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For unusual reasons, I've been thinking recently of what a Middle Elamite (ca 1600-1200 BC) army might look like. AANE says that almost nothing is known except from a relief showing archers with helmet, tunic, and dagger (probably this one), on which shaky grounds I've previously toyed with the idea of borrowing the chariotry from my Mitanni - they're supposed to have been role models for charioteering all over the ANE, right? - and adding a horde of foot archers in tunics to round the army out.

But AANE is now forty years old, so maybe more evidence has turned up in the meantime? Discouragingly, the other wargamer's guide to the ANE I've got, Zeughaus' Die Heere im Alten Orient (2010) doesn't have any reconstructions of Elamites at all.

https://arkeonews.net/archaeologists-discover-three-extraordinary-1800-year-old-residential-style-tombs-featuring-rooms-and-windows-filled-with-han-dynasty-treasures/

Really well preserved

Chris, your research and level of minute detailing are first rate and overwhelmingly impressive.

I don't buy the argument that
"fighting with a movable coloured battle-plans"
brings forth a sense of universal
"disgust of conventional wargamers...(and) heresy"
in response to this method of fighting battles. 

We are free to choose our own methods and media for recreating battles.  If colored cardboard counters work for you, who can argue with your approach? Not me, for sure.

Do you remember the uproar among the miniature wargaming community when GDW's System 7 Napoleonics cardboard counters won the 1979 HG Wells Award for Best Historical Miniatures Series?  I do.

Your Raphia essay tempts me to pull a Raphia board game off the shelf and give the cardboard counters a spin.

Thank you.

very nice indeed Chris and much appreciated for taking the time to do this

Gentlemen,

As announced in the 'Games last Played' sub forum, I recently staged a refight of Raphia.

Below, see the title and the first 300 words (approximately) to either entice you to click on the provided link or to move on to other, more interesting, topics in different sub forums.

In addition to a battle report, I also look at the history of refighting Raphia, offer brief comments on the source material, and provide detailed orders of battle.


RAPHIA: A REAPPRAISAL

With regard to the battlefield's size and appearance, I set up my 10.5 feet by 3.75 feet table and then covered it with a simple light brown (i.e., desert-colored) sheet. A similar minimalist approach to preparing the model landscape for a miniature reconstruction of the well known 217 BC/BCE contest between the large army of Antiochus III (the Great) and equally large army of Ptolemy IV has been used by many other more accomplished as well as traditional historical wargamers. In researching this Hellenistic engagement, I made a note of Simon Miller's comments about the alleged nature of the ground at Raphia. In a post to his well-known-in-the wargaming-community blog, dated 26 April 2016, the accomplished rule writer and conductor of some simply spectacular demonstration/participation games at a fair number of wargaming shows explained: "I have plans to make the terrain more arid . . . since the site of the battle was probably covered in sand and scrub." He continued, relating that the prolific Jeff Jonas had told him "there were limestone outcrops and cacti" present on the otherwise comparatively flat and featureless plain. Anyway, the terrain "problem" solved, I turned my attention to the depiction of the formations and troops that would do battle on a 39.37 square-foot tabletop.

With regard to the representation of armies, I employed my usual (or unusual) method of fabricating two-dimensional color counters. I have been wargaming this way since 1992, approximately. Evidently, I was a foreign exchange student, then graduate, and finally an advocate (mostly silent) of what could be called "The Perkins School." (In the March 1980 issue of Slingshot, then subtitled as the 'Official Journal of the Society of Ancients,' a fellow by the name of Jon Perkins offered readers a one-page summary of the advantages to playing at ancient or medieval war with cardboard armies.

Here is the link: https://nopaintingrequired.blogspot.com/search/label/Raphia%3A%20A%20Reappraisal

Thank you Atheling / Darrell for photos and link to more photos via Bedford blog.

CarlL

A nice change

Interestingly, the FBI do not seem to have busted anyone.  I think they are treating the person(s) who have surrendered the loot as victims of fraud, rather than receivers of stolen goods.

Excellent report Darrell and the photos ARE good!

Partizan Wargames Show May 2024 Pictorial Run Through and a Few Words Too Boot!

See and read about it all here:
https://justaddwater-bedford.blogspot.com/2024/05/partizan-wargames-show-may-2024.html

Sample pics: