Battle of Olpae with Optio

[Justin Swanton]

Here's another battle from the Peloponnesian War. Two smallish hoplite armies with some peltasts and a unit of psiloi. Enjoy!

[Erpingham]

Looks like you were caught changing horses in midstream there, Justin.  I wonder if it would have worked with cavalry, rather than peltasts?

[Justin Swanton]

I deliberately chose an army without cavalry to see how infantry perform without them. I made a huge mistake and paid for it - actually two mistakes: 1) not assigning enough commander hitting power to my hoplites and 2) letting Peter pre-empt my flanking plan. In a second game of this scenario with my other playtester the play was very different and the outcome much closer.

Having played a lot of Optio lately confirms for me that gameplay is very different from any dice-driven game I know. Tactics are key but there are plenty of surprises as the circumstances that affect the deterministic combat mechanism keep shifting. The system is sweet.

[Imperial Dave]

very good Justin, although a bit more chance wouldnt go amiss 

[Justin Swanton]

very good Justin, although a bit more chance wouldnt go amiss 

Stirrer!

[Imperial Dave]

 

[Mark G]

And that, Justin, is why you should prefer Polybius over Livy- since it's P who states that cavalry win battles

[Jon Freitag]

Justin, you are getting in a lot of play testing.  Good to see that the rules are working as expected.  First ensure the rules' interplay is correct then proper tactics will follow directly.

[Justin Swanton]

Justin, you are getting in a lot of play testing.  Good to see that the rules are working as expected.  First ensure the rules' interplay is correct then proper tactics will follow directly.

My aim is to produce mechanisms that encourage players to adopt more-or-less historical tactics themselves rather than plaque on rules that oblige them to use those tactics. For example, infantry battlelines were rarely more than a mile wide regardless of how big the army was. Bigger armies just deployed in more depth (e.g. Cannae). So I need a reason to encourage players to deploy deep rather than wider without making a rule that battlelines can't be more than 10 battlefield squares wide. The constraint in historical width was partly due to terrain restrictions - finding level and obstacle-free ground wide enough is a problem - and command restrictions - it's very difficult to make a segment of line several km away understand what you want to do. Haven't quite licked it yet.

[dwkay57]

Looks like your rules caught you out there Justin for not sticking to historical tactics

From my reading, most hoplite battles tended to be fairly simple affairs partly because they were mostly hoplites not necessarily highly drilled in deep formations with very few and limited support troops and partly (I would suggest - I can see the counter claims flying in my direction...) down to the organisational structure of Greek armies which tended to be state based rather than function or position.

Of course, based on your previous encounters, Peter appears to be quite a canny and cunning opponent.

[Jon Freitag]

Of course, based on your previous encounters, Peter appears to be quite a canny and cunning opponent.

We all benefit from a canny and cunning opponent especially when playtesting.

[Justin Swanton]

Peter is a very sharp player. He caught on to the mechanisms quickly and gives me a run for my money. I'm using hoplite armies for now to see the deterministic combat mechanism is made predictable by simple stick-in-the-mud troop types. So far it hasn't been. The game is really unpredictable. You'll see in the next battle report where peltasts face off against hoplites. You'd expect it to be a walkover for the hoplites but no...