Hellenistic Judeans

[gavindbm]

You'll remember facing my Judaean army, Gavin - it narrowly beat your Akkadians, mainly through shooting.  A favourite army of mine, nicely painted by John Calvert.

Yes - remember that game.  Our right wing was shot down by archers on rough/steep hills (as we advanced past them valiantly protecting our centre)...our left made very heavy weather of crushing the weaker Judean troops facing them...and our centre pushed on towards the Romans sitting stationary near your base edge.  Forget if we managed to reach and overcome the Romans in the middle or not before time was called.

[John GL]

Here's the account I wrote at the time:

Finally we faced Akkadians – two huge blocks of Pk(I) (no Pk(X)), one of Ax(X) and a PIP-dump mini-command.  Our Bw command held rough hills on our left again, and the C-in-C's Ax and Ps held rough going on our right, with the Romans, LH and Cv in the centre.  The Ax(X) attacked the Ax(S) and were beaten off with loss, but they had huge numbers and eventually worked around our flank with psiloi and a single LH(I).  The central pike block powered into the Romans who fought back gamely but soon took worrying losses.  On our left, however, our Bw(I) were able to shoot unmolested into the flank of the other pike block, scoring many hits.  That command's break point was 12.5, which was reached entirely from shooting – the massed Auxilia attack against psiloi holding a rough hill, though successful, turned out to be unnecessary.

By that time, though, the Romans were in serious trouble and broke, with 6 legionaries and a cavalry dead.  The untouched pike command was powering through and threatening to chase our LH off the table – one LH element actually did flee off.  As the time limit approached our C-in-C's command was half an element from breaking and their Ax(X) command was one off – on our last bound we bagged a pair of Ax(X) and broke their army for a 9-1 win.

[gavindbm]

Here's the account I wrote at the time:

Excellent - brings the memories back...though as a doubles game the memories of everything are a bit hazy 😀

[stevenneate]

I did contribute an article on my DBM competition experience using the Jewish Revolt. I adopted my own competition scoring system, mainly based around big points for losing my own generals in factional in-fighting. I had a great time recklessly throwing away my own troops in impossible situations, but I was trying to play "in character"! Gave away 4 big and easy wins to fellow competition "cellar dwellers" but I like to think wargaming was the real winner!

[Tradgardmastre]

I've just pledged for a Late Judean Army and am grateful for the sources mentioned and other reading ideas. Need to do my homework before they arrive...