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.

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!

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.