Raphia at Conquest Sacramento

[willb]

Antiochos III met an untimely end at the battle resulting in the collapse of the Seleucid empire as various factions fought for the throne.

Full report and photos at
http://18clovehamhock.blogspot.com/2015/03/raphia-at-conquest-sacramento.html

[Patrick Waterson]

Interesting: the historical Antiochus wanted to decide the battle by getting into personal combat with Ptolemy (he was much stronger than Ptolemy, unsurprisingly as the latter had substituted debauchery for military training), but it just shows one should be careful what one wishes for!

Was this battle played with Scutarii rules, Bill?

[Old Guy]

Very impressive, nothing like big battles.

[Chris]

I second George's comment. The photos on the linked blog are indeed impressive. With 6mm figures, a battle like Raphia becomes financially manageable. I could not begin to estimate the cost of 50+ elephants in 15 or even 28mm scale, let alone  the time to paint and the space required for storage. (To say nothing of the forage to feed the animals!)

Well done!

Chris

[willb]

Interesting: the historical Antiochus wanted to decide the battle by getting into personal combat with Ptolemy (he was much stronger than Ptolemy, unsurprisingly as the latter had substituted debauchery for military training), but it just shows one should be careful what one wishes for!

Was this battle played with Scutarii rules, Bill?

well, both of them were fighting with their guard cavalry so Ptolemy may have been there encouraging his troops with "Go get him, I'm right behind you!"  The two rounds of fighting saw 3 hits per turn on both sides for a 70% chance of surviving each time.  So to survive both rounds would be .70x.70 = 49%

The rules were Scutarii.  There were over 150 units per side.

On a side note regarding the effectiveness of archery in Scutarii:  a turn in Scutarii is about 15 minutes.  archery fire might cause about 1 hit per turn against an armored target.  Usually less per turn.  It would take over an hour of constant missile fire for one unit of archers shooting at a single unit of militia class troops to reduce them to 50% morale.  Longer if the target were a professional unit. Concentrated fire from massed archers would take less time if multiple units are able to shoot at just one target.   skirmishers, being more spread out might take twice as long unless they are able to concentrate their fire on just one unit (such as more than one unit of open order horse archers riding up and shooting at a specific unit during one turn.  This all assumes that the target will just sit there and not respond.   The refights of Asculum have usually seen the Greek players use the medium infantry between the pike formations to drive off the Roman light infantry before closing with the Roman heavy infantry.