The Battle Pack is Here!

The Battle Pack for Callinicum has now arrived in my inbox (followed 2 days later by a slightly updated version.) It is a useful bringing together of the historical sources for the battle with a summary and two interesting pieces on the opposing armies penned by Phil Halewood and Jim Sye.

We now have a good outline of what we are trying to refight which is at first sight a two stage battle with a larger Byzantine force being roundly trounced by the Sassanid Persians (for a variety of mainly self-inflicted reasons) followed by a desperate defence by the remnant of the Byzatine army until they were able to escape across the river at nightfall. This is going to be quite a tricky one to set up so that the historical outcome is a strong possibility in our refights. The Persians would seem to need to have the odds stacked heavily in their favour to give them a chance at not being steamrollered off the battlefield!

In Piquet terms there are a variety of ways this can be acheived. The most obvious is the modifier to the diceroll that determines how fresh or weary each unit in an army is. A minus for the Byzantine force due to their diligent fasting and a plus for the Sassanids seems fair enough (the pursuit doesn't sound to have been pressed particularly hard.) This modifier can affect the units' fighting and morale values so is quite powerful. A rather more blunt tool is simply to grade the Persians higher; mainly regular and elite compareed to the "Romans'" trained militia or worse.

The most subtle way of tailoring the course of the battle with Piquet is to adjust the Sequence Decks of the two armies. The Sassanids can be given extra movement cards for extra mobility and more reload cards to improve their missile effect. The Byzantines can have fewer command cards to simulate the frictions between the generals under Belisarius. Also included in the decks can be cards that radomise the start and finish of the weather effect and the chance of allied forces becoming unreliable or running off to loot baggage camps. So lots of possibilities to stack the game against the Byzantine army (I must stop thinking of the as the goodies!) However in Piquet it is always possible to beat the odds and still grab a victory.

This leaves two important outstanding questions: Is this looking like an enjoyable game to play, for both sides? And do we have the resources in terms of figures and time to paint up what we need to put on a game that we will be happy with?

Society of Ancients Battle Day

The Society of Ancients is an international organisation of like minded people interested in wargaming the Ancient and Medieval periods. or more informationa bout the Society please have a look at their web site http://www.soa.org.uk/. One of the events put on each year in the UK is the "Battle Day" - a different historical battle is chosen and as many games as possible with different sets of wargames rules run at one venue. http://www.soa.org.uk/battleday.asp There is usually at least one talk from an expert in the period of the battle and some fun prizes for distinctive or amusing results.

Having attended the last two Battle Days and put on a game at each using the Piquet set of rules I had taken it for granted that I would be there again in 2009...

2007 Battleday - Cynoscephelae

The impressive Macedonian phalanx crushed the Roman legions to reverse history in our game.

2008 Battleday - Poitier

The English under the Black Prince managed to match history by fighting off the masses hordes of French chivalry.

2009 - The Battle of Callinicum 531 AD

Byzantium versus Sassanid Persia. Never heard of this battle but in the absence of the official "Battlepack" information from SOA, research into appropriate 25mm figures has begun.