on the bases is from Mininature. I used three different sorts.

The hoplites shown here are the poorer ones - they can't afford body armour and therefore only wear tunics. I used white and beige, because in my mind these guys are too poor to wear expensive colourful clothes.

Now, the pictures: