Prufrock's Wargaming Blog

Prufrock's Wargaming Blog

Monday, February 27, 2017

Messing about with hoplites and legionaries

Following a recent discussion on the Lost Battles yahoo group I've spent the last week or so with a test game set up in the hobby room pitting the Spartan army of 2nd Coronea against the Roman legions from the battle of Sentinum.

The hypothesis on the yahoo group (advanced by Patrick Waterson) was that the hoplite system as represented in Lost Battles is actually tactically superior to the legionary system in the same.

It's just the kind of 'how many angels can fit on the head of a pin' wargaming argument that rings my bell, so I've been enjoying exploring it on the table.

I won't bore readers with details, but as hoplites can use depth to greater effect and  legionaries have greater staying power, the answer, unsurprisingly, is that any such clash would depend on the terrain and the exact composition of the armies.

In the real world no such clash of systems occurred, but in my hypothetical battles the Greeks won three out of four despite having a lower fighting value. Veteran hoplites tended to chew through the legionaries very quickly, but where average quality hoplites were fighting average quality legionaries, the Roman cavalry generally had enough time to outflank the Greeks and gain the advantage.

It was another interesting Lost Battles experiment and, incidentally, the first chance I've had to field my Xyston hoplites.

'Hoplites, Sah. A few dozen of 'em!'

Diceless variant by Patrick Waterson - requiring lots of note-keeping and markers.

6 comments:

  1. I always wonder, in these match ups, would it have worked out that way or are our rules at fault? They are great fun to play out though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, always fun, but any conclusions are always going to be based on circular reasoning, unfortunately!

      Delete
  2. Interesting. While there have been no full scale wars with traditional Hoplite armies, there have been some matchups. The Greek colonies on the Italian peninsula contained Hoplites. They, almost certainly, clashed with the Roman armies at times. It would be interesting to put your theory to the test with other wargame systems and see how things pan out. They all will be built out of the same research, for better or worse!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, but we don't have any accounts of battles between the systems (so far as I know!), sadly...

      Delete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...