Thursday, 26 March 2009

SOA Battle Day - Battle of Callinicum

With less than a month to go we now have multiple units of fierce Arab horsemen painted and (mostly) based, ready to fight the decisive wing of the Battle of Callinicum. The miniatures are a mixture of Perry and Musketeer from their Arab ranges. These may not all strictly match the contemporary descriptions of the Arabs in the time of Belisarius but they are horsemen in long robes with practical headgear and a scattering of armour. They will do. For flags I have given the Ghassanids Byzantine inspired designs with motifs taken from early Arab rock art added. Their King has a very Byzantine Icon style banner as befits a loyal ally and a good Christian.
Our forces on the day will be Ghassanid Arabs versus approximately equal numbers of Lakhmid Arabs but with a small qualititive advantage to the Lakhmids and a Sassanid presence in their ranks to represent the reinforcement of the Sassanid left wing. The objectives for both forces will be to get through the enemy horsemen and attack the flank of the main army. This will be represented on our tabletop by one or two units of levy foot, showing the location of the rest of the armies. The Lakhmids will have a time limit to acheive this objective (if they are not roundly defeated first!) It should be interesting.

Sunday, 25 January 2009

A Plan of Action

Well after much discussion (there were at least 3 emails) we have a plan; a plan that might be a tad controversial too...

Faced with the twin issues of nowhere near enough of the right figures painted for Callinicum as well as a real lack of inspiration for how to set up a game that would be something close to the historical battle, we have opted for a different solution. Rather than fight the complete battle we will do just the battle on the extreme wing between the Arab allies. This, it could be argued was the decisive area of the battlefield and winning on this wing effectively won the battle for the Persians even if their attempts to mop up the rest of the Byzantine army met with limited success.

So it will be a battle between massed Arab horsemen for the Piquet game. Ahead of us is much "discussion" over the ways the Arabs of either side should be defined under Piquet's Archon 2...

Below is King Arethas receiving the good news from Belisarius that everything depends on him!